RAZOR Sold top Inkworks Autos

This is from the Blowout Message Boards. First off, I am a huge fan of RAZOR and just can't figure why on earth they would do this.

Razor Ink Archives mired in controversy
1 04 2009

Ten years ago, most collectors had to wait months to read about card-related news in either Beckett or through Tuff Stuff. How much controversy do you think both those companies ignored just to save advertising dollars?

Yesterday, a member of the Card Informant forums made a very interesting discovery on eBay. As it turns out, over 100 Inkworks autographs had been sold through an eBay account “wwwaitexascom” weeks prior to the announcement that Razor had bought the Inkworks archives, believed to contain over 20,000 autographs.

Razor had released a sell sheet for Ink Archives which was due to be released in May and according to Trader Crack’s, contained just under 18,000 Inkworks autographs. The problem occurred when Card Informant did some background checks and found out that the eBay account belongs to a company owned by Brian Gray of Razor.

As you can imagine, many accusations have been tossed around including that Razor cherry-picked the best autographs and sold them on eBay and stuck collectors with the commons for Ink Archives. I can’t imagine for one second that Brian would be so brazen to attempt such a scheme and destroy the credibility of his company. Ultimately, we will find out the truth when Ink Archives starts popping up on YouTube.

The question I have is why did Razor not sell the Inkworks autographs not being included in Archives through its much-publicised eBay account? I spoke with Brian last night and he informed me that there were plenty of the “big name” autographs being included in Ink Archives and that there were so many leftover cards that there might even be a second series released in the near future.

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Update - Brian has informed Wax Heaven that the remaining Inkworks cards have been removed from eBay. He also stated that the reason they were being sold on another account was because the cards were not produced by Razor.

Yeah, this is also posted on the baseball board. Just a terrible move that Razor was selling some of these on ebay. I really think how they handle this will define the company. BG needs to come out and say it was a very dumb dumb thing to do. Then say all of those better autograph cards in that ebay store are going to be packed out and the extra cards left over will not be any high end autos.
I would also like for them to reward the people still buying this product with a wrapper redemption. Where they use the remaining lesser autograph cards not inserted into boxes as a redemption for people sending in wrappers from the packs. Where you send in say 10-15 wrappers and sase or something any you can get a free inkworks signed card from the lesser extras that wern't packed out. I know years ago ProLine did this with there NFL extra autograph cards not packed out.
I think doing something like this would be a good pr move for them and add value back into this product. Also, reward those that are still going to buy it (or have preordered) and keep their faith in Razor products.

I posted in big thread on this some of the autos that were in the Razor ebay store and the pricing. One thing I find a little interesting is they had 3 Burt Reynolds X-Files cards on ebay for $110 and that card isn't on the sell sheet. I hope some of his got inserted into the Ink Archieves product. That one will be a nice pull for someone. Also, who knew Bill Goldberg was in the Looney Tunes Inkworks auto set.
This stuff is going to be a fun break.

matchpenalty said:

I posted in big thread on this some of the autos that were in the Razor ebay store and the pricing. One thing I find a little interesting is they had 3 Burt Reynolds X-Files cards on ebay for $110 and that card isn't on the sell sheet. I hope some of his got inserted into the Ink Archieves product. That one will be a nice pull for someone. Also, who knew Bill Goldberg was in the Looney Tunes Inkworks auto set.
This stuff is going to be a fun break.

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Yep...there are a couple of big names in the Looney Tunes set

A1 Brendan Fraser - Bobby Delmont
A2 Jenna Elfman - Kate Houghton
A3 Steve Martin - Mr. Chairman
A4 Heather Locklear - Dusty Tails
A5 Bill Goldberg - Mr. Smith
A6 Don Stanton - The Warner Brothers
A7 Dan Stanton - The Warner Brothers
A8 Joe Dante - Director

So here is the sell sheet. Is the Reynolds pull better than any of these other's pictures? The Ritter looks sweet signed in red. Ozzy has nice looking graph.

matchpenalty said:

So here is the sell sheet. Is the Reynolds pull better than any of these other's pictures? The Ritter looks sweet signed in red. Ozzy has nice looking graph.

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Out of the ones shown on the sell sheet, the Gillian Anderson has historically sold the best ($300-$500)...then the Garner and McGowan are probably close to a tie. I haven't tracked any Ritters, but there is one in an eBay store for a $799 BIN.

Inkworks ever release print runs on the autos. Did people like Ozzy and Ritter sign only a few. Or were they just as easy to pull as anyone else.

matchpenalty said:

Inkworks ever release print runs on the autos. Did people like Ozzy and Ritter sign only a few. Or were they just as easy to pull as anyone else.

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I think total number of each auto in season 2 Buffy were the same, but I think the red Ritter is the rarest of the 4 colors he signed in (red, black, blue, and brown). I wonder if they got any of the Charisma Carpenter fulls sig autos (first and last name as she usually just signs Charisma) from season 2 because they are supposed to be really rare.

Nice info Chuck. Very interesting info on Ritter signing with so many different colors. Have to believe all those cards on the sell sheet are the exact copies that Razor has put into this product.

Found ebay auction with some of those Ritter variations. Seller has some sweet autos.
http://cgi.ebay.com/BUFFY-BTVS-Season-2 ... .m20.l1116

One of you hardcore non sports auto collectors needs to start a pick up non sports cert thread in here. Just got my first inkworks auto in. When Razor Archives hits, be cool to see what people pull.

Not sure if you guys saw, but distributors are already trying to sell this stuff at $100/box and $1100/case. Glad Andrew was nice enough to give me my two cases at practically his cost.

Kinda thought the $100 a box price point is about what dealers will open with in selling this product. So did the street date get moved up. May 6 is date I seen in those auctions. I thought it was a late May release. Sooner the better. Any good non sport price guide/info type mags around.

matchpenalty said:

Kinda thought the $100 a box price point is about what dealers will open with in selling this product. So did the street date get moved up. May 6 is date I seen in those auctions. I thought it was a late May release. Sooner the better. Any good non sport price guide/info type mags around.

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I don't know about any price guides...Beckett used to make one I think.

As far as I know it's still scheduled for Mid May.

I'm still surprised at the price. Razor sold the product for $600 a case. Those guys would be making around 80% profit even after fees.

matchpenalty said:

Any good non sport price guide/info type mags around.

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Non-Sport Update here: http://www.nonsportupdate.com/.

But their prices are dealer driven (don't want to offend advertisers - which is understandable) and don't accurately reflect street prices. I'd say clearly 20-25% off high book, sometimes a lot more unpopular/flat sale issues.

Their own boards, while slow, have discussed the Razor Ink Archives in quite a bit of detail. The biggest concern, outside of the "cherry picking" scheme, was how a release of so many autos would affect the cards that were pack-pulled. The consensus seems to point down. You can't dump that much leftover product, even sweet autos, and not have a deleterious effect on the standing market.