SO WHY ARE STICKER AUTOGRAPHS KILLING WHAT'S LEFT OF OUR HOBBY?

Most of you have not had the opportunities I got myself involved in very early on (pre-1998) regarding Certified Autograph Inserts. I'm the type of person who must know everything about anything I decide to spent time on- otherwise I don't do it at all.

When I first heard that 1991 Pro Line Football was inserting an ON CARD autograph into every three boxes or so, I was hooked. The only autograph I pulled from a box back then was an Art Shell. But I loved the design, the dual authenticity (embossed seal, and no card number) method. Plus I liked the cleanliness of the cards and the fact that the 1992 series had one autograph per box. THIS WAS THE VERY FIRST FAIRLY EASY TO FIND ALL AUTOGRAPH INSERT SET OF AROUND (100+) DIFFERENT PLAYERS. Some cards has frayed edges, especially on the gray area on the backs, but that didn't seem to matter very much. In 1992, I pulled about a dozen autos from boxes. None where superstars, but one box didn't have an autograph so I wrote a letter to the NFL Properties and they quickly sent me the one missing autograph & it was a star which was VERY nice of them and created a lifelong Pro Line autograph fan.
What many may not remember is that 1992 Pro Line had company offers where if you send in a certain number of wrappers you'd get a FREE bonus autograph! I got about (20) bonus autographs because in addition to luckily saving my wrappers, they also had another contest where if you had all the autographs in a row printed on a promo sheet- you'd win a specific star autograph and I got the Dan Marino autograph! I was living in FL at the time so I was elated. Even though football was my second favorite sport by far (Baseball has always been #1), Pro Line autographs increased my interest in FB much more.
When Pro Line decided to sell their license to Score Board I had a bad feeling about that which almost instantly came true.  The 1993 release was back to one auto in every three boxes OR LESS. In this hobby you can't increase the HOTTEST item in the product, and the next year decrease it substantially.
But then Score Board returned to one autograph per box and a design improvement for 1994 and I was once again in love with Pro Line. By 1994-95, Ken Goldin was on Shop At Home hawking "extra" autographs for far more what they were worth- so I decided to wait until the heat of these cards died down a bit as I had a feeling all other card companies would get in on this action.

By 1999, I decided to trade my entire 1989-1999 card collection for Certified Autograph Inserts (which at that time were still all ON CARD autos). I can't tell you how happy I was that I did that. In late 1998, I had one Mint Mark McGwire RC (1985 Topps) and knew it was time to trade it for Certified Autographs. I got three 1997 Donruss Signature autos for the McGwire RC: Alex Rodriguez Millennium Marks, Randy Johnson Millennium Marks (ERR- no serial number on back), and a Juan Gonzalez Millennium Marks. Considering I got that McGwire many years earlier in a trade for the whole 1985 Topps set for my $100 Studio Promo/Insert set- I got the best of that deal by far.

Then came early-mid 2001 and these were introduced by Playoff:

THE UGLY, USELESS STICKER AUTOGRAPHS!

The INSTANT I saw sticker autographs: I HATED THEM. I was one of the first people outside of the Production Managers for 2001 Score Select to ever see them. I was at that point receiving boxes to review directly from Ann Blake (Playoff' former owner). 2001 Score Select Football was the VERY FIRST product to have sticker autographs. The first several Playoff products actually used holo-foil return address labels (that they bought at Office Depot) for autographs!!!

This caused players (ESPECIALLY ROOKIES) who had gotten used to signing as big as they wanted on cards up to jerseys and other equipment to have to UNNATURALLY shrink their autos to fit the small stickers. This caused them to sign off one sticker onto the next sticker, This also caused them to change the shape and consistency of their autographs. THIS IS NOTHING ANY TRUE AUTOGRAPH COLLECTOR WANTS TO SEE ON THEIR AUTOGRAPHS! But card companies were saving WAY too much money by using stickers, than by going through the more difficult process of getting ON CARD autographs.
At first Playoff used the LIE excuse that this would significantly cut down on REDEMPTION CARDS if not eradicate them all. It may have lowered the number of redemptions for a year, but by 2002 redemption STICKER autographs were popping up already. Now in 2014 there are MORE STICKER REDEMPTION CARDS than ON CARD autograph redemptions!!! How do card companies explain this???

