that Mantle is sweet! congrats!
I really have been interested in starting a grading company for many years....
I had a lot of expert collectors on board....(from here)
I wanted to start one because there was some fraud from that guy pat when he tried to pass off a brown old mill printer scrap and got it into an sgc holder....
I had a similar scare and made sure all my scraps were legit....it made me realize how important it was to make sure my cards were legit.....
my grading company idea I was working on 5 years ago:
I wanted to call my company "T206 Experts"
and I had many on board(including Erick summers who designed a slab/flip for me)
I had many ideas......one was to assemble actual hobby experts and veteran collectors, who would collaborate and actually have multiple graders on each card.....to document each card......get a scan and data base....and try to reduce any fraud on T206....especially after that pat scrap scare...
Some of my "board of experts" included - Chris B, Steve B, Erick S, Tim C, Jim R, Ted, Adam, Pete, Jantz, Hank L , just to name a few....and about 30 or more heavy hitters and computer/resolution / print experts/hobby veterans./ ect.........true collectors and experts who would have had 1000 years of cumulative experience......and 90% were being recruited by me from this board...
each card , basically, I wanted a group opinion on each......report cards.....confidence of graders.......ect.....many cool ideas and concepts to reduce any type of fraud when it came to T206 especially scraps....
who knows, maybe I will still persue this in the future....
point being- WE NEED BETTER GRADING STANDARDS!!!
especially when it comes to fraud like these autos....
similar to my grading company idea of T206 experts, similar could be done with an "auto" division of a grading company.....put more graders on the cards collaboratively !!!reduce the error rate.....gaurentee what you grade, or don't slab it!!! give confidence reports...ect...ect
there are literally hundreds of ideas to reduce this kind of fraud...
but having these standards will cost more money......let's face it, no matter how many safety checks, graders ect, mistakes will get by, but HELL, at least start putting more systems in place and demand better standards from the grading companies to reduce this type of fraud
even if some more cost is absorbed by the consumer, if the standards are better, more confidence, better quality, more value......
the first step is to keep these problems in the fore front.....and continually strive to improve grading standards to reduce these types of nightmares to zero defects
or at least as close to zero as possible....