Find me a 3rd musketeer card, dear readers

 You have no idea the amount of time I have to spend searching out defaced mustache cards on eBay.  Nobody ever cops to having one up front, despite it being obvious in the picture.  It's rarely mentioned, even when searching for things like "Defaced" and poor condition, filler cards, and so on.  It's tough enough to find a good, trashed card that some schmuck isn't trying to get $5 or $8 or $17 for because it's "a vintage card", it's a HOFer, he won the triple crown and such.  That's fine and all but your card was also attached to someone's kid brothers' bicycle wheel while he pretended to be part of the Satan's Disciples MC on his Schwinn banana seat 3 speed. I've been trying to fill slot 10 with a particularly gnarly Ernie Banks with rounded corners, tears, creases, pen markings and edges that will make you cry but despite being the only person who has shown interest in it for a month or two no getting it below 2 digits where it should be. A new candidate recently appeared that has even worse corners and stains as well and it might be posted by a man reasonable enough to do business with.  

I tried a work around with this Vada Pinson and didn't quite know just how big the '71 Topps supers are and there is no way to fit this monstrosity into the binders, unless...I trim the edges ever so sligh--eh, who am I kidding, I'd have to hack off at least a cm on each side. But if I use some left-handed children's safety scissors it'll probably give it a jagged shark tooth cut with little hairlike strips of paper left on it. Nothing in the Frankenset bylaws expressly prohibit this sort of thing but it's generally frowned upon to self-Trashify a card.  The seller put it up at a low price of a buck, without ever mentioning the condition, not even in the description.  Like they thought they could sneak by them by as unobtrusive pencil lines of an accidental sort.  They then tried to charge a high shipping cost to make up for it, as if it was so thin it would need extra backing in a PWE.  When I pointed out the folly of protecting a card going into a trashed set they relinquished the card for a couple bucks. And Vada looks like he would have totally rocked a Dali stash with a Van Dyke rounding out the face, but the little delinquent could have just lightly followed his 5 o'clock shadow with a fat marker and could have had a killer fu Manchu, possibly a rival to LOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEE Tiant's.

Matty here was in one of the PYC sales where they put a binder page up and a stern warning to examine the picture of the titled auction and such, like they might sneak that caterpillar to someone not paying attention. but it was attached to a price that barely covered the stamp, so I don't see how exactly he could have made anything. It was such a tremendous piece that I would have paid double, maybe triple the price to secure it for this Frankenset.  I had an open spot at that number, but I would have tossed just about any other card into the trash to get his stash in the brash set this is becoming.  But I have noticed something on these last acquisitions and on other mustache cards. You might notice on previous posts that no matter the player or implement of defacement they seem to be so overcome with the giggles at their own cleverness that the whole thing is wildly off centre of the face and how a mustache would sit.  Since most of these are in pencil, we cannot blame the fumes of big fat magic markers of that bygone era to account for such odious misuse of space and perspective.  No, it can only be the drug like spasms of their own laughter, which is part of the charm for me.