To give a simple explanation to everyone whether they collect cards OR NOT, I'll explain this again. If you were to go to a ballgame and figured you'd try to get some autographs, would you bring cards, a baseball, football, etc. for the autographs OR would you bring a sheet of stickers to put on whatever item you want to when you get home?  THE ANSWER IS NEARLY THE SAME ALWAYS: no one would use stickers. The few who answer stickers never could explain WHY. So I have to disqualify the knuckleheads who said they'd bring stickers.
THE VERY SAME APPLIES FOR CARD COMPANY AUTOGRAPHS! There's no reason for sticker autos that helps collectors AT ALL, and it only saves card companies money. Since when have collectors cared about helping card companies since by the early 2000's they made it CRYSTAL CLEAR that they couldn't care less about collectors!

So next time you pull a scribbled UGLY autograph, know that 75% of the cause of these AWFUL autographs was caused by the implementation of STICKER AUTOGRAPHS which are on nearly 90% of all Topps & Panini products!  

WE CAN STOP THIS, WE JUST NEED TO COMPLAIN TO THE RIGHT PEOPLE! Go to the MLB, NFL, and even NHL Player Association websites and CONTACT anyone you can find a working e-mail for. Tell them the problems I stated here and add you own complaints. Then ask whomever you e-mailed to please forward your e-mail to the licensing person for merchandise and anyone else who they think might be able to SAVE OUR HOBBY! 

Sports Card Hobby Fraud You NEED to READ: MORE FAKE GAME-USED CARDS!

I REALLY didn't want to have to post again, I'm way too sick to have to fight battles for people who are much more physically able. I just s[pent tnhe last MONTH in bed without leaving my one room apartment ONCE! I haven't been able to walk anywhere near normal because my disk (L5/S1) on top of my tailbone is herniated so bad that I couldn't use my low back muscles at all for the whole month.

I accidentally came upon some info that once again astonished me as to how stupid card companies can be. All the hobby big shots know who I am whether they wanted to or not. I FORCED them to know because they keep SCREWING UP & DIRECTLY HURTING COLLECTORS THROUGH GREED!
Ironically one of the WORST people like this died last month (Jan. 5th) and the news of his death only started trickling down to most collectors last week. The news of his death at age 59 was first released on my birthday (the 7th) which is also the day my friend Gary Carter (also died 11 months ago - age 57) was elected into the HOF in 2003 (weird...).

RICHARD McWILLIAM IS DEAD! <<<<click to go to story.

 

It sickens me how a FULL MONTH has passed and no details of his cause of death were released and EVERY story online that I found made him out to be a hobby hero! HE WAS A CROOK & HE PROBABLY DIED FROM DRUG ABUSE!!! Plain & simple. If I didn't know tons of factual stories to support this, I wouldn't have said it. I don't mean to disrespect the dead- but it's wrong to lie about this greedy scum too. He's given direct credit for all the innovations that Upper Deck came up with over the years, meanwhile there have been dozens of lawsuits against him specifically for him STEALING OTHER PEOPLE'S IDEAS. I've said it before & I'll say it again: I'VE NEVER BEEN SUED. This is because I ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH & I'm not in this hobby to make a penny profit. I'm not going to waste another second on this jerk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

PLAYOFF WAS BUYING FAKE GAME-USED JERSEYS FROM BRAD HORNE (<<<click) FOR THEIR CARDS IN 2002 & I HAVE ABSOLUTE PROOF!

