Ironically, the 52 Mantle that started it all wasn't even altered. It was just soaked in water.
I've been saying since the beginning that nobody is going to be prosecuted for any of this. Not even the most egregious of trimmers. I can just imagine a criminal trial where some guy is accused of trimming cards, sending them off to a 3rd party to have them graded, having those grades come back as 10s, and reselling them for a profit. I think people in this hobby seem to have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the fact that to the rest of the world, this is an absolute nothing burger.
I wouldn't even care if a card in my collection was trimmed unless it presents as clearly having been. I have a centered 54 Topps set. There's a ton of variance in size with these. Are some of them trimmed? Maybe. Perhaps even probably. But I couldn't tell you which ones if so, and neither could anyone else. As long as they look right and measure to within the tolerance of specs, then I'm happy.
Someone from the Blowhard forums contacted me outside the forum after reading some of my comments on the topic a couple years back. He claimed to have sent hundreds of trimmed cards to both PSA and BGS and said he has never had a single card get rejected for it. I don't know how true that is, maybe the guy was just trolling me or trying to get a rise out of me? I don't know. Although, I have pack-pulled cards falsely get rejected as "trimmed" probably at least 1% of the time), But I wouldn't be surprised if what he claimed was mostly true. I just don't see how it's possible to detect that 1/128th of an inch has been trimmed off of a modern card that already has super sharp edges to begin with.
I highly doubt the investigation is still ongoing. I think the FBI probably saw this as a bunch of collectors mad at other collectors for doing things to their cards that they don't approve of. Basically, I think they view it as a small group of bitter septuagenarians and a handful of millenial cancel culture heroes with nothing better to do than to try to cancel people for not following the unwritten "rules" of the hobby. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if some of those FBI agents are now trimming cards for a little extra cash lol.
As far as my buying behavior goes, it hasn't changed much for me. I'm more aware of how widespread it is now, so I keep an eye out for cards that look obviously trimmed, but other than that, it has no effect on my collecting habits. If anything, I think it has pushed some of the Blowhard junkies away from perfectly good cards. All those conspiracy theory enthusiasts at Blowhard now think every edge of every card that gets posted has been trimmed. It's absolutely hilarious reading some of those threads. And despite the fact that it gets pointed out multiple times in every thread that card sizes vary significantly direct from the manufacturer, somehow all of these clowns still think that all you need is a ruler to catch a trimmed card.
This will not bring about any changes to the hobby. Nobody cares. Or rather, not enough people care.
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