Posted By:
Scott MosleyI don't doubt that some of the points raised in this thread are valid and that there are cards out there which have been altered or cleaned up (in the case of removal something foreign to the card such as pencil marks or glue).
I think the skepticism is healthy but I also don't think the percentages are nearly as high as some are suggesting in this thread. Many legitimate, unaltered high grade pre-war cards are out there either in slabs or still in private collections.
I will offer my own experience as an example of how some of these cards are out there and have survived.
I am lucky enough to have a couple of fairly high grade caramel sets and also lucky because I know the provenance behind the cards. They are not all 7s, 8s and 9s but there are a good number of cards which did survive in that condition.
To help answer Barrys question as to how they survived in that condition? Well, I guess luck is certainly part of the equation but the owner from whom my father and I obtained the cards obviously cared about them right on up into his 70s before he passed away.
The caramel sets were neatly stored in Piedmont and Sweet Cap T206 boxes (along with T205 and T206s) and those boxes were neatly stored within Cigar boxes and then those Cigar boxes were stored in a larger box which was spared from moisture and light over the decades.
To answer another question that was raised, where were these cards in the 70s, 80s, 90s? They sat protected in their boxes in a Cedar Chest at my parents home and were pulled out from time to time and handled with the utmost care.
So, while I agree with the premace that a certain portion of high grade cards have been altered or cleaned up, I know from experience that cards from that era can survive and still exist in that grade.
And, despite the beliefs of the PSA Hall of Fame collector of the year from a past thread, I also believe that there are still a good number of these cards out in private collections which have not been graded as of yet and probably never will be graded until those collectors pass away and the cards change hands.