LOLOLOLOLOL!!!! I wasn't my intention to entertain anyone. But I'm sorry I freaked out over it, and posted on here to get thoughts and ideas as to what it was.

I think there was a story arc in Peanuts, where Pigpen spends his Halloween trick or treating with his best friend, Detritus Mays.

Peanuts was a great strip.

Great thread! I've heard the word detritus in the past but I don't think I ever took the time to look it up. I learned something today.

After further examination Bobby, I don't think that is undesirable detritus... it looks like the infamous Mays swoosh autograph. You may actually now have a signed Mays Red Man!

One of my coworkers actually signs her name like that. Crazy, I know.

First thing that jumped out at me, other than the shadow play, was the absolutely straight ends of the black interloper. That is something that would never occur in the natural marker-using world...unless, perhaps, some highly skilled medieval scribe (with proper pen nib attachments) was recently employed by SGC?? :D

I'm thinking it's more like swarf rather than detritus, but that's just me. :)

Did you even loupe it before concluding it was marker?

Was it a relic card with Mantle's pubic hair? Who knows, something like that could be very valuable and PSA DNA could actually be useful for this.

Edited to add - it looks like foreign material from the black insert that is lodged in with the card. Magic marker? probably not.

Interesting and amusing thread. Being an IT guy, with my logical outlook, I keep wondering why anyone would think the SGC graders would be armed with a sharpie in the first place. I'll bet a T206 Hal Chase there isn't a marker anywhere inside any of the grading rooms, and therefore it's impossible that black streak isn't detritus.

The Red Man Willie without the rubber worm sure looks better than a 3 to me. The offending plastic must have happened. during encapsulation, I am guessing.

This is what I am wondering how is detritus or whatever it's called any better. As tight as it those slabs are encased it is bound to leave some kind of mark which will also bring down the grade. Either way SGC screwed up what appears to be an awesome card. I would be angry.

That’s actually a very reasonable line of thinking, and this example below is a different company…but did this BGS grader evaluate the card and then run to the secured sharpie room to draw his Xs and the outline of the trimmed areas from memory? There are probably more dangers in the grading rooms than we know. I don’t know for sure what the issue is on the OP’s card, but the SGC scan makes it look a little different than the scan on this thread. Eagerly awaiting the final determination.

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...782b75cbd1.jpg

Who knows.....I have sharpies in my office. They go nowhere near my raw cards however.

I am amused that the OP is getting more flack for confusing a marker mark and detritus than SGC is for screwing up another card. At least it’s not somebody’s pube this time? The standards people have for SGC are incredibly low or nonexistent.

Someone will try and pass it off as a late stage Mays signed Red Man.

No offense but if anyone thinks that it's a sharpie mark you need a new monitor or phone or whatever device you're looking at the image with.

When Bobby first posted the thread I thought he was joking about the sharpie mark.

Pat....I'll be the first to admit. My eyes are shit. I'm not 40 anymore. When my eyes turned to shit, it literally happened overnight. One day I had perfect vision. The next day, things were blurry. And yes, when I looked at the card via the image they provided, it looked like a marker. Especially where it got light in the middle. Only when I looked at it with the loupe in really bright light did it appear to be "something foreign". What it is, I have no idea. It is not a pubic hair. Someone else suggested a shaving from the black gasket?? I have no idea.

This. I don't think I am really getting flack though. We are having a discussion. I asked for help. I am getting it. I am just amazed at things that go thru as OK. I've have seen BOTH companies I use do it. I half jokingly volunteered to be their Quality Control guy. I think I would be perfect at it. I know what collectors would be happy with, and I know what would piss them off. As an added bonus, I like the weather in Florida.

Apparently, it already has.

It looks like it has to me as well.....

Definitely not a marker. Actually looks like a thin piece of black wire.

Correct.....My original thought has been corrected. It is a foreign object. Hopefully it hasn't damaged the card.

+1,000

Yep, those ends are perfectly square and is what I also noticed too.

Great news.
That's a sharp looking card! :)

What's the point in bashing the TPG'ers anymore???? They all screw up...routinely. Some more than others...but they ALL make mistakes.

They are a necessary evil in the hobby...which we have to live with.

Correct. All they can do is strive to be better. It just seems like some of this stuff could be avoidable. I guess when they are churning out as many cards as they are, it's just one gigantic blur.

We have so little...don't take this away from us!

bitch away then! I like to complain sometimes too!!!

You're not alone on the eyes thing, that was what happened with mine. Fine, then one day I'm fixing a bike at the shop and can't see the bearinf tracks on the cone.

Told dad when I saw him a few weeks later, and pretty much the same read the paper fine one day, next day couldn't find a good place to hold it where he could see clearly.

I remember there being sleepers in my eyes that morning. I NEVER get sleepers. I could barely see the monitor. I rubbed my eyes and thought that I just slept hard and wasn't fully awake yet.

It was in my mid 40s for me. I just noticed one day I could no longer read the stats on the back of a card.

It has made a huge difference in my collecting habits. I loved the cards with several variations like the 89 Fleer Bill Ripken and Randy Johnson cards. Now that my vision isn't as good I just don't have the passion for them that I used to have.

Same happened to me in my mid-40’s. Now 63, I have a pair of glasses in each room of my house.

And, at 61, I thought I was the only one that did that!
.

