Beckett's Box Breaks Arent Even Worth My Comment Any More

Topps Tribute has lived up to my under-billing and then some. Outside of the fact that the cards look as terrible, if not more terrible than last year, the box breaks have been some of the worst this side of Topps Paradigm we have ever seen. For the amount of money collectors are paying for these boxes the cards that are being pulled are complete junk. There was even a case break on blowout where one person pulled FIVE Duke Snider autographs. Not one, not two, but FIVE. Of course, Beckett's two box break was a COMPLETELY different story. Par for the course, right?

First, a little history. A lot of you probably have started reading this blog after the first few months back in early 2008, understandably. But, back at that time, Beckett was breaking boxes almost daily, and they were never without an eyepopping hit or two, especially when it came to high end products. Even before the infamous Exquisite ass ream, they had a number of products that were so obviously loaded on purpose that it was tough to ignore. I mean, go back and watch their break of 2007 National Treasures. It wasn’t even subtle. The box they had that contained both a 1/1 ridiculous patch auto of Brady Quinn (who was a top rookie at the time) and two other awesome cards didn’t even come with the normal advertising info that comes in every single box. No checklist, no kodak thing, nothing. It was just the box and the pack. That's only the beginning. They had one of the craziest cases of Topps Sterling I have ever seen, and they made it seem like it was all just their luck. Right, just like my scrub auto pull from Classics is worth high book.

Then the 2007 Exquisite break rolled around and everyone FINALLY caught on to their obvious deception, mainly in partnering with the companies to get boxes sent to them that contained cards that made the products seem better. Go back and watch, tally all the pulls, count the number of boxes they break, and then tell me its all LUCK. In fact, Upper Deck faced such a terrible reputation over that break, that they did not resume regular publicized box breaks with Beckett until the 2009 football season. Sure says a lot about what is going on with what Tracy Hackler refers to as the readers favorite part of what Beckett does. Cmon.

Fast forward to yesterday. Tribute is falling flat on its face, especially in the realm of customer satisfaction. Beckett posts a video of two boxes of the product supplied by Topps. In those two boxes, they pull one of the most coveted non-1/1 cards in the entire product, a bat of the most collected player in hobby history, a 1/1 of the best player in baseball, and another auto of a popular player. Two boxes. That’s it. Funny how that works. In fact, if you go back and tally the price of all the pulls of a lifetime Beckett has had, the total equals close to twenty thousand dollars. And they only have broken one or two boxes of every product. Some kind of luck.

In fact, if you go back and look over the cases that have been broken on all the message boards, there isnt a lot of evidence that collectors are pulling that kind of hauls out of entire cases, let alone two boxes. The main point here is whatever cards they pull are being taken out of the hands of collectors that actually pay for the products. I have said a hundred times before that it would not be hard to solicit collector breaks of the product and post those instead of their own boxes supplied by the company reps. They are purchased from real stores with real money, and considering that the collector's reactions to the product will be more genuine, more realism will also be presented.

Yeah, I know, Beckett's arrogance and their commitment to providing the most unrealistic view of the hobby possible will prevent this from ever happening. That is really too bad, especially for the schmucks that still believe every piece of info they put out.

Don’t get me wrong, Topps is just as much to blame, as the companies are. However, Topps has a bottom line to uphold and they are not the media source that is responsible for reporting on the product. It would be like Rolling Stone getting an album with three extra tracks on it and reviewing that instead of what the normal customer could buy on iTunes. The company will take whatever steps it can to pad its profits, and its up to the outlets to refuse the deception. We all know that Beckett is more than happy to trade morality for a few extra views on their video, so Im not surprised.

Its just absolutely terrible that people are still putting stock in their breaks.

NEW SCAM: 2001 Pujols Chrome Fakes Spotted At Philly Show

I just got an email forewarning me of a scam that is on the verge of hitting eBay with full force. Kevin Burge, aka shoelessjoejackson, had quite the situation on his hands at the Philly show last weekend when he tried to get JSA, PSA, SGC and BGS to slab his COUNTERFEIT 2001 Albert Pujols Bowman Chrome autos.

