Pre-War Cards

The reportedly altered card more than tripled in value when resold

As I’ve written here before, I really don’t want to hit on every allegedly altered card being discovered by the Blowout crowd. If I did, this site wouldn’t have any room to focus on anything else.

Plenty of T206s, Cracker Jacks, and other pre-war stuff of note can be found over on the Blowout site that I’m not touching on here. Those are important to be sure but trying to write about every altered card at this point would be foolish.

But what I do want to continue to do is hit on the really key cards. And one of those is Ted Williams’ 1939 Play Ball rookie card.

Williams’ card is one of the more notable and valuable gum cards from the 1930s that is out there. With all due respect to things like the popular 1933 Goudey Babe Ruth cards, the Williams gets a bump up from me in terms of importance because it’s his rookie card. And produced in 1939, it falls just inside the pre-war window.

A Blowout user recently uncovered what appears to be one that has been altered. The details and pictures are here. In short, a Williams PSA 2 appears to have been cleaned up and then graded a PSA 5. Assuming the card is the same, this took a card that was initially sold for $848 and made it one that sold for $3,065, per the post. And, as is the case with so many others in this scandal, the cards were sold by PWCC.

Now, to be fair, that disparity in price is partially due to a significant gap in time. The initial sale was way back in 2014 and a PSA 2 would certainly cost you much more these days. For example, one was recently sold on eBay for $1,549. Still, the bump up in price was clear and even though the second sale was in 2018, today, finding a PSA 5 of the Williams card for that price seems like it would be difficult. All current eBay sales of the card in that grade have topped $3,500.

Just another example of a big money card that has apparently been altered.

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