Yeah, that was me. I'm embarrassed a tad to admit - that as we speak, that particular card is back at SGC right now - being totally re-evaluated, since I popped it.

This happened before Christmas, and yes - I was royally pissed. Total lack of QC, someone should have seen that on the scan if not in hand if any QC had been done at all. I emailed Brent at SGC in a tizzy and told him to refund me (which he did) because I was popping the card. I spent the next few days being pissy on social media and generally disavowing everything about TPG's. (The fact that they also sent me back a '54 Jackie as trimmed did nothing to improve my mood).

What's the moral here? I really don't know. At the end of the day, though I am increasingly more into raw lower grade vintage - there are a few cards like that Mantle that I want in a slab. SGC despite their all too human faults - still does this kind of thing less often and has better customer service in general than PSA does. So yeah, I'm trying to be more patient and forgiving here in the new year - and obviously, I'm eating my words right now on my pubed up, Peter Griffin-worthy '63 Mantle.

Sorry to the OP that this happened to you on what looks like an otherwise very nice Red Man Mays. To me, that looks like what I see even more often floating around in SGC slabs - it's like a piece of the molding that is used in the inserts? That is hands down the hugest one I've ever seen that got encapsulated and somehow made it past them, if that is what it is. Sad yes, and no excuse. But they are human. And I'm trying to look at things like my own patience, etc. a bit different here in the new year. I have no idea how long it will last, but I'm hopeful...

And PS - yeah, you can bang on and rattle SGC slabs all day long if there is something sealed up in there you don't like. It doesn't work. I've never been able to get lint or the black insert shards that you sometimes see to move even a fraction by doing that. The only alternatives seem to be to pop the slab or send back to them for a re-holder.

Perhaps the grader was enjoying some licorice at work and got distracted?

If I pay a company to do a service, and they “screw up… routinely”, why would I continue to pay them to do that service they screw up? How does that make any sense? You don’t have to pay these companies for a job they routinely screw up. How is the problem here that people observe the incompetence?

This is the only business type I’ve encountered where people have truly 0 expectations and get an instant free pass no matter what. It’s strange.

I was certainly not giving him flack just joking around. As far as TPG errors and indiscretions, etc etc, this one by SGC does not even make the top 100 list.

Well....at least the Red Man card is right side up, if that's what you mean.

I have been terribly nearsighted my whole life to the point that I can't see the E on an eye chart without my glasses but I can see things up close pretty good although that changed too at around 50 to where I have to actually take my glasses off to see tiny imperfections.

Have you contacted SGC yet Bobby?

Yes...unfortunately. Each month that passes I grade fewer and fewer cards.

+1

i agree! It doesn't make sense. But if one wants to sell cards and maximize their returns...there is no choice really.

You must play the game by "their" rules.

So . . . . . on the subject of detritus in the slab . . .

Maybe 3 years ago I bid on the card below. I could tell from the auction house picture that there was something on the slab, either a stray hair or maybe a scratch on the case. Worst case, I figured, was detritus in the slab, and I thought in that event I could then send the card in for re-holdering. The card got a clean grade from PSA (as you can see) so I wasn't worried the card was actually defaced.

Well, I won the card, and when it arrived it was not detritus, but pencil scribbles on the card. (It loops around the K in MICKEY and down through the f in outfield.) I contacted PSA, sent them pictures of the scribbles and then sent the actual card in for review.

Amazingly enough, they confirmed the unqualified grade. Their reasoning was that it was "the grader's judgement" whether to qualify the card. I pushed back, saying their written policy required a qualified grade in the event a card is marked, it is not a judgement call.

Their written response, which the customer service rep said came from their "head grader" was that the pencil scribbles were "not in the nature of a mark" and that even if they were, were "not significant enough to warrant a qualified grade".

I called the CS rep to make sure I understood what she was saying and she told me she had gotten that specific language from Reza for her response.

These are the facts and only the facts. I leave it up to you to decide what is and is not a mark, because I cannot make sense of it.

Yes....the card went back today.

Yep. At the end of the day, you play by their rules no matter how inconsistent the decision or even against their stated policy - or you hit the highway. As others have alluded to, until we as a collector base stop putting up with this type of crap en masse, it will continue to happen. I've always had such a love hate relationship with TPG's due to this type of thing. I love a properly graded card in a nice slab, but when they screw up whether with the slab physically, or on stuff that is just obvious even to a novice collector based on grade assigned - I question any faith I ever had in them.

The worst thing that has ever happened to me personally with a slab probably was a '55 Topps Jackie Robinson in a BVG slab. There was a hunk of wood, almost like a splinter - sealed up inside the inner bag on top of the card. I cracked it almost immediately. Miraculously the wood detritus just slid right off, and the card inside - though not high grade to begin with - was no worse for the wear.

Yes..that is a mark and should have been graded as such. They missed it, and didn't feel like dealing with it, so they came up with a kokamamie (sp?) excuse and threw that out there. Hopefully you didn't pay full price for it.

One makes you wonder how that got in there to begin with. Same with the pubic hair. I bet if these cards could talk, they could tell us some stories.

To be fully transparent, I'm part of the problem. I stand for it. I signed up to be slapped in the face one more time when I mailed SGC cards yet again a few days ago. Guess we'll see what happens.