1952 Bowman
 

A few years ago, I won a lot of EX/EX+ 1952 Bowman cards from a very respected auction house. The auction lot had very accurate descriptions and pics of the card fronts but no mention or pics of the card backs. When I got the cards, I was not happy that 70% of the card backs had wax stains. I know wax stains are very common with Bowmans, but I wasn't expecting that many.

I emailed the auction house and told them I felt misled and they should have provided a few back scans in the listing or at least a description. They replied that they don't post back scans on most postwar cards, and that since PSA doesn't penalize harshly for wax stains on Bowmans and the hobby accepts them as normal for the issue, they didn't think a description was necessary.

I am looking for opinions, especially from Bowman collectors. Was I misled? I know I should have asked questions before I bid, but should the AH have posted scans or descriptions of the card backs? I haven't bid with them since. If the consensus is I shouldn't feel like I was misled, I will consider doing business with them again in the future.

Thanks in advance for the replies.

david

Great set and one of the classic sets in the hobby!

Wax stains are fairly common, and PSA generally doesn't consider them too much. Not sure I have seen any with an ST qualifier for a wax stain.

Many AH's do not post back scans, especially on raw lots. Even moreso if the lot is mostly common cards.

I wouldn't worry about it

get em slabbed!

I have collected all Topps and Bowman sets, all ungraded. I personally like gum stains. For me they are a nostalgic part of the hobby. But I get why another collector might be disappointed. And I would think less of an auction house that did not think it worth mentioning that a large number of cards in a lot had such stains

On the other hand, I was not a fan of Topps Heritage artificially adding gum stains to some of their cards recently :rolleyes:

I pretty much agree with Al...I do not mind the stains on the back of my early Bowman cards as much as I would on other cards. About half of my 52 Bowman set has some sort of back staining.

I feel that any AH should mention something about the staining, even something as simple as "As expected with this issue, many of the backs feature Bowman's trademark staining...."

Lazy on the AH's part for not mentioning, but not much you can do about it now except to move on.

I would be disappointed to receive that many with wax stains as well. They should have commented it or shown pictures.

I tend to think that a tech grade of EX to EX+ would include the strong possibility of gum stains on the backs. Maybe if they had been NR MT, you would have a legit beef, but in any case, couldn't you have asked for back scans before the auction end? Man, I wonder how long it would have taken me to complete a '52 Bowman set with no gum stains - many years, no doubt.

Was stains ok....gum stains not so much

Both are marks of character in ....or on a card. :). Gum and cards are the history of the hobby. Removing gum stains is like trying to erase history ;)

This

Should have communicated some way
 

Mho - via picture or description it should have been mentioned - would not prevent me from doing business again, just doing so expecting to be responsible for asking more pointed condition based questions for anything I was interested in.

AH should have either shown backs or mentioned it. No reason to needlessly disappoint a bidder. A bad business decision; you aren’t likely to do business with them again.

was wax
 

Have to wonder why back stains on the '52 Bowman cards are sometimes attributed to "wax staining" and other times to "gum staining." When ripping open the packs back then, I found five cards all facing up, so that only the last card was touching the gum slab. My memory is fuzzy as to whether there was ever a waxed separator between the cards and gum in the pack. But, in any case, since only one card out of five in a pack was in contact with the stuff, why is it so tough to find unstained cards? Maybe there was some other staining process going on at the printshop, apart from gum or wax.

Perhaps more 1 cent packs, thus abundance of wax stains
 

Perhaps more 1 cent packs back then, thus abundance of wax stains? A nickle in 1952 had to be harder to come by for a kid, compared to say 1969, the last year of nickle packs.

Do kids today even know what a penny was?
 

I thought of that - the possibility of many more penny packs being sold in those days, but at least in my small hometown, the only size I saw were nickel packs. Maybe the penny size was a bigger seller in large markets.