Magie cards
 

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Checking VCP both of the original card sales are listed there before they did
their little sex change.

SGC card sold on 2/14/13 by joes vinatge

PSA card sold on 7/8/12 by painthistorian

Both where bought by the same buyer but since eBay started
scrambling the name we don't know it shows as

-***d

Read the article and think they it was a little harsh on PSA. Think
Joe did the right thing by getting the cards off the market and
paying that person his money back.

Grading is not perfect and it involves humans that are going to
make errors. Like it is always said here "buy the card and not the
holder".

Until we come up with a perfect solution which may be a digital
grading system we are going to have errors. And even then it
wont be full proof.

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Seems like the consignor knew he was busted and did not even bother.

There was a follow up blog post by Peter Nash claiming Gerry Schwartz was the ebay buyer.

http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=27012

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"House of Cards"
 

Sounds like there is the making of a great book detailing the fraud in our wonderful hobby.

Great title for it: House of Cards!


Patrick

How about, When it Was a Card: Baseball Cards Before Card Doctors. Oh wait, shill bidding is the biggest problem in the hobby, mea bad.

Peter
 

Is absolutely correct. This is far worse than shilling. So with shilling you pay an extra bid or two. Here people paid thousands for something close to worthless. So sick of the sanctimony over shilling while covering or giving a pass to people committing far more egregious crimes. All fraud should be outed but this is far worse to the buyer than getting bumped a few bids. Wonder why some are so concerned with shilling yet seem to turn a blind eye to this far worse crime. Seems like one hell of a big smoke screen to me.

Glyn, you have to wonder how many of these have been handed out in the name of going after shill bidding.

Well he
 

Peter he Claimed they were not committing fraud anymore sure looks like that was a lie. If all the purported people really are his clients and the facts as presented are correct.

Correct me if I'm wrong
 

But they don't give them out before the crime do they? It's only after isn't it?

Glyn not my field but if I am understanding what you are asking, no you couldn't get immunity from future crimes you might commit, but you could get pretty broad immunity for any past transaction or offense to which your testimony relates.

This statement was made almost 12 yrs ago.....not in 2009, and I honestly don't remember what the circumstances were.....but it was 12 yrs ago, things can change.

"Despite these controversies Net54 moderator Leon Luckey publicly vouched for Schwartz in 2009 calling him a “recommended seller.”



.

So where is the outrage towards alleged card doctor Gerry Schwartz? It sounds like he was caught red-handed, but nobody here much seems to care! Is it because he has "friends" here, or is it because Peter Nash is not credible? This seems like a big deal to me, and should be straightforward to verify or debunk.

I AM outraged...but who am I(a tiny little one celled organism in this large pond of sharks) to do anything about it besides be very careful about how I spend my money on cardboard.

When it's all said and done it will likely be revealed that most major players in the hobby have "blood" on their hands...I have zero doubt!

I have no idea if Nash is right or not, but to put it in larger context, shill bidding is much more of an issue around these parts than card doctoring. Possibly because the truth about card doctoring is too depressing and guys would rather do the ostrich thing.

I have to respectfully disagree with this. while I have zero back up proof or uncredited websites to quote, I only assume that the amount of instances and gains in shill bidding on a daily basis far outnumbers the financial gain of these cards being sold.

on the other hand, while shill bidding is still technically fraud, the amount of despicable layers and complete and utter lack of morals in attempting this type of fraud should reserve you a corner seat at idi amin's and hitler's table in hell.

btw and off topic: I am new here, but just saw leon's profile said "peasant". fn hilarious! liking that guy more and more each day.

I think the shilling gets more attention because until recently it was easy to show who was doing it on ebay. With altered cards it is hard to prove who done it or how long ago it was done.

From personal experience board members get seriously butt hurt when you point out their altered cards.

Shilling affects most who participate in auctions...whereas the # of people who may be candidates to purchase magie error cards is tiny in comparison.

I don't see your point. Card doctoring is a pervasive problem not limited to Magie error cards.

You are correct Peter...I suppose I was referring to this example...and that shilling appears to be more rampant than doctoring.

It is happening to a lot
 

More cards than just magie errors. I think it's funny that people still think shilling is worse. Lol I would much rather have over paid by 10-20% than nearly the entire purchase price be wasted. I do not think some have any clue how much card doctoring has happened and some of the doctors are certainly shillers as well. It's scary honestly how much some of this stuff is all interconnected. It takes a lot of shill bidding to add up to the value of the Psa 8 Wagner, some of the bad Doyle errors and magie's in holders along with other high dollar altered card. Remember most felt the 1973 topps art shell psa 10 was both shilled and altered.

Why do you think it's more rampant than card doctoring?

Glyn that's the good thing about auctions that sell largely dealer inventory. You can get an altered card at a shilled price!

From my experience it appears to be. BUT...I do not buy and sell a lot either.

What about shilling a doctored card consigned by a friend? That's got to be the worst.

That takes BALLS!

Wow, that's even worse than card doctoring if you ask me.

Thread morph..... what's worse, shill bidding or altering a card to turn it into a highly desired card ....

