Card of the Day: 1953 Bowman Color – Yogi Berra/Hank Bauer/Mickey Mantle #44

Card of the Day: Yogi Berra 1965 Topps #470

Card of the Day: Yogi Berra 1954 Topps #50

Card of the Day: Yogi Berra 1948 Bowman RC #6

Card of the Day: Yogi Berra 1950 Bowman #46

Card of the Day: Yogi Berra 1955 Topps #198

Autographs and Pizza

Yes, I’d like to place an order for an extra large pizza with pepperoni, sausage, and a Yogi Berra autograph.

For a long time food companies placed sports cards within their products for promotional purposes.  One of the most notable food related cards would probably be the ones that could be found with Red Heart Dog Food back in the 50’s where collectors were able to redeem their cards for almost 20 years (thats a long redemption program).  One of the earliest baseball cards I ever owned actually comes from a Stouffers pizza box.  Its a Yogi Berra popup card that Stouffers included with their pizza for a short time in 1995.  Until today, I had no clue that you could obtain autographed cards from Stouffers.  I’m not sure if they were randomly inserted or you needed to send away for them, but either way its pretty cool.  It even comes with a COA from Stouffers.  They aren’t that expensive either.  You can usually find the Berra for under $50.00.

Serial Number Scammers & More

Last night SCU reported about a Brady Quinn 2007 LCM Freshman Fabric rookie jersey/autograph that had been up for sale on eBay.  The problem with this card is that Donruss never made any autographs like this.  Scammers are now creating counterfeit sticker autographs.  One of SCU readers suggested a way that someone might go about removing a crappy autograph from a sticker to replace it with a forged one of a better player, and then over at VOTC they created a video giving it a try.  After watching that video it really makes you think twice about buying another sticker autograph online.  This just makes on-card autographs look even better.  Congrats to SCU and VOTC for doing such great detective work.

Digging a little deeper I found this auction run by the same person who sold the Quinn.  This Yogi Berra ’08 Sports Legends auto #’ed 1/1 doesn’t look to have the “shiny” border like the other autographs #’ed 1/1 from this product.  At first I thought it might be the scan, but then another red flag popped-up when I looked at the back.  The serial number is hand written with a marker, not stamped like the other 1/1 autographs.  The final nail in the coffin would be the fact that the person with the high bid on the Berra has their I.D. kept private just like the Quinn auction.  The only other hand-numbered 1/1 autograph from Sports Legends that I could find was this Jerry West.  At first glance it looks to be from a different seller, but you can see they recently changed their I.D. and are located in Baltimore, MD.  The Berra auto is located in Elkridge, MD which is not that far from Baltimore.  I’ll report the Berra to eBay and hope they take it down.

 

 

 

This is what an authentic 2008 Sports Legends autograph #’ed 1/1 should look like.

Razor Shouldn’t Repeat

I find this very confusing for collectors.  The top image is a Yogi Berra Razor Cut Signature Encore Edition autograph, and the bottom image is a regular autograph from Razor’s first version of Cut Signature Edition.  Other than having Mr. Berra sign something different and changing the color of the bar across the top of the holder, they look the same.  Even though Razor hasn’t released the print run yet for the Encore set, I have a feeling there are more Berra’s in that product because three have been pulled already.  Brian Grey confirmed to me that only five Berra autos are in the first product, and mine is the only one I have seen so far.  I don’t think that Razor should have repeated people in their Encore product.  If they wanted to repeat people, they should at least change the design of the card a little more.

 

 

Some People Just Don’t Give Up

This was brought to my attention earlier today.  I got their auction kicked off eBay and now they are trying to scam some poor person using this site called ioffer.com.  Some people just don’t give up!  If this card was graded a MINT 9, the last place I would try and sell it is on a site like that.