And the ID has been outed, one that will be no surprise to some of the old-timers here.

Yep! This is true. The group on blowout is doing great research.

It's all very troubling, and they have turned their attention to vintage now, it's not just shiny inserts.

Glad that some of BO's members have been focusing their investigative skills into this, they have certainly done a commendable job...I wonder why more folks from this board have not jumped into this saga? My guess: this is definitely not the first situation such as this that this board has seen, and most every time the scandal peeks because of the light shined on it and then life returns to (a new) normal with the situation minimized only to appear again later in a slightly different form with a few different names mixed in. It is like playing a game of whack-a-mole.

While the members of BO have done great work calling attention to this situation and this effort is much appreciated, to me it seems their expectations for recourse in this situation may have been set too high. I fear that they may come out of this situation disappointed with the 'final" outcome.

Some truth to this. I admire the idealism of the BO guys but I think they may be overrating their own influence against the powers that be that have a huge interest in protecting the status quo and card values. I'd be satisfied with some diminishment of the freedom with which card doctors operate, I'm not looking to knock down windmills.

That said, I think part of the relative indifference here is that at least some people have drunk the Kool Aid.

I jumped in and have been outspoken about it.

I was going to try and buy that Mantle Card too.:confused: Looking at another one in person today and THEN I'm OUT, just as fast as I was in.:D. No it's not PSA, LOL but was re-holdered once :D

They do have high expectations at BO and should. That's a good they have hope. Like, I hope Santa Claus comes down the chimney Dec 25th. Nothing will happen but both companies will have their reputations further soiled.



We also know absolutely nothing will change and that PREWAR, "Mr. Conservation", will continue to send doctored cards into PSA and they will keep the scam going for him and his card doctoring I mean conservation crew, IMHO. Don't worry about that.

Like I said, I just want them to come clean, but this is doctoring for profit and is FRAUD & meant to deceive plain and simple. (IMHO) They won't & can't come clean any more than they already admitted on the BO thread that the card was Doctored. They will continue to deny, even though the evidence is overwhelming that they are complicit in the crime. I mean, they have to keep lying, sorta like Tony Podsada for 40 years a liar.

As good as they were for the card business, the Curt Shilling and Gaylord Perrying is really tiresome, bothersome and crooked. F PREWAR

Wow, that looks very close to the 52 Mantle I regrettably sold a few years back. It was originally my dad's. You never know … Attachment 352192

Attachment 352193

The resemblance of the OP card to this one is very close. (better pics).

So this card had been graded THREE separate times(that we know of)? I am getting very confused by the ownership of this card. Based on the timeline the BO OP provided, he must have viewed it raw after it was cracked out of cert #14016493.

Certification Number 14016493
Year 1952
Brand TOPPS
Sport BASEBALL CARDS
Card Number 311
Player MICKEY MANTLE
Grade VG-EX+ 4.5
3/28/2014 $36,410.43 Goodwin and Co. Auctions 5


Was the card somehow damaged during the removal from cert # 14016493? The images Ryan provided raw do not seem to match the images that the OP on BO provided. Any help with the timeline you can provide Ryan, would be helpful. I am assuming Ryan sold the card raw to whoever had it graded in the 14016493 holder. The cert #s beginning with "1401" appear to be from over 10 years ago as I have cert #s starting with 1401 in sets I completed in 2008, 2009.

And, if the same card, yet again another cert # NOT removed from the registry.

Edited to add: some of the small print marks on the back of the current 4.5 Mantle do not appear on the back of the card in the 14016493 card, my guess two separate cards.

Hey Guys,

Get your facts straight.

The Goodwin card that was owned by Fastball's dad, who pulled it from a pack, is my card, has been since that sale, and resides in my collection.

The centering on mine, pictured above by others here, is not the same as as the current PWCC card, which as anyone with a good eye can see has tilt.

Nice try, though.

Thanks to the member here who just texted me to tell me; pretty telling way how bad info starts and gets spread.

MC

Good edit, not a guess but more a fact. Let's all pump the brakes on posting every piece of armchair detective work as facts both here and on Blowout. Be certain before hitting submit post.