 

 In 2002 I personally obtained several documents directly from Playoff that listed all the information about 2002 Leaf Game-Used cards and autographs. These were lists of every card made and card deatils, how much they paid for the jerseys and autograph stickers, and most importantly: who they bought ther jerseys from. I got curious a couple of days ago and Googled a name I saw on the list of who these "game-used jerseys" came from. I get "strange feelings" from time to time and when I do I act upon these feelings. Some would call it intuition and others would say it is phychic. Since I always loved all sciences, I think it's simply intuition. So I looked up one name: BRAD HORNE because I got one of my funny feelings when I saw his name. HE WAS BUSTED JUST LAST YEAR FOR SELLING NOTHING BUT FAKE GAME-USED JERSEYS IN A STING BY POLICE! And I just happen to have a list of all 2002 GU Jerseys Cards made by Playoff in their Leaf Certified product & 10% of the jerseys they used were bought from BRAD HORNE & all the info I can find pionts to one thing: THEY ARE FAKE & THE FBI PROVED IT!!!

 

I personally saw Playoff using FAKE "game-used" jerseys of players like Daunte Culpepper (when he was RED HOT) with all the tags from the store they bought them from on them when I just started weorking for them in 2001, but I had no proof of this so I rarely mentioned it since I had iron-clad proof about so much other fraud. So I knew they were using brand new jerseys and calling them game-used & now it seems that I have the proof & here is an example. Sorry the text is so small, but it was on paper that was larger than the scanner I had, so I had to shrink it to fit in one .jpg file.  

 

 

If you can read this, you will see jerseys for the Fabric Of The Game cards of several players were bought from Brad Horne including John Riggins & Joe Montana! These are FAKE & WORTHLESS people!!!

 

YOU ALL NEED TO CONTACT PANINI (just click Panini) AND TELL THEM ABOUT THIS! You should call- Media & Public Relations. Feel free to tell them to read this page, or tell them "Cardcop dug up this info" - most of them know who I am...

I am too sick to do this, so I am handing off the responsibility to you.

 

How many other jerseys from other products used jerseys bought from BRAD HORNE by Playoff, then Donruss/Playoff & now Panini? When Panini bought Donruss/Playoff they kept most of the employees I busted for one thing or another (they only got rid of the top management), so there's no reason they would have stopped buying fake jerseys since I couldn't bust them for that. I rarely ever mentioned it too since I busted them for so much other stuff just as bad.

 

HELP ME FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

 

James



Sports Cards & Memorabilia on eBay: WORSE THAN EVER!!!

I'm now back on eBay for my FIFTH different time in the last 8-months when I was permanently suspended for FIGHTING FRAUD!!! When eBay suspends youx, just sign up again with the same info & you have a new working account to BUY & SELL! This is how bad eBay has gotten. So why is this so bad? The literally hundreds of awful crooks I had permanently banned from eBay since 1998 can just go right back on eBay! Then never used to be able to do this. But now that eBay fired most humans & relys almost 100% on the computer program the hired- IT JUST PROVES A COMPUTER CANNOT DO A HUMAN'S WORK! Hiumans don't understand why they dov what thjey do sometimes which is called emotions & computer programs have no emotions which is why eBay is so broken.

For every negative feedback you leave: IT GOES AGAINST YOUR ACCOUNT! For every complaint you make against someone else: IT GOES AGAINST YOUR ACCOUNT! For every non-5-Star feedback you get as a seller (regardless if it's warranted or not): IT GOES AGAINST YOR ACCOUNT & YOU PAY HIGHER FEES!  You cannot win on eBay no matter what you do anymore.

As I stated before I'm permanently physically disabled with a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy & I cannot walk more than a few steps anymore at age 45. So I don't have the luxury like almost all of you do to go to shows or card shops anymore since 2005. So eBay is my only real choice to buy cards cheap.

