Relic or ripoff...?
 

Hi all, I am pretty much a vintage collector (pre-1980). But I was hoping to get some advice/opinions from you guys. I recently obtained a National Treasures Bat Relic of Shoeless Joe Jackson. I love it because to me it blows my mind to think I own even a sliver of a bat used by Shoeless Joe. My question is, how are we to know these are real game used bats? Sorry if its a dumb question but I have no experience in these types of cards. Thanks in advance!

~Bill

Pure trust in the issuing company, essentially. This has been an often debated topic on card sites for years. If you inspect various different sets and brands, you'll notice the "COA" statement on the backs different quite a bit, some being vague while others are more specific about an item. In the end I don't believe there is a real way to know for sure if any small swatch of fabric, wood, leather or even a button or tag is really from a certain player or was ever actually used in a game.

And if that doesn't waver your confidence, consider that some of the items that were apparently bought as authentic even turned out to be fake! Now you have a legit manufacturer thinking they are providing a real item, only to find out it was not!

I personally treat these as insert cards, so whether or not the relic piece is authentic, it is still a unique card for that player, just as a refractor or parallel is too. If you are not chasing the high dollar relic cards, then it hardly matters if they are real in the end other than the fact that we would have all been sold a bad bill of goods on them should it be determined some/most were fake.

Game used is not exciting anymore. Only some of the older HOF players are ok . Now you get a new Jersey ever game. You get a ton of bats to use . You get a piece of a bat that is probably from somewhere inside the bat and the athlete never touched that part of the bat .

I've got quite a few boxes of unopened stuff from the early 2000's, some of which I've been putting on eBay. A few weeks ago, a lady sent me an email saying one of the boxes in particular brought back memories for her. She claimed to have been someone that Playoff hired during that era to find out if any fraudulent activity was going on. According to her, it was rampant. The companies, and not just Playoff, were buying these things from a couple sources who were simply buying jerseys and such off the rack and issuing a blanket coa essentially just saying they were all authentic. The companies weren't really questioning how a single person could get so many game used items, and on short notice in many cases. She directed me to look up Bradley Wells and the FBI case against him. She also mentioned that in my product specifically, she could tell me the Joe Montana jersey cards were 100% from fake jerseys, as the cost from a reputable source was more than Playoff wanted to pay.

Basically like a previous poster said, I look at them as inserts and nothing more.

It's kind of like all the Ruth autos I see. Did he really sign that many things that survived, The same with Gehrig. It just seems like there is a never ending supply of Ruth and Gehrig autos. I don't buy it.

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I have not liked them until recently, when Topps started including MLB Holograms that ties the pieces to specific games. I have a few of these in my collection, but the others I usually sell/trade pretty quickly. Here is one that has that stamp

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f4...ge/Cobb319.jpg