[Vintagecatcher]

Dan and Frank,

You are not alone. A few of us have been around prior to this slabbing nightmare. Many of these new collectors think that if a card is graded by one of the top grading companies then the card must be original, and must not be altered. Many of these collectors have put a "blind faith" in these third party grading companies.

The only thing that third party grading/slabbing has done is drive up card prices for collectors. They created a false sense of security for naive collectors. Not only did they milk these collectors for slabbing fees...they then introduced "half grades" to continue the revenue stream further. Then they added their card registries to further inflate card prices as greedy collectors competed against one another.

This is just my humble opinion. I'm sure many will state how wonderful 3rd party grading has been for the hobby. I'm not buying that load of crap.

Patrick McMenemy