I've heard for a few years now from different sources about the 1951-52 Parkhurst cards being placed in a cement mixer to mix them around. Because of that, the vast majority of these cards are fairly dinged. Now I know for a fact that uncut sheets of 51-52 Parkhurst were used to make the wax packs for 1952-53 Parkhurst since I have seen it with my own eyes. However, regarding the cement mixer, is this just one of those urban myths, or is there any substantiated truth to this?
Yes its true!! I went over some old articles I remembered reading and found one on the BGS website mentioning it and then again on the PSA website- http://www.psacard.com/articles/article2208.chtml
I've been hearing that story for years. It's probably true. I wish I could find someone that worked for Parkhurst back in the 50's. I have a million questions for them. Jim
I would love to ask them why use a cement mixer. Obviously, I know that condition was not quite that important back then as it is now. However, cement mixer would seem to create more damage than other ways of collating the cards. Maybe someone was drunk, tired, etc. and had to come up with a way to mix up them. Boom!, there was a cement mixer in the back.
I would also like to tell the current card companies to use this method so as to have less near mint/mint cards as all of us know that anything made in the last 20 years will never be worth as much as their predecessors.
Yes, as everyone is saying that it is true about the cement mixer.
Here are some quotes from George Kennedy himself about this issue.
George Kennedy "We bought a cement mixer.The only good way we could get a good mix of cards was by putting all the cards in a cement mixer and tumbling them, then taking them all out and stacking them face up"
"When the printer cut them on the guillotine he would have a big stack of sheets all printed the same way, with say Maurice Richard's picture down in the corner. He would just cut them and stack them and he would have 25 Maurice Richard's in a row and then 25 Geoffrion's and then 25 Sawchuk's and so on and that was no good.
I didn't want to give the kids 5 of the same cards in one package, so we put them in a cement mixer which we paid about $100.00 for, and blended them.
We had one girl doing it all the time, she would check for damage. It worked out pretty well.It got us out of a jam. We did that for a couple of years before we went to a slitter and got a better method of collating."
