An (Im)Perfect Ten: Tenth Ty Cobb Card is Found to be Allegedly Altered

Posted on June 19, 2019 by Pre-War Cards

At least ten Ty Cobb baseball cards are believed to have been altered

Ty Cobb cards continue to be among the most popular ones surfacing on Blowout’s growing list of cards alleged to have been altered and regraded. And this week, a bit of a milestone was reached as a tenth Cobb has been found to be added to the list.

Late Sunday night, a Cobb Tolstoi T206 card was added to the list. The card was initially an SGC 10 and the same card looks as if it has been regraded and bumped to a PSA 2. Cracking cards out of cases and resubmitting them, of course, is no crime. But this one, like the others alleged on Blowout, appears to have possibly had some work done to improve its condition.

The original card was sold back in 2015 for less than $900. The upgraded card was sold in 2017 for more than $2,500.

Some of that, of course, would be due to a two-year period where cards have just risen in general. But the card still certainly appreciated in value and this appears to be another card that could have had some sort of work, even if minor, done to it.

One of the interesting things about this card in particular is that glued paper looks to have been soaked off of the back before it being regraded. Soaking (basically, putting a card underwater to removed paper that has been glued on) is sort of a mixed-bag in the pre-war community but more collectors than not seem to find it acceptable considering no chemicals are used in the process. Fewer collectors would have less of an issue with that sort of improvement. That said, other improvements still look to have been made to the card even beyond that, as cited in that post.

This is hardly the only Cobb to be found. As stated, it’s the tenth such one (at least). Here all of them cited in the Blowout thread.

Many of these cards saw some significant bumps in grade and, as a result, price. And even the ones that had minimal grade bumps, like the most recent Cobb found, still could experience sizable price increases.

Cobb’s ten certainly place him near the top of the list (if not at the very top) in terms of players with the most cards that have been affected. That’s not too surprising as his cards, along with Babe Ruth’s, are typically among the most valuable of all pre-war cards. But the fact that such a large portion of the cards are pre-war cards in general should raise eyebrows and keep collectors of those issues on their toes.