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Someone should’ve been fired over this.
Halloweens as a kid were always filled with late night neighborhood street walks with my parents. After long hours of knocking on doors asking for candy, I’d come home with a pretty sizable pillow case full of candy. Mom made it a point to go through it all in an effort to discard anything that might seem questionable. She was being the responsible parent – making sure my candy didn’t contain any razor blades.
Mom never would’ve bothered to ask to go through my packs of baseball cards in search of razor blades because it’s not a place one would expect to see them.
Well… here we are.
In a recent eBay search, I came across a listing for the depicted card. When I first saw it, I thought I’d missed something in the hobby so I did a bit of quick research. Then I took a closer look at the card and realized there’s no doubt this is the result of worker negligence during the printing process.
The concept of any sort of tangible being accidentally printed over is so incredibly unlikely but manufacturers in 1999 were run by humans and humans make mistakes. Unfortunately, this isn’t an isolated incident. In 2017, one buyer pulled a Mike Trout card with a bug trapped under the laminate.1
What you see here is as interesting as it is disgusting. Not only is there a razor blade stuck underneath the gloss on this card, it’s not even a clean one. Sanitation can be added to the list of associated risks.
If I were collecting Darnay Scott, Cincinnati Bengals, or general Upper Deck stuff, this would make a fine addition to the collection if for nothing more than conversation potential. While this may in fact very well be the only card like it in the entire hobby (making it a 1/1), due to its questionable nature, its value is solely based on buyer assessment.
References:
- Literally, the Buggiest Mike Trout Baseball Card Ever. www.beckett.com/news ↩︎
