Beckett Hockey disappointment

[billcollector]

Recently I have been looking for a 91-92 Pro Set Kirk McLean auto card. Some collectors have raised doubt as to whether or not this card even exists.
The card has been listed in Beckett with a value since the year of issue. There also is info about the card in the set description blurb on the online price
guide.

To try and clear up the confusion, I emailed Beckett to get some clarification.

Here is a copy of my letter to Beckett:

Hello,



I'm writing regarding the 1991 Pro Set Kirk McLean auto card that was inserted in packs.

There is discussion online regarding whether or not this card exists. It has always been

listed in Beckett since the early 90's.

However, after doing some research, there seem to be no confirmed sales or photos of

this card. Despite it being limited, that is still very strange.



Can you confirm that this card was in fact produced and pack distributed in 91 Pro Set boxes?



Please advise and thanks for your time





Here is a copy of the response that I got:

Hi Bill,

Thank you for contacting us!

We apologize since we do not have any information about this and we would request you to contact the manufacturer instead.

Feel free to reach us at 855-777-2325 in case of any queries or concerns.

Thanks,

Stacey B
Beckett Customer Service



Is this the best Beckett can do?

First of all, Beckett is the industry standard and has listed this card in their guides since 1991. Stacey says they
"don't have any information about this?"

Like many of you, I have been subscribing to Beckett for most of my life. The response I get is to try to call the
manufacturer? Stacey, the manufacturer has been defunct for 25 years.

Then they give me a phone number to call, just in case I need any more of their crackerjack investigative help.

I say it again, is this the best Beckett can do these days?

Bill

[RGM81]

LOL Wow, that's brutal. Many collectors, especially in hockey, have long given up on Beckett as being a valuable resource for information when it comes to pricing, but this is pretty bad.

Much like Beckett, the SCF Inventory lists Kirk McLean autos for both 1991-92 and 1992-93 Pro Set. The first year are /500 (both English and French) while the 92-93 is listed as being /1000. I'm surprised that we don't have an image available; I own a copy of the Patrick Roy Pro Set auto (91-92 Pro Set French) and surely there's a Canucks fan or two out there who is a member who has one.

Anyways, I did a little bit of digging around online in the hopes of finding some images.

I did come across a 92-93:


No such luck with the 91-92 version.

I'm going to move this thread into the general Hockey discussion area - perhaps it will have a little more visibility there.

[camsue]

Wow that was bad by beckett and very sad if that is the best they can do

[cjb]

No disrespect to you but there's about a billion sports cards out in the market and i think it's unfair to criticize someone's lack of knowledge about an obscure sports card of player who had a slightly above average career. Chances are the person you talked to wasn't even born or an employee of beckett the time that card came out.

According to my beckett price guide Kirk Mclean only signed 500 cards in 91/92 which means that those cards are extremely rare and there's a good chance that the collectors who pulled them 30 years ago are probably not active collectors today (at least on internet trading sites).

[cjb]

rgm81......

The beckett head says that they are 1000 KM autographs, but on the actual list it says the following..........

'AU239 Kirk McLean AUTO AU/100'

so it's not clear whether there are 100 or 1000 KM autos out there

I would probably lean toward 1000 seeing that that's how many Patrick Roy signed for each series of pro-set the year before.

[OscarsCards]

That is just a default text template email response and that's a world wide standard in almost every company nowadays. Template often stars with "I'm / we're sorry, I / we apologize" some useless stuff and the something you can find in the website or google.

[cjb]

another thing is that these products were massed produced and i'm willing to bet good money that's there's still tons of unopened pro set packs floating out there to this day.

also wouldn't be surprised if people just threw away unopened boxes into the trash seeing that they're worth nothing today.

[jcesar77]

Back when I was more interested in vintage hockey than Beckett could help me with, I bought a 10th edition
“The Charlton Standard Catalogue of Hockey Cards.” Printed in 2000, the 1991-92 Pro Set listing includes this information on Autograph Cards —
“Patrick Roy’s first autograph (#125, serial numbers 1-1000) was inserted in Series One French packs while his second autograph (#599, serial numbers 1001-2000)
was inserted in Series Two French packs. The McLean autograph was inserted into English packs.”


The listing includes a NrMT-MT price for each Roy’s @ $225 and notes a print run/1000 along with listing for #501 McLean @ $30 and NOTHING listed regarding print run.


Regarding the 1992-93 Pro Set, the Catalogue states that an intended second series was never issued and lists cards for —
— a 270 card base set and 4 Insert sets
— a 5-card Award Winners
— a 12-card Rookie Goal Leaders
— a 15-card Team Leaders
— a 5-card Parkhurst Previews


NO mention is made of any autographs, although the RGM81 post above seems to indicate otherwise. The auto posted is NOT McLean’s regular issue card, so it seems like a special signed insert OR promo OR show card — the back of the card has #239 which was really the Bill Lindsay RC in the set (McLean’s set card was #193). All other info on the back seems identical to his set card. The card Front is a unique photo and not tied at all to the printed set format.


Hope this helps.

[Rraincock]

I am starting to think that the 1991-92 McLean auto doesn't exist. I can't find an image of one or a sales record anywhere (spent about 45 minutes looking over breakfast). Were these advertised anywhere? Stranger things have happened as recently I found out about the Patrick Roy 'Mask' CC2 autograph... without an image anywhere.

[creasecollector]

No disrespect to you but there's about a billion sports cards out in the market and i think it's unfair to criticize someone's lack of knowledge about an obscure sports card of player who had a slightly above average career. Chances are the person you talked to wasn't even born or an employee of beckett the time that card came out.

According to my beckett price guide Kirk Mclean only signed 500 cards in 91/92 which means that those cards are extremely rare and there's a good chance that the collectors who pulled them 30 years ago are probably not active collectors today (at least on internet trading sites).

This is the way I'm leaning towards as well.

Just my opinion, but it's unfair to lay this much criticism to Beckett on this one, as they list so many cards and can't possibly know the existence on every single one of them, especially since Becket aren't even the manufacturer to begin with.

It's impossible for Beckett to know details about every single card. They were probably given a list from the manufacterer of what's in the product back in 91-92 and that's what they needed to follow and so they did. Whether a card didn't make it to pack out or it was released, they have very limited knowledge of this.

Heck, even us within the hockey card community don't know everything about every card/set, etc. So why should we expect a Beckett employee to know about a single card released way back in 1991-92? It's a very unfair position to put someone in.

If Beckett really wanted to check the existence of every single card listed in their book, then sure, but that will never happen and the labour involved would be a waste. Some cards like this will slip through the cracks and get listed even when it was never issued. I'm not saying that is the case here with the McLean auto, as I'm sure one is out there, but it's such a tough spot to put one employee on.

That would be like someone asking really specific details about your company that employs you from 91-92 and complaining when you don't know the answer. Same thing here with Beckett. I'm sure they do want to help, but 91-92 is just too long of a time period to be super accurate with. You're better off asking an expert like a Canucks/McLean mega collector. They would probably be able to give you better info.