Beckett Has Stopped Grading Bond Bread Jackie Robinson Cards. Why?

I recently wrote an article for SI Collects about a New York man who paid $75 for a trunk on Facebook Marketplace and found some really rare treasures, including three 1947 Bond Bread Jackie Robinson cards.

Rob, the man who bought the trunk, sent the cards to Beckett Grading Services because there’s a rep near him and he didn’t trust the mail. Beckett, though, returned the cards ungraded and without an explanation other than “Service unavailable,” according to his rep.

It took several weeks, but Beckett responded to an email about this, saying, “I believe that we no longer grade these cards.”

Not very definitive or confident.

When asked why, Beckett responded right back, “I am not sure why it was stopped.”

I reached out through many contacts of my own, but not even my most connected hobby friends has a contact at Beckett anymore. Emails to listed executives either went unanswered for days or bounced back as undeliverable.

Why would Beckett stop grading a set they once called “just as important culturally as it is to the hobby, perhaps even more so”?

I reached out to Dave Berg, also known as Bluejacket 66 on YouTube, who recorded a very informative YouTube video five years ago about the set. Dave doesn’t have a contact at Beckett, nor is he familiar with their reasoning, but I asked him to speculate since he knows so much about the set.

“It gets pretty murky about what is what. I’d imagine they feel they can’t reliably differentiate them, but I don’t know.”

I pointed out that BGS used to grade and authenticate the set, and Dave compared it to a similar situation at PSA.

“PSA used to grade Fro-Joy Ice Cream Babe Ruth cards but stopped because they weren’t confident in spotting reprints. There are a fair amount of issues like that.”

In fact, PSA famously stopped grading Star basketball cards from the 1980s, and then resumed grading them in 2022 when they felt comfortable again distinguishing between legitimate and counterfeit copies.

Whatever happened, when a major grader stops grading a set or card as “culturally important” as the Bond Bread Jackie cards, it seems as if a small press release would be helpful. At the very least, customer service should be able to confidently say whether they grade them or not.

Rob, the trunk-buyer, plans to send the three Bond Bread cards to PSA after the holidays.

We’re still trying to figure out what happened to once-great Beckett, but while I waited for comment they announced that they were under a new parent company:

It will be interesting to see what changes or investments are made to make Beckett relevant again.

I will update this post if I hear anything from anyone at Beckett.