I got four bad hobby boxes of 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter from Dave & Adam's Card World or DACW (the biggest buyers of illegally obtained cards in the USA for MANY years). They were all missing the third hit per box. And all I got out of four boxes was (8) common sports jersey/bat cards. I did not pull any beard cards, flower cards, or anything other than inserts that were more than one per box. There are several 1:144 & one per case (12-boxes) insert cards making the overall odds one per box. I GOT NONE OF THOSE IN FOUR BOXES!
The price difference between hobby & retail is HUGE with most Topps products these days. Retail boxes yield one hit if you are lucky, but hobby boxes are supposed to have three. Hobby boxes are supposed to have an autograph 1:63 packs, and retail are 1:200 packs. With all the common autographs & the doubnle printing of those common autographs they should have been one per box in hobby boxes & one in every other retail box. Anyway, hobby boxes average $75.00 a box, and retail were down to $30 a box, but are back up to around $40 a box now. I strongly suspect that DACW knowingly bought bad boxes from Topps yet sold them at no discount which they often do. If you ever see any recent boxes on DACardWorld.com for less than half of what they are selling for everywhere else- don't expect to pull the cards you are supposed to per box! Plus you are NEVER guaranteed that the card company will help you either. But after many e-mails, Topps did make good & they sent me an unripped rip card, a few Flora flower cards, a Bazooka back card & a common autograph. The same week I bought one retail box & pulled a Shawn Michaels ($175 in  Beckett) autograph redemption card!!! I'm sticking to retail boxes to complete my mini master set that I decided to make after this fiasco.

I need to further explain "bad boxes". Since I worked as a Senior Manager for a big card company, I know things that none of you will ever hear elsewhere & I never lie or exagerate which is why
 I have never been sued after fighting fraud & never holding my tongue in this hobby for over 15-years now online alone & 20-years total. Bad boxes occur when the card company has orders for more boxes than they have inserts for. So they keep making boxes after certain inserts run out. They always purposely make an overage of up to 20% of the entire print run to have extra inserts for replacements. But these are usually pulled FIRST & are NEVER used to put in boxes. When card companies sell the bad boxes they usually discount them greatly & let the buyer know they are bad boxes, but that's only if the printer tells them they did this which is not always the case. 

<<<<<NEARLY ALL CARD COMPANIES DO NOT MAKE THEIR OWN CARDS!>>>>>
They use big printing companies that have no connection to the card company at all! If this is news to you, then you've been relying on Beckett for your hobby info for TOO LONG! The Dallas/Ft.Worth, TX area is a hot spot for hobby elitism. Beckett is there, so is Panini (formerly Playoff), Heritage Auctions, and the printing company that prints & packages nearly all the cards in the hobby: Great Western Inc.. I took a late night peek at their entire card production area (all the way in the back next to the freight train tracks) in 2002 and thought it was quite interesting that nothing but Jamaicans were printing our cards. Now please don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Jamaican people. It's just when was the last time you saw a Jamaican card collector? I'm of the opinion that at least one person in the room making our cards should know almost all there is to know about our hobby. Even the boss was Jamaican. I stayed there behind their industrial sized shredder where no one could see me for well over an hour. A couple of employees even took pot smoking breaks on the loading dock- who's door was wide open! Maybe this is why there are so many screw-ups in card boxes!!!
I even pulled many cards out from under the shredder. I pulled a 2001 Fleer Flair Drew Henson partially completed RC - this card never existed according to Beckett!

 I also pulled a Press Pass football Draft insert of Julius Peppers that was different from the ones put in packs- I still have that card. You would think they would do a better job destroying these cards- BUT THEY DON'T! As far as I know Great Western still prints almost all the cards in  the hobby.

Be extremely careful on eBay, many sellers have hidden HIGH shipping fees, sometimes they don't send your cards if they don't sell for enough (because all you can do is get an immediate refund from them & then you won't leave negative feedback in their minds), and stay away from sellers with multiple bad feedbacks like tntnorthnj. Just lpook at his feedbackl, he averages (50) negative/neutrals EVERY MONTH! 

Probably for the last time (because of my illnesses) I donated over 40,000 cards to Toys For Tots in December. I made 400-count boxes for each child sorted by sport or subject with all stars & most indserts included. Plus every box had at least two Certified Autographed Inserts & every other box had a autographed Diamond King card by the artist: Dick Perez. Every year I'd write to a couple of famous people and always got 50+ by mail autographs to add. This was the 22nd year in a row I donated at least 30,000 cards a year. I wanted it to go to The Leukemia Society which was the charity that I started donating to after being inspired by my friend Gary Carter in 1989, but they told me "hospitals aren't accepting loose cards anymore because of the terrorism climate". I'm sorry, but that's one of the stupidest things I've ever heard! For starters I was speaking to the person who knew me for 22-years & I won a National Award from them in 1991! What was I going to do put a bomb in a 4X6 inch box!

