Did PSA get a free pass on The American Greed show?
 

I don't think they mentioned PSA by name once.....Quite a few things concerned me regarding that company including the Ruth card getting bumped significantly from the "other company's " holder. Being the industry leader that they are, they need to do better.

Didn't PSA also give that trimmed Wagner a High Grade ?

Yes, they did.

Yes and yes. The trimmed Wagner that Gretzky and McNall bought was PSA's first graded card and its unveiling as a card grading company if I recall correctly. So yes, I think it is fair to have some questions and ask why PSA gets a pass.

It's only a one hour program.

Right. That deserves its own episode.

I was waiting for any kind of reference to PSA since the Wagner was their first graded card.Joe Orlando once again gets a pass.How does this guy wriggle off the hook so many times??????? Plus.yes,my heart was breaking for Evers complaining about getting ripped off after doing a ripping off of his own on an elderly garage sale grandpa.

Why wouldn't PSA get a free pass? From what I have read on the whole Mastro debacle they all got a free pass including Mastro himself. I know some might disagree but as someone who has spent some time locked up I would do his slap on the wrist sentence anytime for the $ he made.

Off easy
 

Mastro really got a freebie with that sentence while Doug Allen took a big hit,mainly for squealing on the Fed wire placement.Yet it still grinds me about mastro's relatively light sentence.Govt. had a chance to make a statement and blew it.

My guess is you don't know the whole story. What info or help was given for the lighter Mastro sentence?

I think Ryan and SA Brusokas did a great job as well as Jeff L. Kudos to all 3 of them.
Let's hope some more hobby fraudsters get taken down. And if anyone sees something really egregious and bad in our hobby I hope they will act on it. Or at least PM me :).....

.

I was thinking the same exact thing once the episode ended. PSA should have been strongly scrutinized for the Wagner and those Evers cards that went from SGC 4 to PSA 6. I also seem to recall that during the criminal hearings it was disclosed that Mastro acknowledged to a wired witness or in a wire tap that ALL the cards he submitted to PSA were altered. That to me was the biggest scandal in all of this. I'd rather overpay for a good card than pay anything for a bad card. What a scandal and to my knowledge none of the widespread damage has ever been redressed.

Altered cards are pervasive. Some cards are more altered than others. And as long as they are encapsulated, most people don't seem to care.

I live on the hope that my graded cards are not altered, always assuming that whoever graded them had more knowledge than me and had no motivation other than grading the card accurately.

We can only hope that all graders are monitored, scrutinized and held accountable for their work.

Pie-in-the-Sky? Perhaps.

Definitely!

There are really good card doctors out there who get stuff past well-intentioned graders, particularly where TPGs basically are giving most cards a relatively quick look and are not running a crime lab. Good alteration can be hard to detect; many experts have commented on this. I think this is the main problem, although I have suspicions about other things.

How sad and how true.

It's the hobby's dirty not-so-secret, every AH and dealer out there knows (IMO of course) they are dealing with altered material.

Never been a fan of card grading and have only done it a few times. How in the world could PSA not notice a trimmed card? That seems like "Card Altering 101". And they stay in business? How can anyone trust them after that?

Here is a You Tube video called "Holy Grail: The T206 Honus Wagner" produced by ESPN with Keith Olbermann.

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

Another possible explanation:

A collector who submits a group of raw cards and gets back lots of 7's and 8's is a happy camper, and likely to submit more cards in the future. A collector who gets back a lot of cards with "evidence of trim" is unhappy and likely angry, and probably won't be sending cards in to "those guys" again.

And every business wants happy customers who will end up being repeat customers. So is it possible that cards that are close enough get graded to keep everyone happy? I know it sounds a little crazy, but I am looking for something to explain why such an alarming number of altered cards get holdered.

Thanks...That was a good watch. The card was so nice in all other aspects, why bother to trim it?

I wonder how others on here would have handled that garage sale ? I wonder if the seller was hoping for $ 25 and when he said $ 500 he said yes quickly. I always ask what they want for their items and go from there ? If both parties are happy then what's wrong .

As I said, I think it's mostly because some card doctors are very skilled, and TPGs are mostly doing a minimal review and not conducting sophisticated tests. I believe the President of SGC said years ago that microtrimming was nearly impossible to detect, for example.

The story was that the card was originally part of an uncut strip. The person who cut it off the strip did a poor job. Mastro just improved it.

Right. As I recall the story Alan Ray, who I believe sold it to Mastro, would not say from whom he had bought it so the provenance goes back no further. But apparently it was obviously hand cut when Mastro bought it and in any case could not have been from a pack because of the back (not that it wasn't obviously hand cut afterwards too lol).

