Friday, August 7, 2015

Damaged By My Own Hands


I am not a big fan of modern graded cards, I would rather have a cool card in one of my binders or within the collection that it belongs, I don’t want one slabbed card here and the rest of the collection there.

So far I have broken 6-8 cards out from their encased prison and I have had no problems. Beckett and PSA slabs are pretty simple when cracking the case but today I came across an All-Star Grading case, which is sealed a bit differently. Today I inflicted damage on a poor defenseless Griffey card and I now feel sorrow for my cardboard sin.

The card is nothing major, a 1991 Front Row #9 blank back that cost under $3 so the pain I feel is pretty minor. Actually the seller sent the wrong card at first (which I already had) and told me to keep it before sending the correct card so I got two cards for the price of one.

The All-Star Grading cases are crimped along the edges so the flathead screwdriver does not fit in flat so to break away the case you need to be very careful to move the tool along the edge and unfortunately I caught the upper right corner on the front of the card and it separated the paper and bent the corner.

I knew this day would come and I was lucky enough it happened where there damage as minimal and the card had a low value.

 

4 comments:

  1. Nooooooooooo - I have several slabs I've been meaning to break, and this post makes me nervous about doing so!

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    1. I checked out some videos before doing it and the cases that Beckett and PSA use are not that hard to crack, it was just this case being a different design.

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  2. There should be a support group for collectors who have messed up cards while breaking them out of slabs. I've done it several times. A Harmon Killebrew rookie for my '59 set was my worst sin.

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  3. Sorry to hear about your Griffey. I've damaged at least two cards busting them out of their cases. It's that whole... risk/reward situation.

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