Always fighting for collectors for free for you, & sometimes at my expense!

James McCay

It's time collectors TAKE THE HOBBY BACK by force!

I've been a lone wolf fighting mostly Corporate Hobby Fraud from 1997-2004, then at age 37- I was too sick to continue my website, so I gave it up. I believe that plagarism is truly the best form of respect, so when many others started websites similar to mine mostly in the mid-2000's I couldn't have been happier.
I was the only non-attorney fighting for every redemption holder in the Score Board bankruptcy (1997) & for this this Al Muir of Beckett was nice enough to do a full page article (I think it was November, 1997) about my fight with the courts. At least I inspired Fleer to donate 5,000 autographs (one per household) to those who could prove they were owed a redemption. I ot a nice Steve Young 8X10 Card Sheet autographed wityh the Fleer Autograph Authenticity stamp. I so wish I would have kept that because I've never seen another one anywhere. I collect great lefty quartebacks (the few that there are).
By 2001, I was fighting Pacific asking them for copies of LOA's (Letters of Authenticity) that come with ALL full game-used items for GU cards I had from 2001 Private Stock Baseball. They refused no matter who I was transferred to. The excuses went from silly to ridiculous. So I posted the whole story on my website , and part of my taped conversation with the then Vice-President. The MLB Player's Association was reading my website on a regular basis and then they asked Pacific for exactly what I was. It turned out to be exactly what I thought- THEY HAD NO LOA's BECAUSE THEY WERE FAKE GAME-USED ITEMS!!! Pacific lost their baseball license about a month later which bankrputed them a few years later. That was not my intent, but somtimes retribution is more harsh than we expect.
Next I went after Playoff. I spoke with the owner (Ann Blake) for hours every day for a month in May, 2001. She told me "you know the hobby from more angles better than anyone I ever met". That was quite a compliment, but I spent countless hours learning what I knew from 1997-2001. Then she offered me an all expenses paid trip to Grand Prairie, TX to meet the company & go with them to the Cleveland National as their VIP guest. That was one of the coolest things I ever had the opportunity to do in this hobby, but I didn't let it effect my investigation of Playoff. A week later, she offered me a job as a Senior Manager of Customer Service/Redemptions & Replacements. Little did she know that I took the job to investigate them from the inside.
What I discovered was FAR WORSE than any rumors I ever heard (and most of you have heard) througout the years! Back door selling of expensive autographed inserts (for pennies on the dollar) to big dealers like Dave & Adam's Card World as an incentive to promise to buy cases of not yet produced products was 100% true & I caught the President doing it red-handed. They also produced cards that were against their licensing rules like 2000 Retro Ichiro RC's (I destroyed all but ten of each version, I still own one of each) & parallels of that card which were physically produced in 2000 when Upper Deck had an exclusive license prohibiting that & they were even selling single cards to others which was completely against their licensing agreements in every sport. Card companies were only licensed to sell boxes & cases of cards in nearly every case prior to 2002. This was told to me by Dawn Ridley-Nash who then was the person in charge of NFL licensing.

