David you are proving my point. A high percentage of cards on the market are slabbed, and thus no matter how good you might be at detecting alterations, and I will just take you at your word there, you and everyone else are at a huge disadvantage once the card is slabbed.

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I would use a combination of magnification (Scott and I were looking at 200x power, by the way), gloss (including in comparison to other T206s), black light, infrared and provenance.

Duly note that it was provenance (past sales) that identified these cards. Card collectors often dismiss provenance, but if you can document that a Magie has been around in that state for twenty years, the sage collector would pay a premium. On the other hand, a forger can't show where he obtained the cards-- because he made it.

As board member Jim Stinson once said about another form of collectible, “Authentic autographs have a history or source … forgeries do not. They just ‘appear’.”

Obviously, provenance isn't fool proof and has obvious limitations, including because rare cards really can be found in shoe box collections and in attics and inherited and because for every forged JFK signed baseball is a made up story where it came from, but it is something collectors should keep in mind. And I included it in my list as a supplement to, not a replacement of physically examining the card.

P.s., forgeries, alterations and shilling are all bad. Why is there this debate? As my dad would say "The answer isn't either/or. It's a both/and." Or if I asked "Where would you rather live, Siberia or the Sahara Desert?," he'd say "That's easy. Neither."

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There's a very simply solution to card doctoring (and shilling for that matter) ... stop worrying so freaking much about the condition! (Okay, doesn't stop this Magie doctoring but stops most doctoring).

I honestly can't understand the fascination with PSA 10s. A decent chance they were altered or even more likely, favorably graded by a high paying client of the grading company. Even IF they happened to be legit ... who give's a rat's butt whether the corners are perfect or near perfect? Does your enjoyment increase because your microscope says one is better? Why is a 9 worse? Why is a 7 worse? Heck why is a 4 worse?

Why are you paying a premium for ANY grade over the next one? You essentially have two typoes of cards. Common cards that you can buy raw (with whatever levels of flaws you accept - so maybe a nominal price difference for one versus another) and rare cards that you buy authenticated (because they are rare and you want to be assured they are real). But why does it matter if that "authentication" is an A or a PSA 1-10? Either you have a real 1952 Mantle or you don't. It's a binary event.

So why are you paying more for a PSA 5 Mantle versus a PSA 4? The only answer - because you are using the card as an investment so you can profit later.

I know, I know some of you will (ridiculously) claim "I don't like creases/corner wear/whatever." But if you are honest with yourself, your answer will be you don't like creases because the industry has trained you your whole life to not like creases/corner wear because you won't get your profit whenever you choose to sell. You didn't care about creases when you were a kid - because you put these in the spokes of your bike. You collected for fun, not profit.

So the people complaining about shilling and doctoring ... are the exact same people that are trying to make a profit off the hobby by selling cards ... and they are the exact reason the practice of shilling and card doctoring is happening in the first place.

Too funny.


(Now watch the dealer crowd crucify me. Can't threaten those profits by introducing rationale thought!)

Not so sure I agree with your boast...as most on this board are NOT the people spending ridiculous amounts of $$$$ on high grade cards?

I think most of us are "Collector" grade collectors just looking to "clean up" the hobby so it is fun and safe.

For me...the problem is that these inflated prices for high grades/altered/shilled cards...trickle down to the armpit cards that I want to buy.

I agree with this up to a point. I collect lower grades than I used to because I got sick and tired of worrying whether cards were trimmed or not and getting really pissed off when I thought they were. Now I don't pretend that people don't alter midgrade cards -- they do because there is money to be made at all levels of card doctoring -- but I think a card with a modest amount of even corner wear is still much less likely to be trimmed (the alteration that bothers me the most) than a higher grade card with sharp corners.

That said, I don't agree with the "blame the victim" pitch. Card doctors are scum and it's sad that law enforcement and the Net 54 community seem to have made shill bidding a much higher priority.

I agree Peter. I have never owned a high-grade 'sharp corner' T206 that I felt comfortable with. Unfortunately, the card doctors practice on the low-grade cards, then try to pass them by the authenticators, so you really aren't safe with those either.

You are right about our forum making shilling a higher priority - around 10-12 years ago I posted clear examples of card doctoring that resulted in a card being slabbed by all three major grading companies (the card doctor's test), and no one here expressed any similar concerns. I was never sure why no one seemed to care, but my assumption after all these years is that it simply scared collectors to think that a graded 'Good' card could be severely altered.

Scott, the major auction houses and dealers and quite a few high-powered collectors know damn well who is altering cards. It's not in any of their interest to accuse them and turn off the spigot. And to be perfectly candid, where the card doctors can afford and likely have retained very good lawyers, and actual proof would be difficult to produce in the face of a conspiracy of silence, the average person isn't going to go out there and name names either.

As a collector, mint condition items don't interest or impress me. Mint mostly matters to those who collect where there are 10,000 of a particular item and grade is the only way you can say yours is "better" than the others.

