1969 Topps Baseball Rack Packs- Are they legitimate?

[Mitochondria]

Originally Posted by swarmee

You may want to call BBCE and ask them about the 2nd series rack packs. I'm sure they'd give you an answer as to whether they made any at all, or whether they would consider authenticating them before you pay the money to send those ones.

Steve Hart was kind enough to respond to my email to BBCE and he stated that he would be happy to evaluate them. I’m going to follow the sage advice from this group and start by submitting 2 rack packs to BBCE.

I believe the 1969 Topps rack pack with Stanley/NL Batting Leaders/ Gladding is a fake after careful examination. I purchased the pack on Ebay on 12-19-99 for $405 from “jhustle1” from Jericho, NY. eBay states that the handle is no longer active. The fact that this rack pack had both 1st and 2nd series cards caught my attention. I just noticed that card #171 Glenn Beckert was on the back. When I looked back at the original description (I keep copies of my past purchases), he/she did mention that the pack had 1st and 2nd series cards, but never mentioned that it was tampered with. There are several other clues on why I believe this rack pack is fake compared to the others:
1. The “crimp” pattern between each set of 12 cards (36 total) appears to only have 3 dotted rows and measures 3 cm as opposed to the other 4 rack packs (from different sources) which have 4 dotted rows and measure 4 cm in width.
2. The plastic feels comparatively “flimsy” and less durable than the other packs.
3. The width of this rack pack on the top and bottom edges ranges from 11.3 to 11.4 cm compared to 11.7 to 11.8 cm for the others.
4. There appears to be very slight wear on the corners of the cards in this pack. In contrast, the corners of the cards in the other four rack packs are razor sharp and exhibit no wear. There is damage to some of the cards on the front and back of the other packs, but the corners exhibit no wear.
5. There are these tiny bubbles that I can see under close inspection (first 2 images attached) that I would not have noticed without the other packs for comparison. (Perhaps this rack pack was heated in order to seal it? I’m not sure)
6. There is this plastic “spine” on the other 4 rack packs that does not exist on this pack. I’ve attached an image (at the end) to compare alongside a rack pack that has this spine.
7. Lastly, the other 4 rack packs have this serrated edge that is palpable and has a more frequent pattern of spikes compared to the fake rack pack.

Is anyone aware of a legitimate 1969 Topps Baseball Rack Pack (non-Christmas) that has a combination of different series?





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