Posted By:
Eric BrehmI have submitted two high grade cards in GAI holders to PSA for cross-over, both within the past year and a half, and in both cases the cards were returned to me in the original holders with the designation EVID TRIM. Two cards is a small sample, but this does make me wonder what is going on. It seems to me that there are three possibilities to explain this:
(1) The cards in the GAI holders were in fact trimmed, or appeared to be so, and PSA detected this.
(2) PSA has a tendency to summarily reject GAI cards and return them to the submitter as "altered," as a marketing ploy to plant the thought in collectors' minds that their competitor GAI doesn't know how to grade or even authenticate cards, and that it would be much less risky to buy cards that are in PSA holders.
(3) PSA is becoming increasingly conservative when it comes to cross-overs, and are trying to avoid getting in a situation where they crack a card out, and then find on closer inspection that they can't meet the minimum grade specified by the submitter, or even holder the card as unaltered. So to be on the safe side, they just reject the card out of hand. They may be particularly leery of GAI-graded cards, which would suggest that they don't fully trust GAI's conclusions regarding alteration.
I think (1) is unlikely, though certainly possible, and I have no evidence that (2) is true, so my guess is that (3) is the most likely explanation.
Does anyone else have any experience crossing cards from GAI to PSA that could shed some light on this?