Those "articles" always smelt like infomercials to me. ITS NOT SHOCKING!!!!

Right!!!! Wtf??? You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink ![/QUOTE]

Correct me if I am wrong, but the PSA group sub was in progress BEFORE all this shit went down. And also, I am not trimming my low grade cards. So I am not supposed to ever get cards graded because of the shennigans of others???

I prefer "this stupid" to which my answer is yes, yes, they are this stupid.

It's official. I've spent way too much time this weekend trying to sift through and keep up with these threads. Helllllpppp!

As a small-time collector, and far from an expert, the concern this thread raises for me is, how much of this stuff has been circulating for years, or decades? If it was as simple as avoiding certain sellers, that's easy enough. But with the frequency cards are sold and traded, I would guess even the most reputable dealers in the hobby sometimes sell, unknowingly, cards that have been worked on.

Because, how could they know the difference, especially if it had been graded and slabbed?

Yep. Huge problem for both honest dealers and collectors even those who like me try to do their diligence and exercise extreme caution with some sellers.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the PSA group sub was in progress BEFORE all this shit went down. And also, I am not trimming my low grade cards. So I am not supposed to ever get cards graded because of the shennigans of others???[/QUOTE]

Umm... if the shenanigans are something that involves the grading company, and it looks more and more like they are involved, why would you want to
A) Give someone complicit in giving grades and thus approval as totally genuine to altered cards any business
B)Given that your stuff is fine, pay for the opinion of a company whose opinions are becoming more discredited daily.

May just as well bring back GAI, accucard, whoever that guy was who was pop riveting pictures cut from books into screwdowns… :confused::confused:

Also, I've noticed more and more that the quoting on the board has gotten weird.

One good thing that I noticed tonight.

When I go check prices on VCP, there is no longer an ad for PWCC. I think as recent as yesterday, whenever I accidently clicked on the right or left side of the screen, it would take me to the PWCC's site. It no longer happens today. Yaay.

If law enforcement gets involved I assume that Moser and others would verify that ALL of their submissions from the last x years are cards they worked on, like that 950 card submission shown earlier. Once that gets out then the PSA guarantee would be for ALL those cards and would get removed from the Registry.

This just sucks for the hobby, because it is not just a few cards or a few dozen cards; there are already thousands of cards involved and in holders, never to be removed as they get passed from buyer to buyer.

I am floored by how many sub $100 cards are involved with this.

You and I are on the same page. I still also suggest a front page article in the SMR Magazine.

The title of this thread
 

The title of this thread is about other card physicians practicing alteration or conservation or whatever you want to call it. Is there a handy list of the names, ebay accounts, etc for those who have not read the 1000's of notes on this between net54 and BO this weekend?

Tony

Other known card doctors getting cards past the Third Party Grading services and listing through PWCC, Probstein, etc. to cover their tracks:

Bill Sliheet - SSIGuy (Superior Sports Investments)
Samir Sliheet - Superior Sports Investments
Nate Nichols - affiliated with the Dallas area BGS trimmers
Will Jaimet - Heroes of Sport, submitter to PWCC
Gary Moser - eBay whitman111 vintage cards dating back to 1880s consigned to PWCC after grading by PSA
Eric Bitz - Buynicecards
Brian Deer- isellurcards (formerly Bristol Collectibles)
Kevin Burge- longtime modern card dealer
Robert Block - longtime trimmer of cards to BGS, submitted to PWCC
Brent Huigens - owner of PWCC, co-conspirator with many of these guys
Dick Towle - owner of Gone With The Stain
Steve Tormollan
Circumstantial Evidence: BGS giving preferential grades to WJCII (Joe Clemons), former employee "BLACK LABELGATE" 60+ page thread on Blowout.
Circumstantial Evidence: Gabriel Seraf replacing boring patches with SICK MOJO PATCHES

This one's pretty crazy too:
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1251740

Breaker can't send packages from home in Texas because daughter is in hospital
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Drha10lU8AA8Pb1.jpg

Except scammer stole picture from internet article from Australia:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Drha10lU4AADKmI.jpg

Nate is still on our board. He has not been found to be trimming cards but WAS using a card trimmers account to get better pricing. I am told he doesn't use that account any longer. Besides Brent, I don't think any others on that list are on this forum.

Did you revoke Brent's account? He is on my list as well.

