Yeah I remember when the sky was falling because of all the slabs from Mexico. What happened to all that worry?

It went away but I would bet the slabs from Mexico didn't go away.:D

True, but PSA wasn't financially responsible for the slabs from Mexico, but they're on the hook big time for all these doctored cards.

I will see if anyone's keeping a running tally of all the losses that PWCC and PSA are on the hook for.
In the video interview, Brent said that if PWCC submitted the cards, they will eat the loss, not pass it on to PSA. Noble stance. Let's see if he follows through on it.

All I'm seeing so far is lip service.

Why would he do that? Are Brent and the owner of PSA really good friends or something? :rolleyes:

He had better pray most guys with the bad cards won't know or won't care. If he gets into fights about whether the returner met his burden, he'll get annihilated on Blowout.

This is going to be exhibit A in the Criminal complaint and search warrant. It's almost like he's trying to define away the term fraud.

Talk is cheap. I simply don't trust the guy.

Annihilated on blowout, why would he or anybody else care.LOL Blowout is kinda like telling your mom or the BBB. Telling them might make you feel better but there is absolutely nothing they can really do.

Not that long ago they called out some members over here for shill bidding, trimming cards, and a few other things. Hell that news didn't even get a single post over here.

I think too much focus is being put on Brent/PWCC. As I mentioned before, the scam takes 3 parties - the doctor/submitter, PSA and then someone to sell them (whether knowingly or unknowingly). And whether complicit or incompetent, PSA is the key to making the scam work. You can take the best card doctor in the world, but if PSA is doing their job correctly and none of the doctored cards get past, then those cards really aren't worth anything (other than their raw ungraded value). So there would be no point in doctoring, the doctor finds some other way or hobby to scam. But if PSA continues the pass them, the doctor will still be in business. So let's say Brent/PWCC never takes in another doctored card on consignment ever again. The doctor doesn't need Brent/PWCC to make this work. He can use any other auction / consignment house and under many different names. Do you see how none of this is possible without PSA?

He does seem to care or he and Betsy wouldn't keep posting there. There must be some spillover effect even if the posts you are referencing didn't go viral.

That is what is the most crazy part to me, it makes no sense at all. It has been proven over and over if you just shut up it goes away fairly quickly.

A lot of what is posted over there is fact BUT a lot of it is conjecture too. With absolutely no accountability they can say anything at all, lies and falsehoods included, and not worry about any repercussions. Again, some of them do great stuff and are factual....and some of them are trolls and criminals just lying out of their pie holes. I think that is the reason some things don't get traction, because they are fallacies from anonymous idiots.

Yep. He can't seem to help himself though. And now videos.

I don't think PSA is doing their job correctly. And you are correct, that is the real problem. It wouldn't take catching every alteration, just nearly all of them.
The entire business model of faster turn around times for more expensive stuff is flawed, and invites alterations.

Maybe we should go over the lots/some facts/falsities one by one and debunk/prove as fact/fiction???? Seems to me most are facts!

This is spot-on. And I cannot believe more people haven't addressed and expounded on this aspect. The PSA element is far more dangerous and all-encompassing than PWCC's role. I can only assume the lack of focus and anger towards PSA is because nearly everyone here has a vested interest of some sort.

I really hope the FBI is watching this, and is planning to come down on these people... The first week of August in Chicago might be a great time for it. Would love to see them do to PSA exactly what they did to Mastro/Legendary.

Pwcc
 

This thread seems to be full of hearsay and innuendo. I was screwed royally before the advent of grading. Based on my 50 years in the hobby, I believe PWCC has been completely above board. I am a happy customer.

Look how much they've done for the industry through market research which landed them a huge story in The New York Times last year for heaven's sake. Who else in the industry can claim that?

And yes OldJudge is absolutely correct. Brent deserves credit for elevating cards to the status of assets, continuing a trend begun by Jefferson Burdick. If anyone on this site is giving away their cards, please let me know. More power to Brent.

