Card Shark follow up

[Poopy Pants]

If you are a collector, you might have heard of the book "Card Sharks." It focused on the shady business practices of Upper Deck, including printing additional copies to cash in on the popularity of some sets. For example, in the early 90's, Upper Deck came out with a french version of Upper Deck Hockey. It didn't sell very well, so the following year they produced just 620 cases of the french cards in comparison to 162 thousand cases of the american cards. The print run made cases of the french cards climb to $10k on the secondary market, so Upper Deck printed an additional 930 cases and have associates sell them for profit. They pocketed millions by doing this, and the prices of the original cards dropped dramatically.

Anyways, the author of Card Sharks recommended this book, which is supposed to be an updated (written in 2007) version of it focusing on redemptions, fakes, auctions, and PSA. I'll give a full review of it once I finish it.

 

[sliqwill]

interesting...id like to know the dirt on PSA as they seem fairly reliable compared to BGS where high volume graders got high grades...remember the way off center 04 Bowman Chrome Gold Auto Philip Rivers BGS 9.5, or even the Strasburg Superfractor BGS 9.5?

 

[Brad]

Curious about redemptions.

I believe the PSA part is about that t 206 Wagner. It is supposedly a sheet cut after market and they passed it through.

 

[Poopy Pants]

I am currently on chapter 5. If it keeps on this pace, I'm afraid there is nothing about redemptions. So far it's mainly about the Wagner and a little about fakes. Flipping through the chapters, they will get more into PSA. I don't know if they focus at all on eBay auctions, but they do focus a lot on Mastro auctions. He was the guy who originally hyped up the Wagner card. Before that, the card would sell for $20k on a good day. He bought the card, along with 100 other T206 cards for $25k, and ultimately sold the Wagner for over 100k a few years later. The guy who bought it sold his collection through a division of Mastro auctions to Gretzky for $410k. There is a rumor the Wagner was altered, and they will get into details further on in the book. So far it's been a very enjoyable read. It goes into detail about the T-sets, how they were distributed, how many were distributed, approximately how many remain, what people do to alter them, the history of the famous Wagner card, and how there are cards even more rare than the Wagner, but because Mastro is such a good salesman, there are none more popular.