Posted By:
barrysloateIt's a reasonable off-topic question, as it is baseball card related.
In theory, every purchase has some risk involved. Granted, buying an SGC 84 as Near Mint lowers your risk to near zero, while buying a raw card on ebay with a funky cut that is offered as Near Mint holds enormous risk.
Even looking at a card in person holds some risk. Some graded cards that appear accurately graded have been tampered with, and sometimes the tampering is invisible to the naked eye. So no purchase is 100% safe.