Show me where Jefferson Burdick talked about cards as assets. Comparing Brent to JB is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in a long long time!

Convenience and safe target. PSA is a sacred cow and ubiquitously ingrained in many people's collections.

I've for many years assumed that many high grade cards in PSA holders have been "conserved." Even one major auction house president years back advertised that they could "prep" your cards for grading.

Happily for me, owning '9s' and '10s' never interested me as a collector. Just my aesthetics/sentiments (and understanding that 'art is in the eye of the beholder'), but I never understood the need to own a Gem Mint copy of any particular card.

Mastro

Doug Allen

John Rogers

lol.....and what do these entities have in common??

Dont blame the people who committed mortgage fraud, blame the lenders for allowing it.


Dont blame the Madoff for the stock fraud, blame wall street for allowing it.


Dont blame "no so bright" Brent and the collusion of people around him. Blame PSA for allowing it.


With both items bought sold on his platform multiple times, the shilling and bid retractions from whomever, the "dont worry you'll get outbid" rumors, it seems the ring has been caught red handed. There wouldn't be concrete evidence, only conjecture, if the numbskulls hadn't used NUMBERED cards

I know PWCC and his jug band of investment advisors recommend not bidding on a certain card to investors, but would they reccomend some conservation to get a better grade?


I am as shocked as anyone these cards passed PSA. I would assume a new card would be trimmed, but these vintage ones are bitter pill.

At one point they were good for the hobby too, don't forget now.

Would that be the same Old Judge who disgustedly asked of Brent, who made this guy king, and posted he would never buy from him again?

Thank you for successfully trolling all of the Peters in this thread.

hahaha

If you look at what I highlighted it was the questioning of other things, not Brent or PWCC, which I was responding to. I am not going to get into those things in this thread although I will say I have never shilled a .99 cent postcard (or anything at all) of mine on ebay or anywhere else, ever :).

In the book, Mint Condition, Burdick railed against the inflation of prices in vintage cards-- to 10 cents! But he did sell and trade them as assets because they were worth something and gave him pleasure.

Of course, no one is in a league with Burdick, or ever will be, but he wheeled and dealed to complete his collection, just never on today's level.

i've read MINT CONDITION...I'm struggling to comprehend what you've stated regarding JB...has anything to do with the current debacle with PWCC/PSA, etc.

Additionally you are extrapolating a tad bit it saying that JB considered cards as "ASSETS" just because he liked them and valued them to a degree.

I like turkey sandwiches and I value them as good healthy sustenance...but I would not consider them assets?

Man, as a kid I did not realize I was trading assets with my friends. But I guess I was, as I enjoyed the cards. So I was part of the trend that led up to Brent too, and I want credit.

Haven't seen you post in a while. Should we expect another Forbes puff piece that everything is hunk-dory? Have you read any of the threads on Blowout? And you still want to say that everything PWCC does/has done is above board? Is recommending buyers that they evade state sales tax by shipping their items to the vault above board? Is not revealing which consignors they're "blocking" from listing items? How about not providing the information about which PSA cert numbers they submitted themselves vs. which ones were submitted by others? What you see as "hearsay and innuendo" I see as fire. What is your definition of conservation? I'll wait while Brent tells it to you.

Maybe it's time to start your investigative journalism angle to try to win a press award, instead.

"For the Good of the Hobby -- From Burdick to Brent"

George Costanza said it best. Never heard more double speak in my life.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn_PSJsl0LQ

Well said, John. :)

Have you made these same demands from PSA? A list of the submitter(s) for the certs involved? A list of the employee(s) that graded those certs? What they plan on doing about all these cards? How about PSA contacting Brent for the buyers contact info so that PSA can contact them and offer to buy them back?

If you're going to make demands, just be fair about it and demand information from all parties involved.

