RiceBondsMT2Yng
09-11-2018, 04:53 AM
I'm currently trying to find the best possible examples of Barry Bonds' 1986 and 1987 cards for my PC. To that end, I recently picked up a Pristine 1987 Topps Barry Bonds, his only true Topps RC.
When first I took it out of the bubble mailer I thought it looked washed out and dull, nothing like the scan I relied on to buy it. It wasn't until later when I got the chance to compare it to other cards in the 1987 Topps family that I realized why. Turns out, the registration isn't great. Upon magnification, you can see where color from the photograph leaks into the thin white border that frames the right edge of the image. It matches the color leakage in the circle with the team insignia near the top left corner. The magenta/yellow is misaligned, which is why the card - and especially its wooden border - has a green hue compared to cards next to it.
But the major thing I only realized weeks later was that the edges look unnaturally clean to the naked eye and then at who-know-how-many-times magnification from a 1200dpi scan. They don't look cut by the type of blade that chewed up cards in the 80s and left even the mintiest cards with rough, fibrous edges.
I have no idea if I'm being paranoid and this is simply a freakishly well-cut card. After all, it's one of only a handful of copies to earn a BGS 10 out of the thousands that have been submitted and resubmitted to PSA and BGS. And there's one more thing bugging me. When I matched my raw cards against the card in the slab, the slabbed card was taller and a little wider. That's why the border appears fatter up and down as well as side to side. Production quality control was notoriously bad during this era, and this isn't the first 1987 Topps card that sports a noticeably fatter border than is typical. But it's one more factor leaving doubt in my mind about whether this is a pack-pulled card, factory-cut in the 1980s.
What do you think?
I'm going to include the large native scan in the first reply so it doesn't screw up the post. I would include the native scan of the slabbed O-Pee-Chee for comparison, since you can really only see the loose fibers at that magnification, but the one scan may already be obnoxiously big. By comparison, there's not one stray fiber or bumpy edge anywhere along the perimeter of the BGS. Here's a bird's eye view so you can see why my initial impression was what it was even with the naked eye:
Topps Bonds (want to grade) --------- OPC Bonds PSA 10 -------- OPC Bonds (purchased loose to touch and compare)
Tiffany Bonds (from my set) ---------------------------------------- OPC Bonds (purchased loose to study printing errors)
Tiffany Bonilla (from my set) -------- Topps Bonds BGS 10 ------- Tiffany Ray (from my set)
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1886/44612254141_269c019232_b.jpghttps://farm2.staticflickr.com/1881/44612202441_4db2e750b4_b.jpg
When first I took it out of the bubble mailer I thought it looked washed out and dull, nothing like the scan I relied on to buy it. It wasn't until later when I got the chance to compare it to other cards in the 1987 Topps family that I realized why. Turns out, the registration isn't great. Upon magnification, you can see where color from the photograph leaks into the thin white border that frames the right edge of the image. It matches the color leakage in the circle with the team insignia near the top left corner. The magenta/yellow is misaligned, which is why the card - and especially its wooden border - has a green hue compared to cards next to it.
But the major thing I only realized weeks later was that the edges look unnaturally clean to the naked eye and then at who-know-how-many-times magnification from a 1200dpi scan. They don't look cut by the type of blade that chewed up cards in the 80s and left even the mintiest cards with rough, fibrous edges.
I have no idea if I'm being paranoid and this is simply a freakishly well-cut card. After all, it's one of only a handful of copies to earn a BGS 10 out of the thousands that have been submitted and resubmitted to PSA and BGS. And there's one more thing bugging me. When I matched my raw cards against the card in the slab, the slabbed card was taller and a little wider. That's why the border appears fatter up and down as well as side to side. Production quality control was notoriously bad during this era, and this isn't the first 1987 Topps card that sports a noticeably fatter border than is typical. But it's one more factor leaving doubt in my mind about whether this is a pack-pulled card, factory-cut in the 1980s.
What do you think?
I'm going to include the large native scan in the first reply so it doesn't screw up the post. I would include the native scan of the slabbed O-Pee-Chee for comparison, since you can really only see the loose fibers at that magnification, but the one scan may already be obnoxiously big. By comparison, there's not one stray fiber or bumpy edge anywhere along the perimeter of the BGS. Here's a bird's eye view so you can see why my initial impression was what it was even with the naked eye:
Topps Bonds (want to grade) --------- OPC Bonds PSA 10 -------- OPC Bonds (purchased loose to touch and compare)
Tiffany Bonds (from my set) ---------------------------------------- OPC Bonds (purchased loose to study printing errors)
Tiffany Bonilla (from my set) -------- Topps Bonds BGS 10 ------- Tiffany Ray (from my set)
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1886/44612254141_269c019232_b.jpghttps://farm2.staticflickr.com/1881/44612202441_4db2e750b4_b.jpg