Posted By:
warshawlawPSA has been around a long time but has ****ed up a lot lately and has lost a lot of good personnel (for example, the GAI start-up). Past performance is not a reliable indicator of current skills.
My experience, which dates back to the 1970s, is that the mass of high grade material we are seeing today did not exist before the big money made its way into the game. There are some legit "finds" of cards, but (1) these are few and far between and (2) as can be seen from the cards that do surface in legit finds, most are not nm or better even in well-preserved lots (like the FL find a couple of years ago that SCDA slabbed when it used to slab cards; most of it was mid-grade and these were very well preserved). Where were these cards 20-25 years ago? My hunch is sitting in album pages with dings and creases and minor stains that have vanished. We've had quite a few threads in the past about how to alter cards and get them graded. The least detectable and most effective repairs are hairline creases and foreign stains.
I collect boxing cards, something that has only gained real momentum over the last five years or so. There are a great variety of T cards, most paralleling the baseball sets. High grade cards are rare, as are alterations, because the values are not there...yet. If/when the prices merit it, I fully expect to see a plethora of high grade cards hit ebay. Many of these will be doctored and all will be slabbed.
I just do not buy and I will not spend money on the high grade T cards out there unless I examine them raw first and/or have impeccable provenance behind them.