Here is the thread containing a confirmation from SGC.

(STOCK PHOTO)

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the douchebag that this guy is, he is the mastermind behind the Topps Rookie Premiere fakes that are all over eBay, and have made it practically impossible to figure out which of the cards are real or fake. Per some preliminary reports, some of the fakes even made it past BGS, thus making things even more difficult. Burge has been a known patch faker for years, but creating actual fake cards is something new for him. Obviously he has found a way to get his grubby fucking fingers on some way to produce the Pujols chromes, and it wont be long before they get out of control.

The fact that the Pujols fakes are a new breed of fake is quite frightening. At least his usual stupidity got the best of him when trying to pass them through the graders. Apparently, Burge didnt do his research, as always, and tried to forge a later style Pujols auto on the 2001 card, therefore setting off all sorts of red flags for the people who examined the cards. To add to it, a few of the numbers were off, so it was pretty easy to see why the cards failed inspection.

People, things are getting pretty fucking bad, and I encourage you to do MASSIVE amounts of research before making any sort of big purchases now. As long as asshats like Kevin Burge are out there, we are all at risk to get our money ripped off. More importantly, with this info, watch out for the Pujols fakes that are sure to start popping up on eBay soon, and email me if you see one at sportscardsuncensored@gmail.com. How he has not gone to jail for the amount of money he has stolen from people is beyond me.

Here are a few of his names we know of:

shoeless-joejackson
peopleschoice7373
cardsrahabit
jmvariety09
blameitonthealcohol (buying account)

cauckcards

Pack Searchers Are One Thing...

Ever since the advent of jersey cards in products, people have been there to beat the system when opening packs to make money. These morally deceptive people have camped out at retailers across the country with their system, all with the goal of finding jersey and auto cards without ever opening the pack. These “pack searchers” have become some of the most hated people in the hobby, and have made buying loose retail packs for hits an unwinnable venture.

After obtaining these searched packs, they often sell them on eBay as “hot packs,” or packs of product for sale with guaranteed hits inside. Collectors often buy the packs expecting a chance at a nice card, but usually end up with nothing more than a plain jersey card. It’s unethical, damaging, and underhanded, despite the fact that manufacturers have used decoy cards to try and fend them off. As the companies have started to clearly label their retail packs, coupled with the decreasing value of plain jersey cards, pack searchers have diminished in numbers. It doesn’t stop people from trying their hand at it, but really, it’s not as much of a problem as it used to be.

There is one thing I saw recently that made me cringe, and that is the number of sellers out there who flat out cheat buyers who don’t know the logistics of the practice. Recently, an auction was posted, featuring the claim that the hot pack for sale contained a 1 of 1 superfractor out of 2009 Topps Chrome Football. Superfractors are extremely valuable for top tier rookies and players, and are some of the most sought after cards in the hobby. Every red flag I had in place started to go off in my head, rightfully so.

For those of you who have opened the packs of this product, its no surprise that this is a completely impossible claim to make. A superfractor is physically impossible to search out in an unopened pack, as the card features no discernable difference from the regular cards. They are not thicker, they don’t weigh more, and they are not a guaranteed hit in any box. Therefore, any claim that any unopened pack contains one, is 100% false.

Of course, because not everyone is familiar with these facts, there are bidders on the pack, which should end upwards of 100 dollars. I feel horrible for the winning bidder, because whoever buys the pack will end up with a superfractor that isn’t worth anything, out of a pack that has been opened and resealed. The seller has opened the pack, saw that the superfractor was probably a cheerleader card or lower tier player, glued the pack shut, and is selling it under the suspicion that the sale will get him more money.

DO NOT FALL FOR THIS SCAM.

The easiest way to punish any scam artist is to not buy into the scam, especially when there are very few avenues to take corrective action on this person. The seller’s pack will deliver what it says, but only because the person has advanced knowledge of what is going to come out of the pack. It’s completely unethical and unfair to the buyer, and I recommend never trusting anything you can’t verify with 100% certainty.

