They are the Schrödinger's cat of trading cards -- Topps cards from the 90's with the plastic protector still on them. They are cards that are out the pack and yet you truly don't know their condition because there is that second sheet of plastic. When I can't get to sleep, sometimes my mind turns to the card collector's unanswerable existential question: Can there really be a mint Topps Finest card when the protective coating is on the card? Just like the cat in Schrodinger's box that is either alive or dead, the card can be mint or damaged by the plastic protector and there is no way to know without ripping that sucker off. To me it is like grading a card still in the wrapper. You don't know the condition of the card until you open the pack, just like you can't really know the condition of the card until that annoying plastic coating is removed. For years, I've been doing just that in a series of posts I've called "Free the Finest....
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