I have been corresponding by email with PSA President Sloan. Haven't received anything back in a while. Highly recommended he publicly address the situation. BGS hasn't responded either to the hundreds of cards submitted by all the people they invite to their annual Industry Day: Kevin Burge, the Sliheets, etc.
Heck, we know most of the names now (at least we know a bunch). Just confirming that those guys are defrauding both companies would be a start. But Brent's stance that these trimmers/alterers/conservers can redeem themselves by taking their lumps is humorous. I don't think any of these guys will crawl out from under their rocks.

David- Are you the person that writes the stories about cards on Forbes?

Can someone explain this controversy very succinctly to me?

I have bought from PWCC before, but they don't grade cards, do they? Why is it so important what they think a card's grade is?

I have read essentially every post of every major thread, and I watched the entirety of the interview video. After having reviewed all of that, my question to anyone would be this:

Is there any doubt that both PWCC and the TPGs (PSA specifically at a minimum) are aware of at least SOME of the people who are suspected/accused of trimming cards?


I for one have absolutely NO DOUBT they know who these people are, several of which have well less than stellar hobby reputations going back a long time prior. I simply don't believe any reasonable person at this point could refute that both PWCC and PSA know exactly who many of these people are.

I also believe it is VIRTUALLY CERTAIN they actually knew these people well prior to the recent outbreak of threads questioning the unaltered state of many of these cards. Brent effectively said as much, without using names, in the video.

If you come to the conclusion that they did know, then it stands to reason that they certainly SHOULD HAVE known they were taking great risk to their brands and their services by associating with these people, whether via accepting their cards for grading or for consignment services.

As the TPGs have basically chosen silence to this point, there's really nothing to say about them other than lack of response and to this point perceived lack of action.

With PWCC, their responses in my view have three primary themes.

1) We don't think you really understand what alteration means, so we're going to tell you what it means (or, more realistically, what it doesn't mean).
2) If you can't see evidence of alteration on the card, then it must not really be altered.
3) We're mad we caught up in this, and TRUST US, we're going to make some people pay.

The problem with 1): There is HUGE diversity in opinion on what alteration means in this hobby. Brent speaks in the video of not wanting to pursue things that can't be done, so why is he unable to see this as one of those things? It is highly unlikely that all the TPGs are going to get together and form a consensus standard that is adopted hobby wide, right? Maybe not impossible, but not highly likely. I'm paraphrasing the video, but at one point he uses the phrase "...this is where I need people to think critically...". Probably not the best choice of phrase if you're trying to persuade people to your side of things.

The problem with 2): This is effectively saying they're "hiding behind the slab", i.e. if PSA slabbed it with a number, it must have met their standards, we're just the consignment house so don't be mad at us. This simply just doesn't work if you believe that they did indeed know who some of these people were and were accepting their submissions on consignment. They KNOWINGLY DEALT WITH THESE PEOPLE - PERIOD. Again paraphrasing, Brent said something to the effect of "...photos don't constitute evidence...". I respectfully disagree with Brent on that, and I imagine an extremely large percentage of the hobby does as well. Photos are actually some of the absolute best evidence there is, and photos are exactly the evidence that has shown the serial numbered cards have been trimmed and yet still made it in numbered slabs. According to Brent, if photos aren't evidence, then those cards aren't trimmed. No reasonable person could believe that, I don't believe for one second that HE believes that.

The problem with 3): PWCC has been mixed up in so many issues, from the Dimaggio "cleaning" to the retracted/shill bidding to the changing definition of altered to acting like we didn't really think these bad actors would do these bad things...

In basically every instance, PWCC had or still has a significant monetary interest in keeping things as they were, how they want it to be or to keep it quiet. They've been "reacting" to people calling these things out, not proactively looking to deal with them. They're promising to "make people pay", but they can't tell us who those people are. They can only tell that to the TPGs. THAT would certainly be a start, but that's not what transparency looks like. It's also NOT what leaders do.

