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Posted By: runscott

First of all, what's the purpose of authenticating?

REASON ONE: I would use it if I had a ****'ed up card that I wanted to sell and I needed to give the buyer confidence that even though it had been trimmed, burned, went through a flood, and was painted, it was still REAL. Maybe the slab would say "AUTH. TR,BU,FL,PA"...and they could even have in fine print on the back of the slab insert "this authentication does not guarantee that this card has not been abused in other ways not identified by our qualifiers".

REASON TWO: I also might want to get a card authenticated if it's an issue I don't know much about, but I want to own one of the cards and feel reasonably confident that it's real. So I send it in for authentication and then break it out of the slab when they send it back as authenticated. Sure, this requires that I trust that the people at the grading company have more skills than I do at authenticating cards...and I PROBABLY would never do this.