Posted By:
warshawlawand one we've had before. What we have right now is merely a perfect storm of old issues coming up coincidentally at the same time.
The fake Wagner is ubiquitous to our hobby. What I find reassuring about that situation is that no one with any real qualifications or experience is participating. Absent the level of expertise and shared knowledge out there, I shudder to think of what might be happening.
As for the altered slabs, I don't know enough about the specifics to comment, so I won't, other than to say that we all know of WIWAG and it is quite likely that there are slabs floating around out there that have been tampered with. Buy the card, not the slab.
Turning to the more general issue of high grade cards and slabs, I am not surprised to hear rumblings to the effect that more and more folks are rejecting top tier slabbed cards as altered. The money is too great for it not to attract a sophisticated crimimal element. I collect mid-grade and low grade stuff due to affordability and often lack of higher grade materials. I do think, as I've said in the past, that we need to move closer to the art model w/r/t legitimate conservation of cards. Cleaning and removal of foreigh substances, properly performed, simply is not a sore spot for me given what is accepted practice in the art world.
Finally, on the sky-is-falling market woes, not quite. I see prices on cards continuing to surge forward, the economy is decent as it affects folks like us (upper middle class and wealthy) who comprise the majority of those who continue to collect vintage cards, and there are many, many folks out there who would jump on vintage materials if there was a modest correction in the price structure. I'd be far more worried about the real estate market taking a dump than about N172s falling through the floor.