Yeah please let's be careful, one guy on BO was already taken to task for equating two Leafs that clearly were different cards. A lot of these cards have similar centering, but you really need much more to say they're the same card. Trying to get a tilted card by Matt is like trying to sneak a sunrise past a rooster, to adapt a phrase.

Thanks, Peter. It is as much curse as blessing, LOL! I can't walk my own hall without adjusting every picture hanging on it :)

To think I just had to take a sudden break from a work call to come online and put an immediate stop to a total stranger venturing down a slanderous road on my favorite card and cherished family piece. That card went from Fastball's family to me and my son, and won't be changing hands for many, many, many decades.

If GregC didn't text me, who knows what theories would have been spun about my card by day's end. Very uncool, and people need to be responsible.

I guess on the bright side, now thanks to those posted pics of when it was raw, the world sees mine is 100% unaltered ;)

Glad the resemblance is just a resemblance as Ryan mentioned, Minus the centering, several of the small print spots on the front are similar on both cards. However, the timeline was not adding up nor was the back. I apologize for involving your card.....BTW, very nice example.

Thanks, Larry. Appreciate it. No harm, no foul; all good.

Sometimes the level of vested interest affects objectivity as well.

I don't consider soaking or pressing down a corner to be alteration and neither does PSA. Soaking just takes away surface dirt that was not originally there, and pressing is not changing the composition or changing the dimensions.

I also don't consider stain removal to be alteration. Again it's removing something that is not part of the actual card and was not orginally there.

IMHO this Mantle is clean conservation. They definitely did a little cleaning and pressing. No big deal.

I also collect comics and I think that the comic book community has a much more realistic attitude toward cleaning and pressing. For some reason sports card collectors prefer to keep their heads in the sand and pretend that these rampant practices are not happening.

It's a joke on them.

Thank you for your humble opinion. We'll agree to disagree.

Sports card collectors are not all pretending that "these rampant practices are not happening". On the contrary, as is evident from many posts here and elsewhere in this forum, several are sounding the alarm and their displeasure.
To them and me, it is no joke.

Enjoy your comic books, although to some extent that can be difficult if they are slabbed and unreadable. This might also explain why at least some restoration in that hobby is more tolerated. It seems harder to be bothered over changes that are likely not going to be seen; e.g., those to the pages inside the front and back covers.

There are a lot of altered cards out there. You may have some in your collection. In fact if you have a significant number of older high-end cards that you purchased, slabbed or not -- then it's even more likely.

This stuff has been going on for years and has mostly been tolerated by the hobby or it else wouldn't now be so rampant, and and has now reached the stage of hypocrisy. A 52 Mantle appears to be have been "conserved". Wa wa wa. What about all the other thousands of altered cards over the years where there was a wink and a nod and nothing was said or done about it?

This just didnt' start happening overnight. PSA's first card ever was trimmed. The original sin. High quality counterfeits are the next big thing. So yes I think that collectors are fooling themselves to think this might be going away in their lifetime. As long as there are large profits to be made selling to collectors who are paying big bucks for old cardboard then it will continue.
It's been gaining steam steadily in recent years and nothing to stop it.

Don't expect grading companies to do anything. They do a volume business and their backlogs are already objectionable.

Wow With all the scrutiny this card has undergone it STILL got almost $59,000 for a PSA 4.5. Mantle Rookie cards show no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

No? Didnt a bvg 4.5 sell last night for 18k ?

Must be the "eyeballs" :rolleyes:

Wait there was a Mantle ROOKIE too??? :)

People must have been worried the Beckett one was altered.:rolleyes:

that beckett one is more like a psa 1.5 or less

Yep winning bidder with under 50 feedback and all previous bids with PWCC. Another underbidder also had 100% bidding with PWCC a third with 66%... Quite possible this card ends up in the PWCC vault for a very very long time...

It would probably be a PSA 3 with that light soiling in front. Plenty o' 3s have that same rub on the front. All I collect is 52 topps and have seen plenty that look worse on the front. Am I missing something else?

Right next to the Ark of the Covenant.

