Memory Lane Redux?

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Posted By: peter chao

I had a very nice 1969 White Letter Mantle in excellent condition and asked this guy from Memory Lane about how much it would sell for at auction. The guy told me, I have no idea about the price of low grade stuff, we seldom auction those kind of cards. Well...excuuuuuuuuuuse me.

Peter

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Posted By: James Feagin

An ex-con who scammed old people out of money shill an auction? Of course not!

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

PSA has just shut down the third thread on the latest Memory Lane debacle.

THIS JUST IN: Osama Bin Laden has decided to give up terrorism and instead open up his own baseball card auction house. Joe Orlando, will you allow him to be a main advertiser in your SMR or will you draw the line somewhere? Anywhere?

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Posted By: ScottIngold

What gets me is that people will still defend PSA. I know nothings proven But this is only one of many questionable issue's that have cropped up. One of the most troubling is the fact that anything negative brought up on the CU boards is quickly deleted. Why ?

How many here still bid in the memory lane auction ? I know i won't.

Seems to me that of the larger auctioneers Robert Edwards is looking better and better.

But these posts are so informative. Look at what has come to light in the past year regarding many of the auction houses that we trust with our bids.

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Posted By: Kevin Saucier

<You could not possibly foist off that many inferior Goudeys on unsuspecting buyers, and most all the slabs look fine besides.>

Yes, agreed. Especially when the buyers are top-level collectors.

It is possible to have several different questionable items at the same time though. At this point who knows what'going on. Would still like to look at some live.

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Posted By: Cat

Could this be another WIWAG debacle for PSA? I had $8K worth of cards wrapped up in that mess. Dave Vargha, I believe, is our resident expert as to what happened to the WIWAG threads on the CU board. I think Vargha has described on several occasions how those posts, too, disappeared.

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Posted By: chris

But, what is WIWAG?

Thanks!

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Posted By: Fred C

WIWAG (When It Was A Game) were two guys that used to replace higher grade PSA cards with lower graded cards. They were convicted for their wrong doing.

Since there is no oversight in this hobby there is little that will be done regarding the latest round of crud that's going on. The question you have to ask is why PSA went after WIWAG and why they're not doing anything about this.

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Posted By: Cat

WIWAG (When It Was A Game) was a dealer (more than one guy) from San Diego County, California. They would have high grade cards slabbed by PSA (mine were all PSA 8 cards) and in some fashion had figured out a mechanism to extract the card from the holder insert a lesser card (I believe they used a new holder but the actual PSA flip) in it's place and then resale the lesser card slabbed and in a PSA 8 holder. They would then resubmit the "good" card and have it again graded an 8 and the process would start all over again. In simple terms they were sending the "good" card in to get the flips and cert. #s.

I think this all came to a crashing end in 2001 or 2002. I did get a couple of e-mails from the San Diego County office of the FBI and was asked to provide a verbal victim statement at the trial/hearing. I didn't bother. Actually, I wish I would have paid more attention, but I was professionally busy and didn't want to deal with it.

PSA jumped through a lot of hoops to clean this up. No Wonder!!!

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Posted By: WhenItWasAHobby

January 17, 2003

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
San Diego, California



United States Attorney
Carol C. Lam


For Further Information, Contact: Assistant U. S. Attorney Melanie K. Pierson (619) 557-5685

For Immediate Release

NEWS RELEASE SUMMARY

United States Attorney Carol C. Lam announced today that a local firm and its officers pled guilty before United States Magistrate Judge Louisa S. Porter to the felony charge of mail fraud in connection with the sale of fraudulent sports cards. The firm, When It Was A Game, Inc. ("WIWAG"), has offices in San Diego, California, and from 1998 to the present was engaged in the business of buying and selling both graded and ungraded sports cards. Co-defendants John Slight and Craig Kreider are the co-owners of the company.

The quality of a sports card can be graded by an independent grading company on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest quality. A card that is graded as a 10 is typically sold for over twice as much as a card graded as a 9. When an independent grading company assesses a sports card, it assigns a grade to the card and seals the card and a label indicating the grade, in a plexiglass case, called a "slab". The seal on the slab is intended to be permanent.

In connection with their guilty pleas, the defendants admitted that they would sometimes remove cards that had been graded as 10 or 9 from the slab and replace them with lower quality cards. The lower quality cards would then be sold by the defendants in the slabs which bore the label falsely stating the higher grade. The defendants intended to deceive buyers into believing that the lower quality cards were actually of higher grade, thereby fraudulently inflating their value.