Paraphrasing again, Brent says in the video he "can't revise auctions after they've started". He SHOULD KNOW that's not accurate, otherwise PWCC is literally the only seller on eBay who can't. You can ALWAYS add to the description up until the very near end of an auction (I don't know the specifics, might be 24 hours or something, I'm sure someone can look that up). It appears as a new "section" within the description with a date and time stamp. I believe he knows this, and has again said something that isn't true and is trying to make us believe he doesn't know it's not true. That erodes trust.

What they have contributed to leading is the push for cards specifically, but collectibles more generally, to be viewed as an "alternate asset class" for investment. Unfortunately, I think many people view that as "cheerleading".

Thus, I think most people have little to no faith that the "trust me" portion of the video actually means anything, as there really isn't sufficient substantive action and accountability historically to justify that trust.

The gist:
PSA, Beckett, and PWCC are being used by a whole host of scammers that alter cards. These guys are trimming $100 cards to make them worth $500, $500 to be worth $3,000, and $5,000 to be worth $25,000. They have realized that PSA and Beckett (edit: originally had SGC here on accident) are unable to do the job they claim to: detect trimming and other alterations. Once the cards are in TPG holders, they are submitted through PWCC (and Probstein) so that you don't know which scammer's cards you're buying. That is the rub with a consignment service: the owner of a card is known only to the consignment house.

PSA has been silent on the matter. BGS has been silent on the matter. Both are exposed as grading companies, but PSA has the "Grade Guarantee" where they will pay someone who gets scammed the difference between the purchase price and the value of the altered card. In the past 6 months, a few guys on a different message board have started researching the internet to find original pictures of cards before slices of the cards were cut off or before creases were pressed out. These cards would therefore be liable to be returned to sender, because they don't deserve a number grade. Those same sleuths have figured out many of the scammers based on finding out which eBay accounts bought the cards, altered them, submitted them to PSA/BGS, and finally sold through Brent and Rick.

We're not talking small bills; we're talking fraud amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars exposed by just a few guys on a message board. And since Brent keeps talking/posting and asking for feedback for his ridiculous re-writing of what altered means, he keeps getting rightfully bashed.

No. You can go back to post #1 and lose 10 hours of your life, just like the rest of us.

Kidding.

Not kidding.

millenial?

Yeah, you should read about 6-10 threads on Blowout forums as well with all the "evidence" showing before and after pictures.

exactly!

.

Anyone who says before and after pictures are not evidence, I mean why even bother listening or trying to respond?

Those aren't evidence, dude, just ask Brent.

That's why I put it in air quotes....

Understood.

On the vintage side, and presumably modern too, the identities of the major card doctors are well-known. These guys more or less operate in the open and every major dealer, collector, and grading service knows exactly who they are. And so does law enforcement. It's a fair question to ask, so how the f--- do they keep doing what they do? I know some pieces of the answer but not all, and I just hope, as I've said, that the grading companies aren't being paid to be complicit.

He gets a pass as he’s doing a lot of good things for the hobby. Like submitting raw, altered cards to PSA for Gary Moser. Cards that were bought by Moser in PWCC auctions and cracked out and altered. Then given back to Brent, raw, who submitted them to PSA under his own name and sold the altered, newly-slabbed card in his auctions for Moser.

Win win, sounds like.

I'm still waiting for an answer,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidse.../#480c93a99783

compare to name in his post

That sounds like an incredibly profitable proposition.

With stickers too?:eek:

What makes you think Brent is submitting on behalf of Moser and it's not Moser himself submitting? If this has already been discussed, then I overlooked it.

Yes it is.

mom was right...birds of a feather...

For someone who's been in the hobby for 50 years, according to him, I wonder what his motives are?

comparing him to Mastro is more parallel. He has been in bed with edward scissorhands for a long long time and PSA is complicit in his crimes, IMHO.

exactimundo

Brent Mastro is a very slimy individual, that much is PROVEN already IMHO. He does nothing he says he's gonna do and that my friends speaks volumes about his Integrity. HE HAS ZERO and is a ZERO

Because PSA aint sharing squat and neither is Brent Mastro. Hopefully, law enforcement will make them both comply but that is very unlikely.

