12 Sports Collectors Digest / August 16, 2019 http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com
- Remembering Roy Halladay
Thank you for the article on Roy Hal-
laday by Robert Grayson in the June 21,
2019 edition of SCD.
May I give you my story about Mr.
Halladay.
I was attending Spring Training in the
early 2000s.
While at the
Blue Jays
training site,
the club-
house man-
ager came
out and told
us they had
changed
the hats
for Spring
Training and
gave each of the autograph collectors a
signed ball cap. Mine was Mr. Halladay’s.
I later saw Roy and told him I had
his hat. He signed a ball and card for me.
Each of the next three years I attended
Spring Training, he signed a ball for me
that I donated to a local hospital charity
auction. The signed balls brought $150-
$200 at the auction and were written up in
the local newspaper. I sent a copy of the
news article to Roy.
The last time I saw Mr. Halladay was
at the 2017 New Williams Hall of Fame
dinner in Tampa. He signed another ball
for me, which I still have.
Always a gentleman and a great signer
for autograph collectors.
I have good memories of a great
pitcher and now a HOF member.
-Byron L Buker
Bedford, Indiana
- More to hobby than graded cards
I have been an SCD reader for a long
time and I would like to suggest that you
include more articles and information
about baseball cards that are not graded.
Ever since the grading companies came
into existence all anyone talks about are
graded cards, mostly PSA. There are mil-
lions of cards that can be collected, traded
and sold that are not graded.
Grading companies fell into a pot of
gold. They did a great job of psyching
out investors who do not have experi-
ence in judging cards on their own. We
all know the only reason to grade a card
is to attempt to make more money just
because some heralded authority gives
their opinion on what grade it is. Grading
ruined the coin collecting hobby and so
will grading ruin this hobby.
SCD has also fallen in with the grad-
ing trend. I see no articles or listings of
sales or auctions for ungraded cards.
SCD is short shifting the hobbyists who
built the hobby and the SCD, who collect,
trade, buy and sell “raw” cards.
I have sold over 1,000 baseball cards
over the last year or so that are ungraded.
If you look at eBay’s listings you will fi nd
a lot of ungraded cards for sale and sold.
I think you are doing a disservice to
your paying subscribers by ignoring the
hobby of collecting ungraded cards.
-Donn Ross
Shelby Twp., Michigan
- What is a variation?
I have a run of Topps sets, 1948 and
1951 to 2018. Been collecting since 1957.
I collect recognized and unrecognized
variations with my sets. As you may know
there is no offi cial hobby recognized
defi nition of a variation. Near the end of
his tenure at SCD Bob Lemke had limited
his defi nition of a variation to cards inten-
tionally changed by the manufacturer for
some reason. But even that defi nition is
hard to apply in each case.
Was the 1952 Frank House (with
different color Tiger logos ) caused by
ink running out and corrected, or was
it just an unintentional print defect that
existed on some runs. The question on the
House card is complicated by a factor not
discussed in the article. The House card,
146, is in the 131 to 180 series printed on
two different stocks, white and gray. The
gray backs in this series are very scarce
and bring large premiums, in many cases
higher than those on the high series cards.
So the House already had one varia-
tion, gray or white back. But, the yellow,
orange/yellow/red and yellow with some
red exist on both the white and gray back
versions. How many versions are thus
possible is still a matter of some debate
due to the fact there are transition cards
too. Those of us who chase variations
have been aware of the many different
House versions for some time
Another example of variation ambigu-
ity exists in the Lee Smith rookie card
highlighted in another article. See the
elongated “i” in Smith in the accompany-
ing photo. Was it just a temporary recur-
ring print defect (it is not hard to fi nd), or
a corrected defect, and thus a variation.
Or does it matter. This, like the House
card, is not a currently recognized varia-
tion by the Registry, SCD or Becketts.
I truly miss collaborating with Bob
Lemke on such matters
-Al Richter
San Antonio, Texas
TheInÀeld DirtBlog
http://www.sportscollectorsdigest.com
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