Yes the certified autograph one!:p

See the PWCC "Conservation" thread that they started over on the Prewar forum. It's all the same - the ends justify the means, and the sad fact is that for most people - once a card resides in a numbered slab, the desire to question how it may have actually gotten there rapidly fades. Some of the other points in this thread are very well valid also - we may be better at detecting the work now this day in age where internet scans of before and after raw alteration and apparent fradulent slabbing jobs seep out of the woodwork - but don't think for a second that doesn't mean it wasn't also happening back in the 1990's. The fact that the vast majority of the hobby today simply glosses over the fact that the very first PSA slab job on the Gretzky Wagner was a total sham - is telling in terms of how as a whole people still just want to leave their heads stuck in the sand.

For me personally, all of the suspicion has reached such a fever pitch that I am really loathe to trust the TPG's anymore, even on mid-grade cards. So I just try not to think about it and buy cards at reasonable prices that are aesthetically pleasing to me. It's certainly why I don't want to spend multiples more on a "high-end" graded card when for my own purposes - a nice PSA 4-6 range example will do just fine. Yes, it's less likely that someone would take the time to alter stuff to mess with a PSA 4.5 of the type cards that I'm able to afford - a couple hundred bucks here and there a the most - but if they are able to do it for lesser grades of the marquee cards, and do it all the time seemingly now convincingly - what type of cards are next?

I don't want to get kicked off the board for railing a paid advertiser of this site, but the facts are the FACTS period...something is rotten in Denmark.

To me it's just them suggesting that we continue down the path of the slippery slope. "Come on guys! We all know this kind of thing happens with old cards - whether fixing a bent corner or removing a pencil mark. Is it really that bad? You all know you do it...why don't we just admit that certain things are ok!"

Doesn't it sound like the kid on the playground back in the day, trying to get you to cheat or do something else untoward that you know you shouldn't do? The problem of course with this line of thinking is where do you draw the line? Even with otherwise well-intentioned TPG's, the hobby has been arguing for nearly 30 years now on the consistency of grading standards and as a whole, has generally proven the inability to agree on things like this long term for some time now. So suddenly we should just start relxaing even more standards and things will somehow just magically be ok? Oy. Many, many bridges for sale right now.

I would disagree with you if you are ok with all of this. But in terms of a realistic outlook on the situation, I fear you are closer to being correct than many of us would like to admit.

I don't do it John, that's for sure and I certainly don't like it. Not that I wouldn't like to find a good card doctor, but it is out of control. Especially having to outbid a card doctor on nice 5's or 6's they turn into 8's and 9's.

PSA needs to hire that Moser kid at the very least to see if he can help detect the trimming, soaking, solvents, pressing spooning, etc. Because PSA certainly can't tell on a regular basis. They may have to submit a card several times, but they eventually ALL get through, I'm sure. PSA are Boobs.

Do we have to wait until Moser is facing jail time to make a deal like the "Catch Me if you can kid"?? Is Moser the doctor or is he buying the cards and paying the doctor, then flip and repeat?? OHHHHH Doctor!

The amount of $$ being made off of this fraud is at an astronomical level, that's not in dispute, is it?

It's unbelievable how many "alterations" have been missed by PSA in just the last 3pgs of this link alone. https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...290614&page=37

All were sold to one guy who seems to exclusively use PWCC as a seller once he decides to sell again.

Some of these cards are so bad, like superdan states, that PSA needed a mylar sleeve to keep them from moving around in their slab. :confused:

I know some will still defend PSA by stating mistakes happen, which is true, but to this extent makes that statement quite unreasonable, imo.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1297252
PSA unofficially responded on Net54 that they will review all these cards for free under their grade guarantee!

Not going to be that simple though. The owners of said cards all would have to agree to have them reviewed, correct? Maybe some on here would, but I doubt all or even close to a majority by a longshot. And just from what I have seen with the "outed" cards on Blowout, sounds to me like they don't have nearly enough in the bank to buy all those cards back.

PSA has removed Cert #s from their registry in the past without the owner's permission. If you return them now, you get a full refund. If the market drops by half next year, they only get refunded the "current market price"; if you're the owner, are you taking that chance?
If your card is decertified and no longer can be used in a registry, does it have the same value to the owner?