Fake George H. W. Bush Baseball Cards Confirmed

In 1990 baseball cards depicting the former President of the United States, George H. W. Bush, as a first baseman for Yale university were created, and they have repeatedly fetched thousands of dollars from collectors since they were made.

However, experts have now stated that there are other cards in circulation that weren’t part of the original set that were presented to the President. These cards are different from those given to Bush by the Topps trading card company as they don’t have a clear, thick coating on the front.

However, despite their differences, Joe Orlando, president of Professional Sports Authenticator in Santa Ana, California, has stated that both versions are among the most valuable cards in modern day memorabilia.

One card sold for $3,367 last month, however it was not coated, but this revelation only came to light after John H. Sununu, who was the former White House chief of staff and an avid baseball card collector, sent 11 of the cards to be evaluated.

After being told that they were fake and weren’t produced by Topps, Sununu, remarked, “I said, now, wait a minute, I’ve got a fairly good provenance.”

Arthur Shorin, Topps’ CEO, stated, “For the first time ever, this has been documented and studied, and it’s clear that there are two different versions. That’s meaningful for collectors. But it’s not like one is real and one is not real. They’re both real.”

Sununu added that he originally became wary about the George H. W. Bush cards after they began to pop on eBay and various other auction websites, which is what made him suspicious and prompted him to get his cards graded.

Sununu stated, “There was an awfully large number of them, and I knew that nobody that George Herbert Walker Bush gave a baseball card to would sell it. You’d have to kill me to get these out of my cold hands.”

[Image via Library of Congress/Wikicommons]