Card of the Day: Lou Piniella 1970 Topps Scratch Off

My First Card Show Purchase

For some reason tonight I felt like looking up Willie Stargell stuff on eBay and I found a card that takes me way back to my early days of collecting.  When I attended my first card show back in the mid 90’s, in addition to meeting Scott Rolen while he was working his way through the Phillies organization, I would try to acquire cards of players whose signature I had on baseballs.  The first autographed baseball I ever received was Willie Stargell when I was 3 years old.  That day at the show I was looking for a Stargell card, especially one that wasn’t too expensive.  I remember finding this Willie Stargell 1970 Topps Scratch-Off card sitting in the front part of one of the dealer’s boxes.  This was my first purchase I ever made at a card show.  After awhile I stopped obtaining cards of every athlete I met and a few years ago this card made its way into another collector’s hands.

What was your first purchase at a card show?

Photoshop Redemption Card Deception

After reading this, I bet you’ll never want to purchase a redemption card over the internet again.  I have talked to you about people using Photoshop to “enhance” the appearence of their cards, but this time I would like to talk about how people use Photoshop to travel back in time with their redemption cards.  Lets say you pull out a redemption card like the one pictured below.

Then you decide to scratch off the redemption to see what autographed card you are due to receive.

You find out its an autograph of a rookie that you have never heard of.  You wish you could go back in time and never have scratched it off.  Well, with Photoshop some sellers have discovered time travel.  People will scan the scratched card into Photoshop and “correct” the scratched part using the image of another unscratched redemption card.  Below is a “fixed”  version of the scratched off card.  People will put them up for sale making the buyers think it is unsctached.  Therefore, the seller gets money for the unsctached card, and get the card from the company since they already redeemed it.

I know people will read this and say I’m promoting sellers to do this, but if I wouldn’t show collectors this they would not know about it.  I wrote this to help protect potential bidders from falling victim to a scam.  Online redemptions are good for collectors because you don’t have to mail them in, but if you purchase one over the internet you could get stuck in a mess like this.  The mail-in redemption cards that most companies are getting rid of could protect you from a scam.  There are pros and cons on each side of the situation.