Anonymous Collectibles NJ said...

“Let me see if I got this right. You buy low grade

beat up cards and feature them on your blog.

That’s awesome. Totally different than all the

other blogs I have seen featuring the nicest cards.”


7.25.2011

1916 M101-4 Sporting News
Joe Jackson (Reprint)

A few months ago, while searching for poor old baseball cards on eBay, this card popped up. The title said: "1900's Shoeless Joe Jackson Strip Card, Rough Card." The starting bid was $1.

Upon further review, the description went on to mention this card was a reprint. Normally I would not look any further, but there was something different about this old card.

I gave the card and good look and wondered if the seller could have been mistaken. The color was right, it had badly rounded corners and several stains and creases.

Again, it was listed as a reprint but it didn't look like it was recently printed. Could it be a really old reprint?

So I took a stab and put in a $1 bid. A few hours later, I won.

I wasn't expecting this to be a $5,000 card but the curiosity of exactly what this card was, was killing me. It arrived a few days later. Needless to say, I wasn't about to retire.

It looks like someone used a photograph of a poor-conditioned card of Joe Jackson and attached it to a piece of cardboard. They even took the steps of rounding the corners and bending the card to produce its deep creases.

To me, that's not a reprint — it's a fake!

On the bright side, it does make a nice bookmark.

4 comments:

--David said...

Unfortunately, eBay has become the place for people to sell off fake cards. "Reprint" is a loose term for this, but it's more of a "created" card. I like "fake." I just wish folks would be truthful in their ads...

Anonymous said...

Joe's one of my all-time fav's. Too bad the card was more of a fake, but yeah, it's still rather cool for $1. Awesome!

marlowesghost said...

Hey you got to give them credit for going through all that trouble.

Anonymous said...

$1 is cost worthy to satisfy the curiosity. I recently bought a few of those cards in NM condition just for the novelty factor. They don't say reprint on the cards but obviously they are.