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Julie Vognar(I should say that the Mantle and the Thompson are also double prints, but i don't have the low down on the details, though there are definite differences in the cards, unlike most double prints. AND: yes, they are high numbers. But they're high numbers AND double prints.
I recently sold my '52 vg-ex Topps Robinson because i decided i wanted a really classy one. I'd had it for 23 years, and I loved it. In fact I wrote a poem about it and the red-background Cobb in a 1983 Baseball Hobby News.
Anyway, I called Levi Bleam for a replacement. He said he had a PSA 6 one for $1200 (he knocked off $50), which he sent me.
I mean, everyone who first saw Jackie said the first thing you notice about him was he was BLACK. My card had been a shiny, bitter chocolate color--nearly black, the one Bleam sent looked 1/4 Indian, with some white guy way back there. It just was n't Jackie. I squawked; Bleam explained.
He said: most double prints look exactly like their counterparts--but not the Robinson, Mantle and Bobby Thompson. He said the one he sent was what he would call "reddish skinned," and the stiches on the baseball on the back go left (or maybe it's right?) Otherwise, it's a perfectly normal card. BUT: the one I wanted had several peculiarities: on the back, near the copywright sign, there's a funny little mark like a "g," and the stiches on the basebasll on the back go the opposite way/ Now: the front! Jackie's skin is much darker--the way i was used to seeing it. Additionally, the right hand black border to the picture was 1/32 of an inch taller than the left hand black border, so, in drawing the crossline, you're sloaping down, and that top line sticks out past the line coming up to meet it. Also, in the lower right hand corner, there's a little black mark (this is in the border)--unless the card is really badly cut--sort of like a comma (he showed me a whole row of borders with the comma in them). Also, the woodgrain in his bat looks different.
Well!
I looked over his remaining Jackies--he steered me toward the darker-skinned ones (the skin color is not always so apparent in the scan), and I picked one out, for $2000, a PSA 7. But, I noticed, and brought to his attention--where was the little black comma? Could this mean the card was a fake. Bleam wrote me right back, saying that if you held the card so the light glanced off of it, you could see the comma had been removed! The card was altered, and he would have to get in touch with PSA about THAT. After thinking half a day, i said i still wanted the "altered jackie,' especially if i could get it for less, and that the only way he could guarentee that no one would again sell it at full price as unaltered was to destroy it, since i wasn't going to live forever (Mark Macrae expressed an interest in inheriting it from me). I told him to keep the $1200, and see how he made out with PSA, and, knowing him, he'd be getting another Jackie in before the end of the month. But i really wanted the "altered" card. The red is smooth and brilliant, the skin is very dark, and the borders are white, and it's well-centered. What more could i want--except a comma?
So what kind of '52 Robinson do YOU have? And did someone remove the comma, thinking it was an error?
01-18-2003, 10:54 PM
The strange double print '52 Topps Robinson
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