About five years ago, when grading was a bit more popular than it is today, I was desperate own a card graded Gem Mint by Beckett Grading Services. Having submitted dozens upon dozens of my own cards to no avail, I badly wanted a 9.5. The allure of the gold label was tough to dismiss. It was almost like the card gods convinced me that owning such a card would change my life. So I did some searching and found a lot of two rookie cards of a mediocre player, Preston Wilson.

At the time, Wilson still had some tread on the tires. He was still a power-speed threat who figured to have enough time left to make himself relevant. So I bought his Bowman and Topps rookies, graded Gem Mint, of course for the low, low price of $22! Yes, I paid $22 for a pair of crappy Preston Wilson rookies … simply because they were encapsulated and had a gold label proclaiming them to be perfect … well, Gem Mint anyway, not Pristine.

Hindsight will show you that I grossly overpaid for this pair. But my question: Who the hell gets Preston Wilson rookies graded in the first place?

This entry was posted on August 6, 2010 at 7:39 am and is filed under Newspaperman with tags baseball, baseball cards, Beckett Grading Services, Preston Wilson, Topps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.