Personally, I would avoid hot packs all together, even if the sale seems legit. It encourages cheating, and provides funds for people who do not deserve them. You will NEVER make back your money, and the risk will never be worth the reward.

A New Way To Combat Fakes?

A few days ago I talked about the fake Peterson logo patch that had been retardedly created from a legit 3 color SPA. Well, that auction was taken down after a few people got together and bid the item up to over $250,000. Oh, so much win.

Now, the item is back up, and so is the bidding. The seller is famed faker shoelessjoejackson Kevin Burge, and I know a lot of people are tired of his multiple accounts and endless stream of fucking stupid fakes. Is this the new way to handle the douchey fakes? I say yes.

Here is a screen shot before it is taken down:

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that the scan is so tiny because the card is trimmed. For those of you unfamiliar, Trimming is when the douche cuts off parts of the edges to remove perceived damage. The card looks much better, but is still considered to be much less valuable due to the alterations. Trimming is to bad edges and corners what patch faking is to one color patches, or in this case THREE.

Why Are People This Stupid?

Kickstand forwarded me this auction of a fake SPA Peterson Viking head logo, and I am shocked for a few reasons. Obviously, there is not even a question that this card isnt real, and Kickstand even included the pic of the real card to prove it. Ill get to that in a second.

First, its almost like no one understands that the stiching on any Vikings NFL authentic jersey is not flat like it is in this patch. The Vikings heads have much different stitching, which most of the time can be determined simply by going on the NFL website. If you are going to spend 500 plus dollars on this card, why wouldnt you just go take a look? Its fucking ridiculous to me.

Second, and even more shocking, this fucking douchebag destroyed a three color patch card to create this abomination. If you look at the before pics, you can see why the actual real card will be worth MORE than the money he gets for the fake. For this I fucking laugh, because you know he is too dumb to buy a regular one color patch for his crime, and instead uses the most expensive one available. I dont think I have ever seen a douchebag fail so hard.

Lets all laugh with me as we report this assfuck.

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Here is a link to Kickstand's album, he has some pretty good ones.

Hiding Is Not Worth The Effort

Yesterday, Beckett posted the end to their highly publicized in depth three year long expose about the fake Topps Rookie Premiere autos. This move sparked quite a frenzy over why this approach was taken, a lot of those comments focusing on Beckett's lack of professionalism. Rather than moving on or examining the impact of said news, Hackler instead decided it was better to take passive shots at the vast amounts of discussion over the merits of Topps move. After discussing with some of the other bloggers the reason for this idiotic display of douchebaggery, it became clear to us why this was all happening in such a weird fashion.

As most people said, including myself, the move by Topps was just a minor chink in the armor created by these people who sell hundreds of fake Rookie Premiere Autos. Beckett, as most of us expected, focused more on the inconsequential parts of the story, as not to disturb the plethora of people who come to them with news. I mean, because "player issue" cards are a HUGE part of the problem, right? Personally, I now see why Topps decided that Beckett would be a better outlet to break this story to. Rather than giving the story to a blog like this one, they chose a more familiar outlet. Clearly, its easier to go with a friend who wouldnt question the lack of action or call them out for focusing on the future rather than the present. Topps knew that going with Beckett would provide them with the opportunity to hide behind a solution that only covers upcoming cards instead of securing one that deals with the current problem.

Despite what people may say about my motives, many were left scratching their heads as to why Topps wasn’t going after the scammers more aggressively. If you think about it, it’s a good way to guard against future transgressions if the people responsible are punished for their crimes. Of course, there is a large discrepancy over the amount of time needed to execute this bust and the time available to execute it, which is a great reason why its important to have the discussion now. By throwing this solution at the problem, you still leave the collector base open to decade worth of fake cards, all being sold to unsuspecting people who pay hundreds to get them. How about protecting the customer rather than yourself? Hmm, becoming clearer now why Beckett got the resolution rather than the blogs?