Saw the Light
 

Leon,forgot to add : Mastro found God just in time.Maybe he had a religious leaning sentencing judge.

Opinions.

The people who get paid for their opinions have opinions that are affected by what effect their opinions will have on how much they will get paid.

That is why a trimmed card, some would say "the" trimmed card, which just happens to be the first card they graded, is not trimmed, in their opinion.

That not trimmed card set in motion multiple billions of dollars.

Everybody in this, and every other, forum was effected.

But that's just my opinion,
Doug

No telling how much Doug got paid for this opinion :)

Hi Al - that made me laugh out loud, thanx.

In the program they said the card had oval edges and it was football shaped before Mastro used a paper slicer to trim the card. Can you imagine what it would be worth if the card was still intact on the strip.

A lot less

I agree. It wouldn't be a PSA 8 Wagner. An uncut strip w/Wagner sold for less within the last 15 years.

Actually $85,000. in the 1999 Halper auction.

that one could never be high grade no matter how it was trimmed!

The strip that sold years ago looked like crap, the strip that the Mastro Wagner came from obviously looked a lot better.

Attachment 284932

Here is a link to the strip in the Hunt Auction from 2010

https://www.huntauctions.com/live/im...=242&lot_qual=

Personally, I think chances are very high that most tobacco cards graded PSA 6 or higher have been 'professionally' trimmed. The likelihood that a card stayed that crisp over 100 years is slim. I'm sure there are genuine examples out there, but very very few.

That's why I collect in the 3-5 range. They all have some corner wear, so you know it's legit...also I just can't afford most super high-end grades :cool:

Dollar for dollar, I'd rather have the strip. It might not look as good as the PSA 8, but I like the originality of it.

Agree. I think hands down that is the greatest T206 card/piece in T206 memorabilia. I'd take that over a Ty Cobb with Ty Cobb back or a clean Honus Wagner.

"If both parties are happy, then what's wrong?" If you take that mentality a step further, the same could be said about shilled cards. I am happy to pay 20k for a card even if you shilled me, because that is what I was willing to pay for a card that I desperately wanted. I don't think anyone is saying what Evers did was wrong or what Maestro did was right. Hell, I would gladly take a garage-sale deal like that, though I like to think I would have returned with more money for the guy after assessing the value of the cards.
Those of us who posted about Evers found the irony in him whining about getting ripped off, when he got those cards by ripping-off someone else. We weren't comparing the legality of one over the other, but merely the morality, or immorality as it were. The fact that the seller didn't know he was getting robbed doesn't mean it wasn't so. Maestro robbed many people who were as oblivious as the seller at the garage sale...and many were just as ignorantly happy.

No, it is a nice novelty item, but the end it is not an actual t206 card issued in the packs. Nothing beats pulling cards out of their packages and the history that goes with them.

Extremely well put Orlando!!

For the CDN members, like me, who can't view the vid posted.
https://vimeo.com/59180900

I just finished watching the episode tonight, and, like others, also find it hard to believe PSA wasn't mentioned/talked about more?

My assumption on the lack of PSA coverage, is fear of legal repercussions. PSA offers an opinion of quality of a card, and opinions are only that, nothing more. As far as I know, they are not embroiled in any criminal case. No basis for the show to sling mud on them.

Mark Medlin

They are only opinions, you are correct, but the mud slinging is well justified.

Hypothetical conversation in the office of people who get paid for their opinions :

Person 1 - "this card looks trimmed"
Person 2 - "well then we need another card to be the first card we grade"
Person 3 - "Doesn't look trimmed to me, looks like an 8"

Whether person 1 is lower than person 2 who is lower than person 3 in the pecking order in this hypothetical conversation is unknown to me.

Doug

Read The Card. If memory serves, the guy who graded it, Bill Hughes, said he and everyone else present at the creation knew it was trimmed.

Doug,

I am not defending psa at all. But I doubt that any person or entity would make accusations or claims against an opinion based company unless it had PROOF of fraud. If they do so without proof, psa would own them.

Mark

Right, and that's what they hide behind, because you can't "prove" what the opinion of another person is.

All they have to do is lie about what their own opinion is, which serves the triple purpose of saving their asses from legal issues, making a boatload of money / business for their company, and ruining the fun of the hobby.

How great is it for the entire business of paying people for their opinions that the first paid opinion was a lie, we know it's a lie, and it's still ignored as a lie.

Barry's comment about "close enough" is aiming in the right direction, but the more to the point - they lie because it makes them money.

Doug

Too many powerful people have too much money tied up in the PSA registry; in my opinion they are essentially bullet proof.

Yep