No. And I am also not doing other things you said I should do too.

Edit: misread your post. You did point out Brent still has posting priveleges.

I have asked Blowout to ban him, but it hasn't happened yet. Why he went back there, I have no idea.

Nate is still out recruiting submissions for BGS. And supposedly getting very good business.

IF Nate isn't doing anything wrong do you really need to report it? I spoke with him for a long time several weeks ago and told him if he used that scammers account then he will be known as a scammer too. I have never seen any proof whatsoever that he was scamming.

Oh, by "him" I meant PWCC Marketplace. Nate has already been banned from blowout.
I appreciate you removing Dick Towle at my request a year ago.

If a person is submitting cards for scammers, they're putting their own reputation on the line.

I do what I think is the right thing to do in each circumstance. I appreciate you understanding that. I do listen, read and then make my own judgement on each situation.

Umm... if the shenanigans are something that involves the grading company, and it looks more and more like they are involved, why would you want to
A) Give someone complicit in giving grades and thus approval as totally genuine to altered cards any business
B)Given that your stuff is fine, pay for the opinion of a company whose opinions are becoming more discredited daily.

May just as well bring back GAI, accucard, whoever that guy was who was pop riveting pictures cut from books into screwdowns… :confused::confused:[/QUOTE]


Maybe everyone should just quit the hobby then. According to you, the whole thing is corrupt anyway. Let's everyone just leave.

Maybe I have missed it, but have any other auction houses come out publicly and either confirmed they have not taken any consignments from Moser or admitted that they have taken consignments from him?

The hobby was around for a long time before grading. And will be around a long time after it.

I still don't understand giving more business to a company that from what I can see is either grossly incompetent. Or is involved in deliberately allowing altered cards to be graded.

But hey, it's PSA! They're the experts and final arbiters of all things cards. How dare we question them.... :confused::confused:

AHs are not going to confirm they have taken cards from known card doctors, of which there are many. IMO very few could deny it truthfully.

Not questioning them. But like I stated earlier, am I supposed to quit going to my gym because a few of the members there take steroids??? I know I DO NOT cheat. It's called ETHICS. It sounds like a few members need a class in it.

that gym analogy isn't a good one imo. would you keep going to the gym if it was proven that the gym equipment did't contribute to muscle building/overall health?

Oh, but the machines ARE working!! Compare myself to someone who doesn't work out at all (ie, a raw card) and you can see the difference. I sold a Mars Attacks checklist last night in PSA mid grade form for almost $1,000. If I were to sell the card raw, it would bring around 1/5 of that. Am I supposed to not get my cards graded because of the scams of others? Should I just leave the hobby entirely, as it is ALL corrupt?? I tell you what....you sell all your cards and never buy another card in your life and I will follow suit.

Let me be the first then.

I took cards from someone mentioned elsewhere in this series of threads. He is not, apparently, involved with PWCC, but I did not know he had a reputation for shenanigans. He consigned a bunch of wax which he disclosed to me failed BBCE. I looked at it all, shared the BBCE verdict with my buyers and offered my opinion on the items that I thought were obviously no good as well as the ones that were questionable. They brought nowhere near what "pure" unopened of a similar nature would have bought and buyers and consignor all seemed happy.

I was surprised to see his name, even tangentially, in these threads and it shouldn't be hard to figure out who it is. But he was honest and above board with me which is why I'm not going to out him by name.

I personally do not care what has been done to a card as long as the seller discloses any and all problems they know about.

As far as Scott goes, in my personal experiences with him I would say he is by far the most honest guy in the AH business. He won me over when he honestly described cards he sold for me.:)

If you were an athlete competing at a very high level, that answer would be yes.
Cycling requires a written itinerary of where off-season training will be done, and who you do it with. Going outside the written plan without advance written notice is taken as a potentially positive test. If you train with dopers, or dopers coaches, or see their doctors you get bumped into the next level of suspicion, and get extra scrutiny.

If you don't want to be associated with dopers, you can work out at home, or in a gym with a better reputation.


Similarly, PSA readily grades cards that are altered, possibly knowing they're altered. It now appears that altering and getting the card to pass is just as prevalent as doping in cycling (In other words, depending on era anywhere from rampant to almost required.)
I'd consider any card in a PSA holder as suspect. That doesn't mean of course that the submitter altered it, but my level on confidence that the grade is correct and that the card is not altered is currently very low.