Luckily here in the blog network we have established, its no longer an easy task to hide in plain sight, as many of the people who read Beckett's blog also read Mario, Rob and I. That means the people who read the kid gloves version of the story, are also going to get a lot of the riff raff you create by handling it that way.

In The Times Of Great Douchebaggery, It Becomes Our Responsibility

Over the last year and a half, there has been a lot of stuff that I have written about in terms of the dark underbelly of the hobby. Much to the chagrin of a few people, Beckett has been the center of about 90% of it. I really dont think that people understand just how bad it can get, as its still unclear as to how far down the rabbit hole goes. Most people just think about it from a standpoint that its just a hobby and they dont care as long as they get whatever they usually do via ebay or the local shop. The issue is, that this hobby is one based on chance and random, so any dillution of those factors has an impact on anyone who participates in the purchase of cards. Therefore everyone should feel the effect with each card that is taken out of circulation.

One of the major pain points for people like me, is that the stuff that is given to people who have no business receiving it. Whether its product, swag, or just ad money in general, free stuff complicates everything, especially when you have done nothing to receive it. Since I first started up March 2007, Beckett has been the prime focus of my anger, mainly because of all of the stuff they do that compromises the integrity of their perceived place as THE hobby news source. Most of the time, with every product release, Beckett gets a box full of stuff to pass around to their lackeys, with wax being a main focus. I have gotten emails from former Beckett employees talking about all the stuff that comes through the door, and just how little of it actually makes it to the people its supposed to go to - you. So far this year alone, Beckett has received close to 50 boxes of product from companies that have actually made it onto video. There are many more that dont, according to my sources. This is completely frustrating to collectors once they find out how much money they are actually getting, in addition to the ad money for products in the magazine. Why is this acceptable for a "news source" to receive? It creates a huge problem.

Then we have the recent video, where Beckett has received a full case of Exquisite Basketball from Upper Deck. This is the first public box of Exquisite they have received from Upper Deck since the 2007 fiasco, despite the fact that we have been told a number of times that it wouldnt be happening again. When you think of the fact that a case of Exquisite can cost in upwards of $1,800, its a little bit more apparent how much money Beckett receives from the companies each year. I think this is a direct reflection of the companies themselves, as they should know better than to flaunt their subtle kickbacks to the magazine that can easily make or break a product. As for Exquisite, a product that features one of the lowest print runs of any product ever produced, it is also unfair to expect collectors to sit back and watch Beckett receive all they do, when so few of the cards actually exist. Its funny too, because they tell us how all these cards are going to be available for the public to win in contests, but I have yet to see how that is even remotely true. Sure, some the fifteen pulls of a lifetime and 1 of 1s they have pulled since 2007 have been given out to contest winners, but why are those enormous pulls even going to Beckett in the first place? What does that accomplish for the collectors in general? More and more are seeing through the practice of doing the video box breaks, so why even risk it?

Its become a disgusting display each time Hackler and the Giant appear on their vid player, as we can see the grease in the wheels being replentished with each turn. Its pretty much become a display of the constant arrogance and douchebaggery that Beckett displays every time. This is the same arrogance that makes them spit on the blogs saying they dont deserve the news, when in reality, many blogs are ten times the news source they are. On top of all of this, there is zero reason why Beckett cannot tap into the thousands of collector videos on youtube, or why the manufacturers cannot do the same. Video box breaks have reached a point of parody, as we have seen with "Packs to the People," a feature created to break the monotony of the breaks. Based on that premise, Beckett's breaks should go the way of the dodo as well.

As for the rest of the shipments that Beckett gets almost daily, its time for the general collector base realizes the giant conflict of interest at work. If Upper Deck decides that providing thousands of dollars worth of product in one shipment is worth the exposure when the boxes are broken for the world, its our job to continually voice our disapproval. Beckett has become an organization whose sole purpose is promote an agenda of certain interests that pad their bottom line. When you see that the only reason for their existence is to make money for the parent company, it becomes very clear that they have zero responsibility to maintain content that has informative purposes rather than advertisement purposes. Look down the product lines, and really see what is being sold to people. Is it information, or is it instead ways for the companies to garner more revenue on product sales resulting from what is laid out in the pages?

