[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

As we all know, slabbed examples of prewar sets simply do not exist at every grade for every card for every set. The SMR extrapolates from known cases to develop prices for other cards. PSA used to publicly disclaim this practice of using made up prices, until Dennis Purdy and I caught them doing it and went after them for doing it in VCBC.

The problem with extrapolation is that Babe Ruth isn't Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson isn't Christy Mathewson. Just because a PSA 5 Ty Cobb sells for $1,000 does not mean that a Babe Ruth from the same set would sell for $1,500 if it ever existed and was sold. It is pure SWAG ("standard wild-assed guess") methodology. If the card doesn't exist in PSA form, or has not transacted, PSA should not be reporting on it, yet that is precisely what the SMR does. Now, once PSA makes up a number for a non-existent card, it has no reason to drop that fake number just because a real number on a different card falls. It is pure fantasy to begin with, and the garbage that is in the SMR was published with stock prices instead of with card prices, the SEC would be all over them (well, theoretically would be; the regulators have been a bit comatose over the last four years...).