Umm.... Mike Schmidt 5 Star Bat Knob?

AMAZIN HOF COLLECTOR said:

We all assume the Bat Knob cards are from the "knob" of the bat (handle end). I have seen a few knobs from various Topps products and it is my belief Topps is also using the "barrel" end of the bat and calling it a knob as well. This way Topps get 2 "knobs" from every bat. Did you really think Topps cut up that many bats to get all these "knobs"?
Would explain the 33 on the end of the bat.

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Might not be far off, I have recently looked into buying "Gamers", most gamers have a numeric code stamped/engraved into the end of the knob. Looking at images on google it appears that Schmidt utilized bats with the curved barrel end rather than a concave end.

On the Rice bat card: That bat was for sale on eBay earlier this year and a very knowledgable Rice Game Used bat collector did some research and concluded that the bat was indeed a Rice model that he did order but didn't like it. Tony Armas did however and proceeded to make that order of bats his, thus #20.
A Rice model yes but a Rice gamer no.
Loses a lot of value to me.

Heads up to the Schmidt fans

FS/Trade: A few Mid/High End Cards - Blowout Cards Forums

This highlights a significant problem with the GU card market to me.

We have no evidence that the bat is a Schmidt gamer other than Topps' promise (vaguely worded no less). And we've seen Topps make plenty of mistakes in the past.

The worst part is, there is no way to prove that it was not a gamer. With a knob / plate there is a chance of photomatching, but with any chip / swatch there's no way to know.

Eventually, I have to believe that the GU card market will segment into two categories:
-- highly authenticated pieces with video of patches, bats cut etc.
-- low low priced items similar to unverified IP autos.

Unfortunately I have to think that virtually every GU card issued to this point is in the first category.

bobthewondercat77 said:

This highlights a significant problem with the GU card market to me.

We have no evidence that the bat is a Schmidt gamer other than Topps' promise (vaguely worded no less). And we've seen Topps make plenty of mistakes in the past.

The worst part is, there is no way to prove that it was not a gamer. With a knob / plate there is a chance of photomatching, but with any chip / swatch there's no way to know.

Eventually, I have to believe that the GU card market will segment into two categories:
-- highly authenticated pieces with video of patches, bats cut etc.
-- low low priced items similar to unverified IP autos.

Unfortunately I have to think that virtually every GU card issued to this point is in the first category.

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If you meant that second category I'd agree

AMAZIN HOF COLLECTOR said:

We all assume the Bat Knob cards are from the "knob" of the bat (handle end). I have seen a few knobs from various Topps products and it is my belief Topps is also using the "barrel" end of the bat and calling it a knob as well. This way Topps get 2 "knobs" from every bat. Did you really think Topps cut up that many bats to get all these "knobs"?
Would explain the 33 on the end of the bat.

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I believe this to be the best explination for the "knob". "20" on the knob of the handle and "33" on the knob of the barel. Makes complete sense to me and I would probably be willing to bet a significant amount of money that this is the case. Great job!

Personally, I'm very very skeptical of this knob card and I wouldn't trust it was a bat used by Schmidt.

The knob would most likely be from a H&B/LS, as Adirondack/Rawlings have the model stamped into the knob and as someone else pointed out. The oz. is often written in ballpoint pen (at the factory) on the knob of A/R bats. There would be no reason for the oz. to be written on the barrell end because of the way the bats are stored but I won't say it's never happened but highly unlikely without a player number also present.

With that in mind, assuming this is a LS bat since there is no model stamped in and looking at his order records with LS, it seems that about half were 33oz. and half were 32oz. with a few 34oz. and even some 36oz.! Now from my years of collecting gamers, when I've seen players mark the oz. on a bat to differentiate them, they also write their number on the knob. Typically when you see a number cover the whole knob such as this it is a players number. If I were in the market for a Schmidt gamer, I wouldn't have touched this one and waited for one with his customary #20 on the knob.

As for Topps using a bat with Schmidts name on it but perhaps not used by him, sure they would. What do they have to lose, its your word against theirs and they'd just try to fix the issue or simply say oops, we'll try harder next time. Once they chop an item it's difficult if not impossible at times to determine if it was ever a legit gamer used by said player. In the end, no matter what happens, more than enough people will still continue to buy any product they put out they won't be hurting if a bad "relic" card gets out.

How quickly people forget about the big bust of dealers selling fake/forged gamers to card comapnies, if you think it was only limited to football or just the deals done many many years ago.. its time to open your eyes.

I'm not trying to compare but some players don't put numbers on their bats. I got this random bat from 2009 during Arizona Fall League. It has a 16 on a side of bat and it does say professional bat on it.

uniquebaseballcards said:

If you meant that second category I'd agree

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Haha, whoops, yes.

My main point is that, despite all this legitimate debate about whether this is or is not a true Schmidt gamer, at the end of the day we are unable to know for sure. And this is an unacceptable reality for items this expensive.

What else would you buy for nearly 1K with virtually no guarantee that it is real?

The secondary market for these is still strong so it is a reasonable purchase -- as no card has "intrinsic" value anyways.

But... once the doubt starts to mount (after a few more well-publicized cases of fraud)... the bottom could easily fall out of this market... and even authentic items would crash in value as there would be no way to differentiate them from the fraudulent ones.

I suspect that 80-90% of GU is fake.

There's no auditing. There's no way to prove or disprove.

I still cannot understand the mentality of buying a piece of a game used bat for 1K or more when you can but a whole bat with provenance for the same or lesser price. To drop this much money on a relatively common hall of famer (in regards to his available supply of bats) with no guaranty that it is in fact real besides a card company telling you it is is well, lunacy in my eyes.

Buying a Ruth bat barrel for 5K or more I can kinda see as there are not many out there and for most that is the closest any of us will ever come to owning a gamer from the sultan of swat. Again..assuming the bat is genuine to start with but buying modern day hall of famers like this is pure craziness.

Bob Loblaw said:

I suspect that 80-90% of GU is fake.

There's no auditing. There's no way to prove or disprove.

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You talking full gu items or u talking gu cards?

This is why I sold off just about all my GU a LONG time ago.

mchenrycards said:

I still cannot understand the mentality of buying a piece of a game used bat for 1K or more when you can but a whole bat with provenance for the same or lesser price. To drop this much money on a relatively common hall of famer (in regards to his available supply of bats) with no guaranty that it is in fact real besides a card company telling you it is is well, lunacy in my eyes.

Buying a Ruth bat barrel for 5K or more I can kinda see as there are not many out there and for most that is the closest any of us will ever come to owning a gamer from the sultan of swat. Again..assuming the bat is genuine to start with but buying modern day hall of famers like this is pure craziness.

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Then you dont understand baseball cards.

Look, I can sell you a photo of Mickey Mantle from 1952. I can write a nice bio and attach some stats to the back. For some reason, people prefer the one that Topps made a bunch of copies of.

Thay did that in 1952? Well, I have seen people pay THOUSANDS for these crazy looking "super factors" from this year's Bowman products, but I have paid a fraction of that for the regular versions. Wait until the people who bought those superfractors learn that their scarcity was merely manufactured by Topps!

OK, shat talk aside, I see that many are worried about the authenticity of these GU items. However, people pay tons for manufactured 1/1s all the time. These bat barrel cards are just a different version of that. Authentic or not? Doesnt really matter and wont affect the price much anyway. The full bat is worth more to you? Cool. Some people clearly don't understand that, or the full bat would sell for more. Yet it doesn't...