Quote:
Originally Posted by drcy
I'm certainly not defending PSA, but I don't consider authentic and non-altered synonymous.
I think PSA's three things in grading are:
1) Authenticity (the card is not a reprint or counterfeit, the card is correctly identifed). SGC, Beckett and PSA are reliable at this.
2) The card is not altered (or is altered and is dentified as such on the label)
3) Condition grade. Obviously, 2 and 3 are related, as only unaltered cards get a number grade and altered cards get a grade of AUTH. If you want to combine and 3 into 2, that is fine.
I, and many others think, that condition grade number is by far the least important of the three for graders. If graders can identify the card as authentic and unaltered, grade then is a matter of opinion (and, as resubmissions demonstrate, variation even with the same grader) and many collectors can make their own assessment. And if a grader can't authenticate or identify alterations, the assigning of conditions number is meaningless and irrelevant, as #3 is premised on, and comes after, #1 and #2.
PSA advertises and promotes and charges big fees that their services are for #1-3, so if they have mass problems doing #1-2 (and, thus, #3), complaints or lawsuits may be warranted whether or not there were bad or deceitful intentions by the company. Incompetency-- that they didn't or even couldn't do their charged for services-- in and of itself can be reason enough.
Obviously, some sellers were doing more than incompetence (in fact, they were very competent until they were discovered), but intentionally working to get cards misidentified and misgraded. That's when criminal charges can get involved.
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I think you're splitting hairs, but if you want to put authentic and unaltered in different categories, have at it.
The point is, it seems, they're promising something they're not capable of delivering. Their own grading standards state...
PSA will not grade cards that bear evidence of trimming, re-coloring, restoration, or any other forms of tampering, or are of questionable authenticity. From this it can be inferred that every collector who's ever rec'd a number grade from PSA expected the card to be unaltered...and therefore authentic.
To me this isn't open to interpretation. An authenticator who can't tell if a card is original, isn't worth anything to me. What would you pay them for? A plastic case?