I do know people that have shilled
 

I also know people that are card doctors, I also know people that are both. SOme come across as very nice guys and i can actually be friendly with them but what they did is wrong. I understand the law does not have degrees of legal or illegal but I am not in a court of law. So ill state how i feel, I think those that shilled and doctored are the worst, I than think you have to look at the amount of times one or the other did what they did. Did they buy back one or two of their own cards or did they cut and trim thousands or more cards? in that instance i feel the doctor is worse, now if say the guy cut one or two cards vs a guy that shilled or had his good buddy in say Florida shill stuff for him all the time to inflate prices than i would think the shiller was the worse of the two. For the record i do not condone Shilling or card doctoring and wish we could rid this great hobby of both of these problems.
I may be expensive when i set up and sell stuff but i will always buy back something i sold if it ever comes out to be altered or counterfeit. That offer lasts as long as i am alive. I would welcome others that sell to join that pledge. I do not auction much but junk that id take whatever for, so i don't think shilling is really an issue, but my retail prices aren't cheap. But then again, and Leon can vouch for this, I don't really like to sell my cards. i d rather just hoard them, lol.

I disagree regarding law enforcement focus. Agents make cases on what can be proven. There have been plenty of criminal cases made on altered or fraudulent "game used" jerseys -- because the evidence was there. If it's there for a card altering case a case could be made as well. Certainly some of the allegations against Mastro et al. included the alteration of cards.

As for Net 54 focus, as I said above people here have all sorts of nefarious reasons to focus on one area of fraud but not all -- or to rationalize away their criminal activity. Not everyone here does this but many, many do.

What are you suggesting, that card doctoring isn't pervasive? Or that it's too hard to prove?

I guess I'm in an odd minority on this.

I think both doctoring and shilling are fairly common.

I think both are wrong.

I may have a looser definition of doctoring than some, soaking to remove scrapbook residue I think is ok especially if the scrapbook paper is very acidic. I think anything up to a light surface cleaning is ok. emphasis on light. Making a card with "stuff" on the surface look like a new card is going too far, removing stuff that will cause issues later on is fine. (I've done both, and I've been very open about it here. None of the 3-4 cards is for sale, and I'd disclose the cleaning/paper removal if I did sell them.)

Altering the card- trimming, removing color, altering text, etc are all right out. If I tried I could probably do any of it so it was nearly undetectable but then I'd feel the card should be destroyed. Knowing the technical end of things comes with responsibility not just knowledge. (I won't even clean up the Hostess cards I cut out with a pocketknife as a kid. Original is original. Others may feel differently about tidying up hand cut cards.


I also believe that currently any alteration can be detected. The only thing preventing it is the cost of doing it and the desire to do it by people in the hobby.

Another hobby of mine is currently seeing a lot of use of spectrographs of different sorts to determine the makeup of inks used in the mid 1800s through around 1900. It's either fascinating or horribly dull depending on if you like that stuff. I do. And it answers a lot of questions that have been unanswered with any certainty for over a century. Like was the red-brown ink actually made using powdered rust. For over 100 years that's been the belief and what's "known" --A couple trips through the spectrograph and that's gone, replaced with provable knowledge that the ink contains no iron at all.

Could an oil based solvent be detected? Yes.
Would it be time consuming and expensive to tell? Yes.

Can trimming be detected in the slab? A qualified yes. It is for many sets. Perhaps not all.

Can fading be detected as fading instead of a missing color? Perhaps. I can't do it reliably with the equipment I have. It may not be possible on very modern cards, earlier postwar it should be possible and I believe it is possible with some prewar sets especially T206. (I'll have access to a SEM later this year, that will hopefully change a few things :D )

Can an altered bit of print be detected. Obviously yes if it's not exactly like the original - with the Magies it was done only from scans without the cards in hand and without an original in hand. (Ah technology!)


The real problem is that those detections take skill and time, and in some cases expensive equipment.
And our entire grading system is backwards. Why does a 1981 Topps common take 20 days to grade? (supposedly only 10 with PSA) And yet, anything over 7500 or 5000/10000 only takes a day or less. Shouldn't the valuable stuff get more scrutiny than the very common?

Yes, dealers don't like tying up cash waiting for authentication/grading. But I bet they like buying cards back even less.
I'm sure insurance is part of that, the longer something is in the graders shop the more chance of problems.
But other hobbies have it worked out. Stamps cost a minimum of $30 through the APS and it typically takes 45 days and they say to allow 90. Special cases may take longer, and there's the possibility of getting a cert that says "we decline to render an opinion" That's with an average of 615 items a month, hardly a big workload compared to Any of the big grading companies.

Change the effort expended change the expectation, and that's how authentication becomes a lot more valid. (The graded stamp guys have the same complaints about big dealers getting better grades. I'm not sure it's true consistently, but might be. Very few outright fakes get through no matter who submits them. )


Steve Birmingham

I find it amazing how the doctor did this: removed the 'arms' of the first 'E', then scooted everything to the right of it, over. How they got this by PSA is baffling to me.