You must be kidding Swarm, Investigative journalism doesn't exist anymore. Otherwise, the forbes guy would do the research the guys at BO are doing and write something that would ultimately help the hobby instead of flooding the market with trimmed cards and fluffy asset stories, giving Brent Mastro the verbal bj. No, that would take too much effort.

a client of mine had their personal care products (branded perfume) counterfeited and they were made by the DTSC (perfume was flammable) to pay for the destruction of 2- truckloads of counterfeit goods as it had "THEIR NAME ON IT". Only cost them 70K to get rid of the criminals product. PSA should be held to the same standard.

I said this elsewhere but I think it bears repeating here:

Originally Posted by Goudey77 View Post
To rely on internet sources to flag altered cards is not good for our hobby. It causes drama, unnecessary bad publicity, conspiracy theories etc etc. It needs to be done at a collective industry level. My only solution is getting TPG’s to step up their game. Follow what CGC does.

I feel it's very NECESSARY bad publicity.

My problem in general with your scenario of evolution is that it's evolving only after people got caught gaming the system. In other words it's not a "natural" evolution of standards but rather backing and filling to account for deeds already accomplished. You can't do something and then when called out claim you were just trying to evolve the hobby. Forget the hubris for a minute. If you honestly thought that you were the one to lead the hobby to a new paradigm you'd announce it BEFORE you ever started profiting from it.

Agreed. And who was foolish enough to do it on modern cards that are already numbered from the manufacturer?? While these guys are talented and have been making money hand over fist for quite some time, they sure blew it on that minor (but huge) detail.

I wonder if Dr Cards is a client of Brent Mastro?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVdD6WTYYU

not that it bothers me. it just shows him waxing the card, not trimming.

Greed isnt always good

Big money in those cards, for whatever reason they are what the modern dudes crave.

I was just about to pull the trigger on a very expensive PSA hockey card, but I really have no choice but to hold off for awhile after reading what has been coming out. I'm just now hearing this and getting caught up to speed.

Brent says PWCC is not a grading company - but they are. "High-End" "Exceptional" etc. They say they can offer these grades based on their experience in handling more trading cards than anyone else in the industry. So, why can't they detect alterations?

They couldn't just list a graded card and give a small description and let the pictures sell the card. They used the most ridiculous hyperbole I've ever read for trading cards and developed a grading system for them.

Not surprised it's come to this. Won't be surprised if it comes out someone at PWCC was aware of the scamming.

Yeah, but no one is buying anything based on what they say in their description. It's PSA that matters. If THEY are doing bad stuff, that's a much bigger and much more improtant scandal than PWCC saying something has great eye appeal or whatever meaningless stuff they put. Now, if they KNOW they are posting altered cards, that's a scandal, too-- and I think people should be clear about it when they accuse them of that.

I don't like PWCC auctions. I've posted before they don't make sense to me and I think it's the card owner buying his own card to inflate prices in many cases (I documented that in a post). But for the <$1000 cards, sometimes they have decent stuff.

Says who?

https://photos.imageevent.com/allred...size/greed.jpg

I read all these threads on PWCC and no one ever mentions the ultimate solution - Don't pay higher prices for higher graded cards.

If the buyer's for high end cards go away, the card doctors go away - because they can't make money. Problem solved.

But no one on this board wants to hear that solution - because they're all sitting on high end, graded cards, and don't want to lose their "asset value."

Fortunately for me, my budget never allowed for buying higher end cards, so I have nothing to lose (or gain) from my collection!

What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive.

+1 I am a poor guy with a ton of low end cards with little to no real value. They put a huge smile on my face when I look at them so I am happy.:)

That's what collecting should be about. I bet you're probably a lot more happy than the guys with deep pockets who set at the top of the registry.