Last card of the year for me, Clark - and it’s a big one. There has been some debate in the hobby lately about what constitutes a “grail card”, but I can tell you this meets the definition for me, a Cub fan now in his 34th year of following the team.
Wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make this happen in ‘23 given some of the other stuff you have seen here, but this one had been at LCS #2 (the one about half an hour away…) for some time and I had my eye on it. The problem was it started out considerably overpriced. Finally was able to persuade the owner to come down to what I considered “reasonable” for what it is, even if that wasn’t necessarily the deal of the century. I was over it by this point, and just wanted the card.
I’m generally a color / focus / image and surface guy over centering, so yes - while this one displays the typical “name pushed to the top” that you will find on a large percentage of these cards - I had decided some time back that this was not going to be my main criteria. I didn’t want a miscut one, and this example - while perhaps barely meeting that requirement - does. The name and team logo are all there. ‘54 Topps is such a weird set for centering to start with, what with the missing top border, and design elements (Ernie’s butt in the inset picture on this one) intentionally hanging out on to the borders. Also as a bit of bonus - hard to tell maybe, but the lettering itself at the top of Ernie’s name is not cutoff as you see with so many of these, even high grade examples. The background here is a bright, clean white - not dingy, and the color and focus just really pop, print quality is astounding. For a VG range card, there are also no creases or wrinkles that I can find.
Not a perfect card by any stretch of the imagination of course, but very clean and I’m very happy with it; and I have always loved the PSA half grades. Merry Christmas to me! I hope all of you have a very merry holiday whatever you are celebrating, and that your cardboard satisfaction goals in ‘23 were met. Mine certainly were, and I’m thankful for that.
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