I then caught Playoff's President red-handed stealing cards from MY department to be sold to dealers out the back door. I fought with him constantly over the wrong things Playoff was doing which evertually had him downgrade me to an outside consultant. But I got a full 3-months of training working inside a big card company. I even worked 6-7 days a week with a MINIMUM of 70-hours per week to learn as much as I could from everyone & everywhere I could get to.
It was sick what I saw there! Right when I started they were moving from Grand Prairie to Arlington, TX. So the old CS manager had thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cards (autographs too) that could have been used for replacements for long overdue redemptions from 1999!!!  I was able to save some, but most had been badly damaged being thrown in an industrial dumpster with literally thousands of pounds of cards! This guy (Noel) was a moron as far as hobby knowledge goes!
I took what evidence I could to bury them once I left, but as I was preparing my case against them once I returned to FL- they had me arrersted for Grand Theft over $200.000- a 1ST DEGREE FELONY! I was released from jail on bond & after a 3-year battle all the charges against me were all dropped & once again the MLBPA believed my story and they finaally pulled D/P's baseball license which bankrputed them also. During that three years I kept fighting for them to make an inventory list of what was "stolen" & they never made one! After consulting several attorneys, the general answer was that one of the FIRST things done in any theft case is to make an inventory list of what was taken. So why after 3-YEARS was no list made?
It turned out that the person that I thought was helping me from the NFLPA (Dawn) was blocking the release of the inventory list! To hide the evidence of course. That evidence was never released & they kept my 14-year personal collection as well. But in the end I got even.
eBay has changed drastically over the past few years as well regarding sports cards. eBay helps NO ONE regarding fraud anymore & even punishes those who try to help others??? I know first hand after being suspended for 2-weeks for trying to collect evidence from NSA sellers against  who refuses to answer any of my e-mails.  NSA is the company that made only the best SUPERSTAR "Game-Used" Dual Encased PATCH "cards" that were selling on eBay for $6.00-$10.00 each??? Imagine, a Game-Used Tom Brady/Peyton Manning Dual REAL "Game-Used" multi-color/layer PATCH card for $10.00? Or a Derek Jeter/Alex Rodriguez Dual GU Patch card for $10.00? IMPOSSIBLE IF THEY WERE AUTHENTIC! Most of these patches were the rarest patches you've ever seen as well, like MLB logo patches and shoulder patches. The old saying "if it seems to be too good, it probably is" fits perfectly in this instance!
Here is a good link about NSA:

http://www.sportscardforum.com/showthread.php?t=998332

In rapping this up, I want every one of you to know that YOU CAN MAKE A MAJOR DIFFERENCE TO CHANGE BAD THINGS IN LIFE BY YOURSELF- I'm living proof. All it takes is percerverence, patience, and a drive to improve things for everyone- ESPECIALLY CHILDREN in our hobby who cannot fight for themselves!!!
You must complain to the right people such as the Hobby Relations Representative which every card company has, or the person in charge of card company licensing for each sport's Player's Association. These are all easily found in search engines. When you first call, ALWAYS ask who you are speaking to & keep notes as you go along or tape record the conversation. You can buy a 4-hour digital tape recorder for like $50.00 in Target these days & use a phone with a speaker. If the person you wind up speaking to doesn't sound like they are willing to help, or seem uncaring ask to speak to their boss- EVERYONE HAS A BOSS!

Another major problem that needs immediate attention: Not one card company is doing anything to STOP pack searching & the selling of these packs on eBay. These crooks bend packs & the ones that are unbendable have the key cards. Or they weigh packs & the ones that are different from the rest also have key cards.. I didn't want to let this secret out, but it's more fair if EVERYONE knows how they do it since card companies are doing nothing to stop it!
Every year I send them all a long letter explaning this with ideas on how to stop it, they never reply and they never try things to stop searching. That is a plague in our hobby right now. Go to eBay & type hot pack in the search box. The results are hundreds of packs ending every few days that leave hundreds of boxes MISSING THE KEY CARDS. They sell those boxes as if those key cards were still in there 90% of the time. IF THAT'S NOT FRAUD, THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS!!! These searchers can also search blaster boxes to know which ones have the best cards by weighing them! ALL OF THIS NEEDS TO STOP FOR GOOD ASAP!

I have a rare/deadly form of Muscular Dystrophy (since 2006), five ruptured disks in my neck & lowest part of my back with severe sciatica in both legs (late-2001 at age 34). I had two heart attacks from taking Vioxx (2004), and my life will be cut very short because of all this. So it's your turn to take over!

THE FUTURE OF THE HOBBY DEPENDS SOLELY ON YOU! They recently formed a group that is looking out for brick & mortar card shops, but do you think they care about us collectors? NO WAY!! They care about making more money from us & THAT'S IT! So we collectors need to band together & form our own group to fight for our rights. I'm too sick to do it, but someone out there can and I hope they will...