Grand Cards: Sketch Card Shenanigans

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Sketch Card Shenanigans

It was bound to happen wasn't it? Just when sketch cards restored my confidence in the "1 of 1", Stadium Club had to go and screw it all up. In my post on 2008 Stadium Club, I included a picture of the sketch card that had sold on eBay earlier in the week. I did not mention that the sketch card had sold a few months earlier, at a higher price, and that I was surprised that somebody was flipping it so soon. It turns out, this was a different sketch card (I vaguely remember the first one having yellow accents--very nice looking as sketch cards go). I know this, because during the course of my daily perusing of eBay, I found...a 1 of 1 Sketch Card from Topps Stadium Club!

Oh no. Oh yes. Each sketch card is a "1 of 1" because each is hand drawn by a different artist. However, there is no record at all of how many sketch cards there are per player. By my count, Granderson is up to three.

I wonder if this is just Stadium Club, or if the regular Topps issue will be afflicted by this as well. In other words, is this new Ty Cobb sketch card from 2009 Topps (currently on eBay) a 1 of 1, or just a 1 of a few? If I were somebody who paid a premium on a 1 of 1 card, I would be pissed. I understand that these cards are different, but they are no less different than the multitude of parallels out there. At the very least, it would be nice to know how many artists produced sketch cards, or how many sketch cards there are for each player. You can still make them 1 of 1 cards (they are each individual pieces of "art" after all), but Jesus, give us collectors a chance.