We can compile a list of things that a-holes do to ruin this hobby. Those two issues are just items on that list.

If the article is accurate and the person named in the article is guilty of the allegation then I'd call him out and call him what he is - a phucing dirt bag piece of $hit that has no place in this hobby. I hope he goes to jail. I hope his cell mate is named Bubba and that Bubba doesn't like to be lonely. I hope he learns a lesson, though I doubt it. And if you're his friend please don't try to come up with a defense or excuse for what he did. Again, this is only if the allegations are true and can be substantiated.

In this case, it should be a wake up call to everyone that TPG's are not the final line of defense for authenticating cards. If PSA passes two fakes (of the magnitude of these cards) as graded authentic examples, then what good is PSA? Is it time to pull the Wagner "card" (excuse the pun). It still makes me sick to think about the PSA graded collection of "Hall" T206 cards that had many overgraded examples and in the opinion of many, numerically graded trimmed cards.

This crap really begins to push me to the point where I just want to say screw this hobby, unfortunately this hobby is a part of me and I keep holding on to hope that people won't trash it to the point where it's just not fun anymore.

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They're both equally bad and criminal punishment is determined based on the dollar amount of the fraud. Fraud is fraud. Of course, you'll get a myriad of self-interested responses following mine screaming that one fraud is worse than the other -- mainly because the screamer either has committed the fraud himself which he is now claiming isn't as bad or his close friend has. That's how it works on Net 54 with fraud.

Totally agree with u Fred!

They are both bad...IMO turning a card into a highly desired card is worse...greater of 2 evils...as both are crookery.

Peter and Glyn,

I respectfully disagree with your stance. To me, shilling is a bigger issue than card doctoring, but to you card doctoring is a bigger issue than shilling. That doesn't mean that one of us is right and the other wrong. There are other factors you're not considering.

I can honestly say, I don't think I've ever been a victim of card doctoring and nor will I ever be. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I'm better at detecting alterations than they are at creating them. I'll put my card doctoring detecting skills against the best card doctors out there.

In other words, the issue doesn't affect me because I can spot the doctoring. Shilling on the other hand, I have no way to control (other than trying to be careful about who I choose to do business with) and that does concern me.

Likewise, somebody with an unlimited budget may not care about shilling because if they pay an extra few hundred for a card, they don't care as long as they got what they wanted. As long as they didn't pay more than their max bid, they don't care if they were shilled or not. That's evident from some of the shilling discussions that I've seen on the board.

My whole point is, what's important to some may not be important to others. What affects you, might not affect me and vice versa.

Not sure if you were referring to me...or the other Peter...BUT...a board member has opened my eyes to how easy it is to remove colors/print from topps cards from the 50's-modern to the point I don't think I would ever touch a "rare" variation...graded or not.

To me the most relevant point here is that the 'EE' letters were modified AND moved on the surface of the card, so effectively that the alteration could not be detected under whatever magnification PSA uses.

This is huge and scary.

their magnification must suck because myself and others could see somethings wasn't right with scans.

This ^^^^

Frightening to think that card doctoring has become this advanced. Scary to think about how good they might become in 10-20 years.

If PSA misses paperloss on a PSA 6 without magnification, how can they determine an alteration with magnification?

Hey, Pete. I was actually referring to the other Peter. I think I know the thread you're talking about where the board member was able to get the yellow color to fade to white. However, if you look closely at this scans, you can still see traces of yellow. He may have been able to remove most of it, but not all of it.

And you can do this on a slabbed card where you can't see the edges? Well you're a better man than I then.

David, I always assumed they look at cards under magnification - especially prime alteration suspects like this Magie, but I assumed they would magnify any card of 'value'. When David and I looked at Pete's 'missing name' T206, the loupe was imperative. I feel certain we would have noticed 'EE' tampering, which is why I think it's a big deal if PSA checked this card out the way we do, and couldn't see any tampering. Not knocking PSA - I'm assuming David (Cycleback) and I wouldn't have spotted the problem either.

Anyone, am I wrong about this?

scott...you guys would have undoubtedly detected the alteration.

Pete, if that's the case, then no way PSA would spot any issues with your card; thus, no reason not to slab it as a 'missing name' card. If they refuse to, then it means they just guess about things.

well scott...not sure if u saw that psa DID grade it...gave it a #...called it miscut...and made no mention of the name missing.

I'd personally rather get shilled on 10 cards that are legit than to end up with one altered card. one feels somewhat similar to the other, but shall we say, sans lubrication.

I missed that, but congratulations - it means they didn't detect alteration, and we know it's not a miscut.

Peter, that's not a fair question. The card doctors are not altering edges through a slab, how can I detect it through a slab? I can't detect it though a locked box either, so that statement is kind of ridiculous. I have to be able to see it the entire card.

The edges are about the only thing that you can't see through a slab though - everything else you can. On the cards in question, there is no doubt in my mind that if I had the cards in hand (slabbed or not) I could detect the alteration.

As far as edges go, even though you can't see them completely through the slab, you can still get a pretty good look. So, if I were buying a slabbed card and I thought there may be a problem with one of the edges, but couldn't tell for sure since it's in the slab, then I would pass.