Specifically, the defendants further acknowledged that on August 21, 2002, they submitted an Upper Deck SP Authentic Series sports card of Bonzi Wells to an independent grader. The card was marked by Upper Deck as card number 0946 of 3500 cards produced. This card was graded as a "10", placed in a slab bearing certification number 40077235, and returned to the defendants on September 11, 2002. Thereafter, on September 22, 2002, a Bonzi Wells card, bearing certificate number 40077235 from the independent grading company and allegedly graded as a "10" was sold by the defendants to an individual in Spring, Texas. However, the card that was in the slab when purchased by that individual was a lower quality card, number 0594 of 3500.

The next appearance date for the defendants is June 25, 2003, at 8:30 a.m. before United States District Judge Barry Ted Moskowitz for acceptance of the plea and sentencing.



DEFENDANTS

When It Was A Game, Inc.
San Diego, California
Incorporated in California, 1998



John Slight
San Diego, California



Craig Kreider
San Diego, California



SUMMARY OF CHARGE

Mail Fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1341
Maximum Penalty (for individuals): 5 yrs. in custody and/or $250,000 fine
Maximum Penalty (for corporation): $1 million fine



AGENCY

Federal Bureau of Investigation


Official News Release from the Department of Justice

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Posted By: chris

All for the info...I've heard the acronym used many times and was always curious...

PSA will not do anything concerning the new accusations, and we all know why...$$$.

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Posted By: Eric B

Is it the consensus belief that the auctions were allegedly shilled up to a certain level and these "repeats" were the cards that were not topped by a real bidder? And PSA was allegedly complicit by allowing the cards to be reholdered with a new lower cert #?

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Posted By: barrysloate

It certainly looks like something to that effect was going on.

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Posted By: WhenItWasAHobby

Eric,

You asked two questions and I'm not quick to rush to judgment but I'll give you some food for thought.

It just occurred to me that PSA has a webpage and an on-line video showing the grading process. After receiving the cards, the webpage explains, "The next step in the PSA process is called the Sticker Stage. At this stage, the cards are counted again and labels are placed on the outside of each card saver. The label or sticker assigned to each card contains information including the order number and individual certification number - that is the same certification number that will appear on the PSA label once the card is graded". See "Sticker Stage" in the link below. So it now appears that the '34 Goudey Grove was submitted with the '59 Topps football cards. Here's the URL to the website:

http://www.psacard.com/grading/process.chtml


L.J.'s explanation posted at 2:05 pm today, now appears to make the most sense. The card was probably submitted in a invoice with a lower fee rate per card and was overlooked as a premium card and was still graded in spite of its high market value. I personally don't believe PSA was complicit by allowing the cards to be reholdered with a new lower cert number by design because I believe they would have deleted the prior number from their database.


As for the circumstances surrounding the auctions, in my opinion, I'm not convinced the main intent of re-submitting the cards to PSA was to get bump-ups since some of these reappearing cards are vintage PSA 9's (did they really think they'd get a vintage 9 to bump to 10?) and the many that are less than 9 clearly show by the high resolution scans that they were correctly graded with no hope of a bump-up.

So why would a first time winner of the card, or a consigner who won his card back, go to all the trouble of changing the cert number to resell it? He could send the card to any number of different auction houses who seem to consistently achieve high auction returns and not go through the expense and trouble of re-sending it to PSA just to change the flip and drive up the pop report (to his market disadvantage)? Those are the questions that need to be answered.

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Posted By: Frank Evanov

Am I understanding this right? April 16 2007, 5:22 PM


Is it the consensus belief that the auctions were allegedly shilled up to a certain level and these "repeats" were the cards that were not topped by a real bidder? And PSA was allegedly complicit by allowing the cards to be reholdered with a new lower cert #?


That sounds right except for the PSA part. There is a lot of time between ML auctions. They could cetainly "bury" the Goudeys in a bunch of commons and submit to PSA individually. That way they get new certs without PSA's help.

Then again, PSA's actions on CU and their lack of response to this issue merely serve to heighten one's suspicion of their role here.

Frank

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Yes, I have to agree that PSA's actions today by shutting down every CU thread that discussed the Memory Lane allegations is troubling and very telling. It also evidences a high level of arrogance on the part of PSA. Simply put, it is my belief that PSA's large market share has given them the courage to simply ignore JP Cohen's wildly criminal past and the now very suspicious actions of Memory Lane. The hubris of PSA is sort of laughable -- you'd think that CLCT was Microsoft instead of thinly traded, micro-cap company. I wonder what CLCT's directors would think of today's actions?

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Posted By: Eric B

OK. But would they really remove the reference to the old cert #. I don't see why they would need to, and certainly it may not be a priority. In fact there could be many reasons why they keep the old data. As an Accountant, when I make an entry that is incorrect I reverse it out, I don't delete it. We still keep the old entry as part of the data trail.

