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In my daily run-through of baseball birthdays, I noticed that Tom Burgmeier turns 80 years old today. That’s sort of mind-blowing given that he appeared in about every other pack of one of the first sets I really Ioved — 1983 Topps.
That memory sent me to eBay to see what sort of prices plain old ungraded cards from that issue are bringing right now.
Not surprisingly, the Tony Gwynn rookie card is prominent in the listings, including this copy (affiliate link) that sold on August 1 for $27 on the strength of 8 bids. What really struck me, though, was the grade the seller (Greg Morris Cards) assigned to the card.
Take a look again if you haven’t already — here is the card (affiliate link).
Do you agree with the grade in the listing?
I think this card and its self-assigned grade will make another appearance in one of our upcoming weekly newsletters.
But first, as a warmup, I thought it might be fun to do a little group grading projects. So I grabbed a Junk Wax card I had handy, at random, and snapped photos of the front and back.
You can check out my 1984 Topps Ron Hodges below.
Now, recognizing that my image quality isn’t up to eBay standards, I want you to tell me what grade you’d give this card (see poll below).
Feel free to write in another grade if you like since the poll software here gives me only five slots to work with.
Thanks, and I’ll see you for our normal weekly rendezvous on Friday.
I would assign a grade of Excellent.
The cut on the right side doesn.t appear to be sharp and is rippled.
Agreed
Lower right corner looks a bit fuzzy, or soft .