It's a case by case basis in terms of what can be proven. Surely there have been more prosecutions based on altered hobby material than shill bidding, not even close. Shill bidding cases are much harder to prove, not even a question, due to the ultimate determination of loss amount. As for pervasiveness, I think card altering and shill bidding occur all the time.

Other than the Wagner being mentioned in the Mastro indictment, and as I understood it that was not the basis for his plea (but I could be wrong), are you aware of any prosecutions for altering CARDS?

They were prosecuted for the Wagner. And there were other allegations for card altering which was part of the evidence against them. As for other cases, how many different federal indictments do you think even exist for fraud in this hobby? Believe it or not, there isn't a "Baseball Card Strike Force" in every US Attorney's Office. For the most part, the frauds aren't big enough for a federal prosecutor to deal with and are not easy to prove. That there have been any federal cases at all surprises a lot of people.

Your language suggested there had been a reasonable number of total prosecutions.

"Surely there have been more prosecutions based on altered hobby material than shill bidding, not even close."

"Not even close" suggests to me a decent sample size.

But in any event, it is clear that there are no prosecutions for altered cards unless one counts Mastro, which is all I had asked. And I am guessing there aren't going to be any in the future.

So basically, the conspiracy of silence among auction houses dealers major collectors (and maybe even grading services, nothing would surprise me) will continue undeterred, as will rampant card doctoring. So it goes.

So who is Gerry Schwartz? Why has nobody jumped in to vouch for him? I mean, if he did it, and everyone including law enforcement is going to turn a blind eye to it, the least we can do is leave a flaming bag of dog poo on his doorstep or something. Has he denied doing it at least?

As I recall, prosecutors mentioned other alterations with Mastro Auctions. The example(s) I recall involved restoration than wasn't disclosed. It was the lack of disclosure at sale that was the legal issue, because there's nothing illegal about restoration, or even trimming the T206 Honus Wagner, in and of itself.

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One would think that is the work of someone with an impressive (so to speak) resume.

If this is the case he's not that good...imo.

Good enough to have made a very good living and then some off card doctoring, would be my assumption.

Now we are making assumptions of the doctor's income??? Are we aware of any other cards this doctor doctored?????

All I know is the Magie is not very good...granted it got past PSA but that doesn't mean a whole lot.

The M and the A are canted in weird ways...unlike any t206 I've ever seen.

All you have to do to make a tremendous living doing this is to get a reasonable percentage of attempts past PSA, or SGC. Even leaving Nash aside, I think it's a pretty fair assumption that this is the work of one of the usual suspects. But of course I am just making assumptions, I don't know.

True I suppose...but I can't think of any other high profile cards such as this magie...that are holdered...that appear not right...but obviously I don't see every card!!!

What if there was a 'dirty' grader on the inside that was authenticating these? You have 'dirty' people in other professions, why not graders?

Seriously??

I guess my post was vague...there are plenty of holdered cards that do not look right! I was referring to radical doctoring like changing type like this magie...not trim jobs, etc.

[QUOTE

http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=26290

http://haulsofshame.com/blog/wp-cont...-and-after.jpg[/QUOTE]

No one has mentioned that the original first card graded out at Ex 5, and then after it was doctored it graded out at Good 2. Is this not odd, or am I missing something?

I think there have been a pretty decent amount of fake game used jersey cases and investigations underway. I also think there may be an altered card case in the works.

Not odd at all. Typical PSA inconsistency.

May I see the day. That would be fantastic.

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To answer earlier question, there are ways to identify when solvent has been used to remove ink. For example, the Gone With the Stain guy said his autograph removal work is seen under black light.

You wouldn't say that if you had seen how much I cried when my friend's little sister folder up my '87 Fleer Wally Joyner.

But that was months ago of course.

I was never a fan of creases on cards
 

I always liked nicer condition cards, don't need to be mint but not beaters either.

I answered in my long post, so maybe it got lost.

Short answer - Yes, but if it's done well it can't be detected cheaply.

Slightly longer - Nearly all solvents will leave traces behind, and those traces are detectable. And very few will remove all traces of the ink or substance removed. I don't own the required equipment, and I don't believe any of the TPGs do either. Plus they won't take the time to do the test.

Steve Birmingham

My concern is more with how the surface of the card looked under magnification (200x as David suggested) - were there obvious differences in the lettering ink, surface gloss, etc., as compared to a 'normal' T206? If not, then we have an even more serious issue - getting the slant of the letters better is just a small step away.

I couldn't tell enough from the scans or from the detail pics in HOS, but I suspect that 200x magnification would have shown obvious problems. If you have ever looked at the surface of a T206 under such magnification, you'll probably agree that it would be really difficult to hide alteration. I would think impossible, but I would love to get a look at one of these Magee's to confirm.

Bringing this disturbing thread back to see if anyone knows what became of this.

For reference, the original Nash article.
http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=27012