And we have heard many stories of how the pop reports are only updated sporadically.

Jeff, CLCT's directors would be accessible by anyone. Go to sec.gov and type in CLCT as the company. Then look for the DEF 14A report which is known as the proxy. I believe they are required to give contact information there. I could, of course, easily do this also. But if you don't know about the proxy you will have some fun reading it. It's public information.

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Posted By: calleocho

I think there is something wrong here ...but im not sure what exactly

PSA like any other big company over reacts to controversial messages posted on their message boards ...any one gets sued now for much less

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Posted By: L.J.

As just explained by recent poster, a new cert is created when a card is sent in again and they are not required to send or delete original cert #...Since it is apparent that many of Paul Moss' findings are pretty clear, many but not all of the above cards have same fingerprints, and many cards auctioned are identical with new cert #'s. Now it should be pretty obvious now that the lower tier grading process( 5 day @ $13 or even 45 days @ $8... allowed a few of these cards to be regraded, trickled in, and hence the cert #'s of common items are consecutive with the key cards discussed.

There is hard evidence that Memory Lane had trouble getting paid by so many of their original "winners" the first time or something smells sour as is being discussed, the forum can be the judge of that.

as for PSA.......Mr. O may not be able to find the path that can clear up the enormous quantity of dirty laundry piling up, even with the millions of dollars in their soap box.

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

The above scenario presumes someone actually cracked out all the cards and resubmitted them. That would be madness given the value. No, the more likely explanation is they were given to PSA and PSA, for whatever reason, gave them new certs from a combination of prior bad numbers, unused numbers, etc.

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Posted By: David Smith

If you want to try and make money off of this, you could Sell Short shares of CLCT tomorrow and see what comes of this. If there is some type of criminal action going on and the market hears about it, the shares will drop and then you could buy them back adn make some dough.

The downside to this, of course, is that nothing criminal is going on or that CLCT sweeps this under the rug and nobody really hears about it. Thus the shares don't drop and you are at the risk of having the shares go up and you have to buy them back at a higher price and you lose money.

David

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Posted By: dan

i won one of the 34 goudeys in question--what do u guys suggest i do?? head for the hills? graciously bow out of the auction? or honor my bid and hope and pray the card is legit???

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

The issue (if there is one) is the integrity of the prior auction, not the integrity of the cards themselves.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Dan, I'm sure a high quality guy like JP Cohen will soon be sending out an email mass mailing to his customers (you know, as if it were only 3 hours until his auction ended...then 2 hours..then 1 hour...you get the picture) explaining away this issue. I mean, wouldn't it be hilarious that JP and company are more concerned with bombarding its clients with emails every few minutes in an effort to make money as opposed to a single email explaining away an allegation of a possible fraud?

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Posted By: Bottom of the Ninth

Did not mean to offend anyone nor take this off topic. Feel free to start a hate Schwartz thread but I do not want to derail this train.

Greg

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Posted By: WhenItWasAHobby

Peter S. wrote:

"The above scenario presumes someone actually cracked out all the cards and resubmitted them. That would be madness given the value. No, the more likely explanation is they were given to PSA and PSA, for whatever reason, gave them new certs from a combination of prior bad numbers, unused numbers, etc."


Yes, your point is well taken. It would indeed take an immeasurable amount of testicular fortitude to crack out cards valued from $2K to $8K without the concerns of receiving a "bump-down". If your hypothetical scenario is true, then someone within PSA circumvented much of the PSA submission process to help someone out who didn’t want these cards to be recognized from the prior auction. Hmmmm.....

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

"Yes, your point is well taken. It would indeed take an immeasurable amount of testicular fortitude to crack out cards valued from $2K to $8K without the concerns of receiving a "bump-down". If your hypothetical scenario is true, then someone within PSA circumvented much of the PSA submission process to help someone out who didn’t want these cards to be recognized from the prior auction. Hmmmm....."

Hypothetically, yes, precisely.

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Posted By: Todd Schultz

Hey Schwartz, your post is neither funny nor appreciated. It is remarkably crass.

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Posted By: Frank Evanov

That Schwartz post is repugnant and offensive.

Frank

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Posted By: jeffdrum

Takes the cake! Very offensive!

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Posted By: chris

why even go there, how absurd botn...a pot shot at Christianity...

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Posted By: Tony Andrea

Greg's pic should be removed.

Tony

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Posted By: painthistorian

As I have been a bidder in JP's auctions, I am quite amazed of the above stated comparisons, many of which are clearly the same cards being offered using different certification #'s, especially those T202's which are so clearly fingerprinted, and that to me is astounding.

I think PSA will have to make a new category on their forms, "items never paid for by bidders in major auctions", dealers can change the cert #'s in 5 days for $15.

