It's been a week since I last blogged, but I'm back!
A couple of weeks ago I made an offer on a bundle of Tony Gwynn cards on eBay. It was the first time I'd used eBay's global shipping service which handled all the customs taxes on my behalf. In the end I ended up being charged about the same amount each for the cards, the postage and the import duties!
However, the parcel arrived safe and sound without the dreaded grey form of doom or being misdelivered to another street (as happened last November) and I got to open a joyful packet of cards from the late Nineties and early Noughties.
I decided to start with what would have once been the pick of the bunch - a relic card. I have a few plain swatches in my collection already, so it's nice to have one with a hint of a pinstripe down one side.
Card Number 585: Upper Deck People's Choice Game Jersey, 2002; #PJ-TG
(A card 'number' that sounds like a Star Wars droid!)
One thing I don't understand with these swatch cards is why they didn't apply a bit more thought to them. This would have looked a lot cooler if they had angled the pinstripe to run diagonally across the window it appears in, or at least line it up to the stripe is down the middle of the relic piece.
The same photo is used on the back, although it is decolourised. There is also a large blurb about how it is genuinely a piece of a shirt worn in a game.
There's a good reason why Upper Deck wanted to underline the authentic game-worn pedigree of the fabric. A couple of years earlier the Pacific trading card company was accused of buying uniforms off the rack in sportswear shops and cutting them up for relic cards. There are some incredible details about another mistake they made that outed a player for using a corked bat.
Upper Deck made their CEO, Richard P. McWilliam stake his name and reputation on the validity of that tiny square of fabric. However, they don't say which game(s) Tony wore it in, or show a picture of the actual shirt - unlike the direction DonRuss took showing the very bat they chopped up for a bat relic card.
I'm hoping to post regularly all week, this week. See you tomorrow!
Total: 585 cards
Old school memorabilia card COA's are way better than the ones featured on the back of today's cards. And I'd love to own one of those corked relic cards one day. What an awesome conversation piece.
ReplyDeleteThe corked relics would be much more interesting. A bit like the Upper Deck "asterisk" signature.
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