ISA Grading Ad...Really guys?

ISA Grading Takes Professionalism Seriously

I'm not trying to say I'm perfect and never mispell anything or use questionable grammer, but then again I'm not doing this for a living and I'm not trying to turn this blog into a business. So I don't mind if I make a mistake here or there and my readers catch them. But I was floored when I first saw this ad for ISA Grading in a magazine.

It's just one of my pet peeves I guess, but before a company sends something to print, or pays to have something produced, or what have you, I think I should be able to hold them to a higher standard than myself. Especially if they are trying to introduce themselves to potential customers and they would like to be taken seriously.

Here is the ad that had me so annoyed...

The first time I read through the ad, I found four problems. Four. Are they serious? How many people read this copy before they sent it to be printed and let their reputation be advertised as this unprofessional?

"Oh, this is were I want to send my cards to be graded. These guys are obviously detail oriented. They reviewed their own ad so closely that only 4 things were missed. I could probably be sure that any card I buy that they have reviewed should have been just as closely examined and that only only 4 scratches, dinged corners, bits of paperloss, spots of writing, or any other problem that would normally downgrade a card should be missed as well. In other words, a card they say is a '10' could have up to 4 blatant condition issues."

Let's take a closer look now.

1. They failed to capitalize their own name: In the first sentence, they typed their name "international Sports Authentication".

2. They offer "expert grading, great rates, and quick turnaroudn".

3. They ensure a "tip-notch" grading relationship as opposed to a "top-notch" one.

4. When informing us of their location, they abbreviate Michigan as "Mi" instead of the proper state abbreviation method of "MI".

I'd love to hear from a representative of the company if they want to claim these were all intentional mistakes and meant as a joke.

Hats off to ISA. You guys are true profesiionally dedecaded to makeing me feel like i'm getting the bestest review of the cards I collact.

Enjoy the hobby all.

Recent Pick Ups

I've been getting a bunch of new stuff lately, both on the internet and from the last Philly Show. Is it still called the Philly Show by the way, really? Anyway, I really like that show even if some of the dealers complain about the table prices going up since Heritage started running it.

I'll try to get scans of all my new cards as well as other things, but my scanner isn't working right now. My old computer crashed and when we got a new one, we kept our old Dell printer/scanner and I can't get it to work yet with the new HP computer.

I do have images of these three new items however, and am happy to share them with you.

First up: Two new cards for my horizontal collection. These aren't baseball cards, but I really don't care. They are E77 American Caramel Co. "Prize Fighter Caramels".

I've been liking these horizontal boxing caramels more and more lately. I have a few of the "Scrappers" set from Philadelphia Caramel Co., so when these ones came up on eBay a little while ago I was excited to have a chance to pick up some examples from a different set.

After winning them, I checked out Adam Warshaw's site that identifies several of the many many different boxing issues and saw that he says that these are "very tough to find". Hey, that's cool and makes me even more happy to have them. I just hope I haven't misidentified them or something.

Okay, so the other card that I have an image of (for now) is an upgrade to one of my Jersey City C46's, John "Rube" Kissinger:

I am always excited to pick up another Jersey City card! I know what you're thinking, "This is an upgrade?" Yes, it's an upgrade.

My first one had some major paperloss on the sides of the front on both sides of his head and it has always bothered me. I picked the first one with the paperloss because I didn't have it yet and needed it. This one will someday be upgraded as well, but I'm very happy to have this one. I'm only missing Butler, Jones and Wells now to complete the 9 card subset.

There were recently a Butler and Jones on eBay but I didn't put my snipe high enough to win them. Them another Jones came up, but it was a little too nice and I knew my high bid wouldn't be enough, so I didn't get that one either. No problem, I'll get them someday.

Well, I know it's not much, only three new cards, but when I get my scanner back up and running, I'll get a lot of scans up for show.

Enjoy the hobby all, it's a great one.

Tristar Flop

Like many prewar collectors I'm a big fan of the Obak sets. Between the years 1909 - 1911, packs of Obak cigarettes came with a card featuring players of the Pacific Coast League and the Northwestern League. These cards are widely considered to be some of the most beautiful prewar cards produced.


You can differentiate between the the three years quite easily. The 1909's actually have a slightly different look on the front, and the 1911's have sevaral cards that have a sort of drippy gooey-like background that are only found in that series. But the easiest way to determine the year is by flipping the card ove and looking at the back design; each year has a different back.

1909----------------------1910----------------------1911

While I could go on quite a bit longer on the original Obaks (and I most likely will in a future post), I'm actually writing this post to ask this question: What were they thinking?


"They" are Tristar Productions and they have released a new line of cards (I know what you're thinking, "Modern cards?!") that have borrowed the name of the old Obaks and the back designs for it's modern release. And for some reason, I couldn't resist seeing what they were like.

I was expectedly unimpressed and furthermore left scratching my head at how these things made it past the various stages of design and approval before they started printing them. They did nail the most spectacular part of the Obak design; the amazing sunset backgrounds.


They decided to make the player's image really dark and dropped the quality of the image so much that the guy is actually pixelated like they took the photo with a really cheap 1.5 megapixel camera.


The scan I took actually brightens up the image considerably as the card in hand looks as if there was no light in front of the guy. You can barely see him on the actual card.


Each pack comes with some old timers in there pictured with their minor league squads and this is kind of cool, except they decided to make them black and white images of the players set against the colorful background and they just don't look right.


Here are the ones I got in my pack:



I did get one card in the pack that I'm happy with though. In each pack, you also get a reprint of one of the original Obaks. I got a reprint of one of the most sought after of all original Obaks. It is the Victoria Bees of the Northwestern League player named Ten Million. Yes, that's right, his name is Ten Million. It's written right there on the card.

I've always liked this card and it will be a long time before I can actually afford an original, so it was kind of cool to pull this card from the pack.



It's safe to say I won't be buying any more of these packs, so I'm glad that I got one card I liked out my trial pack.

Happy collecting everyone, enjoy the hobby.