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Posted By: Cobby33

Never mind.

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Posted By: Denny

Leon,
I'm not one to ever ask for much, but is it really possible that BOTN can belittle an entire faith, so openly, and it not be removed with the swiftness of effort? Please delete BOTN collage, it is way out of line! It has Nothin' to do with Old Cardboard at all.

Extremely Offensive! The line has to be drawn & this is were it is for me...

Denny Walsh

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Posted By: leon

I locked the other thread and had had enough for the night...I never saw the picture of which I had numerous emails. I guess it's gone now. I don't think Greg meant to offend all of Christianity.....Sorry I went to sleep (or was off the board) early last night......regards

edited for spelling

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Posted By: Frank Evanov

Feel free to start a hate Schwartz thread

That really isn't necessary. Your despicable actions have insured that no one here with any kind of decency will want to deal with you ever again.

Frank

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Posted By: E, Daniel

Greg Schwartz is a pig. Probably the most disgusting piece of filth I have ever had contact with.
He once sent me an email (without knowing me or having ever spoken to me) filled with gay slurs and the most putrid language you could ever imagine.
And my wife had the enormous misfortune to open the email and read his nauseous thinking. She didn't sleep safely for weeks, literally in fear that a lunatic would turn up on our doorstep.

I hope one day to catch up with him in person.


Daniel

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

Well I had hoped some explanations would be forthcoming, but it appears we are dealing with this:

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Guys, I don't think that Greg had any intent to belittle Christianity. While the image he posted was offensive to some, the pertinent part of it was a wry attempt to demonstrate how JP Cohen is being crucified all because of his love for the almighty dollar. I think we'd all agree that the image was not intended to insult Christianity but, instead, to insult Cohen. I am not suggesting that it may not have insulted some of you or that the image was not offensive to you -- I'm simply saying that it is illogical to assume that in a thread about JP Cohen Greg decided to trot out his true feelings about Christianity. To analogize, in Dan's seal thread he finally threw up his hands when faced with comments about the minor humanitarian impact of the seals' plight that "the holocaust is over ... there is no comparison." Any right minded Jew (or any human for that matter, including Christians) should have been deeply offended by Dan's offhanded remark. Yet there was not a peep on this board. Why? Because, I presume, everyone figured that Dan did not mean to offend anyone with that unfortunate comment. I certainly was not offended because I think that in Dan's heart he is a good guy -- after all, just look at his love for animals. So, before we go about assuming that Greg intended to attack Christianity at least consider the strong possibility that the image was offensive but the intent to offend was absent. Now can we please get back to patiently waiting for Joe Orlando, JP Cohen and JP's probation officer to weigh in on the latest Memory Lane debacle?

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Posted By: leon

You should know better, counselor. That would be JP's "parole officer" not "probation officer"....

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Posted By: Cat

Jeff:

Well said.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Ahhh...but Leon, I do know better! There is no parole in the federal system. Upon release from federal prison one is supervised by a United States Probation Officer. Now what would you do without me to teach the finer points of post-conviction life?

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Posted By: E, Daniel

And Imus was only being funny.

Sometimes, its just not funny - its extremely offensive and you don't explain it away with a clear thinking exercise.



Daniel

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Posted By: BcD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwpvIAYAqMo



BcD

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Posted By: Anonymous

Well this thread certainly took a turn and went in all sort of tangents, and I'm still waiting for the gunman on the grassy knoll to be brought up. My intention of the original post was as I stated, a price comparison in the difference in prices realized between the two auctions on similar cards in light of what many feel is a bubble market and as to whether we are in a "corrective" mode, or whether the information regarding Cohen on this board had effected the overall prices. I also stated that several (NOT ALL by any means) were the identical card and that the serial number business was just something that caused me to question as to what was going on.

Anyway, I just got off the phone with the buyer of the M116 from the April auction who gave me a rundown on what had transpired. He told me that he knew for a fact that the consignor had both PSA 8 in the auctions and I guess that it follows that the second one on the market in such a short period of time would bring substantially less. He also stated that the 34 Goudeys in the Dec auction were unpaid for by the winner. Fair enough, I guess that could happen, but I'm surprised that the underbidders weren't offered a chance at the cards rather than a rerun of the set as that's one hell of a hit to take. I know that if I had been the consignor, I would not have been happy about it.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

And why were the certs changed? And why were they replaced with 'old' numbers instead of new ones? And why isn't Cohen or Orlando explaining this?

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

Someone reneged on 20+ cards?

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Posted By: BcD

THEY CAN'T JEFF!
not without having three(thousand) fingers pointed their way anyway!



BcD

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

I'd love to hear from Rob Lifson or Doug Allen on the percentage of non-paying winners in their auctions.