The one indisputable fact is this:

This whole situation is a double edged sword, bloodied by the wounds of the dishonesty displayed by both Beckett and the card companies. When the companies, like Upper Deck and the recent Exquisite break, send the boxes for Beckett to break, the collectors lose. Not just because the cards in those boxes are no longer available for collectors to pull, but because it creates an environment where people who dont know any better are preyed upon. Its obvious that Upper Deck didnt care how much backlash they would get from the people in the know, because they knew there would be thousands who would see it. Also, it may have begun to repair a damaged relationship with the magazine over relationships created with blogs like Wax Heaven and this one. Clearly Beckett didnt care about any voiced disapproval because they got those thousands to watch it and come to their site. Because of this, it is now our responsibility to call them out as publically as possible, just to show them the thousands who will now spread the word against their practices. I may only get 600 visitors here per day, but if 200 of those people tell one friend, and they tell another, you can see what I mean. Its time for you guys to really show what you are about.

Library Of Fakes

So, assfucker Peopleschoice7373 aka shoelessjoejackson's exploits have been around for a long, long time. Dont believe me? Check out this amazing proof bucket posted by Mrwhitesox30 on FCB. It takes up 5 fucking pages, how great is that?

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v671/mrwhitesox30/Ebay/Suspected%20Cards/peopleschoice7373/?start=all

My favorite part - Remember This?


CHECK THESE OUT!!





Yeah, he has done it three fucking times. What...a...scrote.

Wonderful person this guy is, glad he has been around for so long.

Book Value vs Actual Smart People: Take 1,000,000

Recently, there was an SPA auto RC card that was posted on eBay and sold for a ton. It is special because the card had not been posted before, and may have been a ridiculous short print due to a number of reasons. Not surprisingly, the card went for multiple times what Beckett said it was worth, and the argument was born:

How could Beckett price a card that had never been sold before?

Many people posted that Beckett does it all the time, and that they really have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to anything resembling true value. After a few people actually came out and legitimately questioned that book value could actually be a number drawn out of a hat, I jumped in and questioned the people who still went by book value. You know, just because I wanted to have some fun. Little did I know that I would get the most ignorant answer since my go around with Mr. Mojo Hand (yes, he has a blog now, and it is glorious) over at the Nennth Inning.

"[On rebuffing my challenge that book value sucks] Do you have something better ? Please do not say Tuff Stuff! 

Until there is a more proven source and/or method Beckett will remain a force in pricing and the hobby.

However I will agree Beckett is somewhat in the dark on real value as compared to Book Value. I use Beckett pricing for trading and a starting point in regards to selling."

(THE BOLD IS MINE, OF COURSE)

Dont let any of that sink in at all - blood may shoot out your ears. After this, I think I may be done with the users at Freedom Card Board. All those people prove on a regular basis, is that there is a reason Beckett continues to have  a reader base:

Collectors are intrinsically stupid.

Sometimes, You Just Have To Laugh At These...

Man, Wolverine24 has decided that he wants to be enscribed in the book of douche. Many of you may know him from his ridiculous auctions (ridiculous good), however many of you may also know him from the constant speculation of his practices and their legit-ness. Well, he threw all that speculation into a gas drum and lit it on fire for warmth.

This particular auction is especially funny, as this dual "logo" looks like he just split it down the middle and gave half to each window. Nice job there. Premium workmanship. He even spits out the patch faker motto in the description:

"CHECK OUT OUR OTHER 1/1 NFL LOGO PATCHES !!!" Nice dude, three exclamation points. The card becomes more valuable with each.



See, the funniest thing is that these type of cards really dont go for that much anymore because so many people have caught on. So much for creativity in your ass backwards sense of ethics.

h/t freedom card board