To avoid this, just like the cyclist could train in a less suspect gym, or at home, a collector could collect cards that aren't graded, or are graded by someone else. (Admittedly difficult, since all the big 3 have problems, and the rest either don't have enough track record, or are worse. )

A sensible response is not to spend $200,000.00 for a 1957 Topps Sandy Koufax or $15,000.00 for a 1980 Topps Rickey Henderson because it's in a PSA 10 holder.

Of course, then, that would have been the sensible thing to do in the first place.

Yep, I've always thought it was insane how much people put blind faith into PSA, especially when it came down to so much money and such minimal grade (opinion) difference.

If anything, I hope this entire mess helps recalibrate collector mindset a bit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDAm...ature=youtu.be


CLCT down over 9% today.

I've always been baffled by that as well. Literally the very first card graded by the company was no good by their standards.

PSA: another for my wish list.

Decertify Cert# 00,000,001

Take it up with Ken Kendrick.

+1


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Yep. I’ve been saying this for years.


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Robert - DON’T stop collecting!


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No chance of that. As a matter of fact, I bought some sweet RAW T206 this weekend.

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I always assumed those that spent that kind of money had that kind of money?

What I hated to see/read about were those who took out loans or paid the sellers monthly payment amounts in order to get a desired card.

Personally, I've seen some cards that I definitely wanted but due to their price, even if I didn't have to take out a loan, there was just no way I was going to drop that kind of money.

Off topic but does anyone else now view 8's and 9's and especially 10's in a different light?
I was told about some cards for sale currently at an auction house that I looked into. In a lot was a PSA 9 card that of course looked great but in doing so, my first reaction was, it's likely been doctored. :(

What I am especially curious about is if PWCC will be shown to have been complicit in forging autographs that were then slabbed by PSA.

If so, that would cripple part of my collection (the instagram link in my sig for anyone curious).

I have never heard anything at all in that regard.

I've never heard they forged, but they've sold bogus autographs with goofball certs including a Michael Jordan Jersey.

estimate of the fraud involved
 

Anyone want to throw out some guesses on the potential fraud involved here? $100m, $200m, $500m, etc?

Will the folks with $10s or $100s of thousands of dollars involved seek restitution?

I seem to recall some 1950s cards selling for neary a half million.

How deep does this go? Seems like it will be 100x larger than the auto scandal.

It is tough to even guess but if reimbursements start going through I would probably bet against PSA having enough money to cover the full extent of treachery.

Too early to tell. And are you just talking Moser/PSA or all of the scammers, PWCC, BGS, and PSA?
The modern stuff is crazier than the vintage.

Look at the 1993 SP Jeter RC. I sold the PSA 8 I won from a PSA set registry contest a week or two ago for $725. PWCC sold one of the 22 PSA 10 copies for $99K recently. When their "server glitch" happened and they stored copies of their cards submitted by known scammers like Kevin Burge to another server, the $99K Jeter disappeared.

Was it trimmed/altered? Hard to prove. May be entirely circumstantial that modern baseball's version of 1952 Topps #311 Mantle happened to also be submitted by the guy that submitted copious amounts of trimmed cards. I think the owner should fly to PSA and have them check it again. PSA regularly spits that card back to its owners in a cardsaver for MINSIZREQ or EVIDTRIM. If you don't bring them the before and after picture (and how could you?), they know they owe you $100K if it's trimmed. And they know it will be a lead news story that they refunded someone $100K for incompetence.

Read the SSI Guy thread and the BuyNiceCards threads over on Blowout. This thing has been so pervasive with both companies either looking cross-eyed, the other way, or being paid to turn around, that I personally can't see PSA or BGS make it out of this scandal intact. But as they say, "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American customer."

Now if the PSA side of the scandal doesn't break them entirely or sic the Feds on them from their lack of guarantee reserve, does it make the guys with the PSA 8-10 T206 sets re-evaluate their trust in the product they already own?

I doubt it, but that could be another stress point.

But a big question, and one I've mentioned a couple of different places, is that they CHARGE UP TO $5,000 TO GRADE A SINGLE CARD. And if you can't trust them to grade a $500 card and not see that it's trimmed/color added/pinhole fixed/reglossed, who is going to pay them $5K to do the same "job"?