But for every shorter card, there is not (no longer) a larger one. :)

The problem is that you're conflating opinion with fact. You might think that the previous grader's opinion is material, but at the end of the day it is still just an opinion. It is not a fact about the card itself. A material fact has to be a fact to begin with. And you can't spin it to say it's a material fact that someone had an opinion lol.

You have to get over this idea that whatever is written on a slab is some sort of factual statement about a card. It's just not. It's just one person's opinion on a particular day.

Why can't an opinion be material? I am selling a revolutionary new cancer treatment, claiming that it is safe. But I conceal that expert A -- let's make him the most prominent expert in the world -- told me clearly that in his opinion the treatment was highly unsafe. No fraud because it's not a "fact"?

Cards like this have most of their value dependent on the appeal to authority, not the cardboard itself. The top 2 authorities were consulted and gave widely different opinions. It is honest to take 2 seconds to note that. If people don't care, then the price won't change and there's no issue. Honesty was once considered the proper course of action to take. Most hobbies at least pretend that it still is.

Ok, that's true. Also, not every shorter card is trimmed. How about that?

.

You wonder if all the people going to such lengths to justify nondisclosure, if they were selling the card to a friend and knew the grading history, would conceal it from them? Maybe they would.

Every single grade on every single card ever slabbed is an opinion, and nothing more.

It feels to me on both of the threads that pertain to this card that a majority of people are not really understanding the Min Size assessment and what a moving target it is with the grading services. Good news is that you are still qualified to work for Goldin Auctions to do description write ups. :D

That aside, it is nice to see at least two people who have acknowledged the potential harm on the final price paid due to the write up that suggested the card was possibly trimmed.

I decided to look up what an Auth example should sell for and found this:

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...50062-05112023 At least Heritage understands the world of grading and the terminology.

The Heritage one sold for LESS than the Goldin one.

i stand by the "opinion" that this dimaggio was trimmed. just look at the top and bottom edges/corners as compared to other 36 goudeys...I mean WWG's!!!!

The PSA flip may mean as little as the SGC one.

Yes. My posts about the consignor possibly getting less for the card due to the flagrant error of the description writer was prior to my looking in VCP for other sales of Auth examples. And it just so happened that this one has a prior sale. The write up did not have an impact at all because the person who bought it knows what Min Size means and the implications. And that person is having a pay day.

As for whether the card is trimmed or not...once again...hard to know for sure based on the scans. Something looks off but does not mean it is trimmed.

The part of this discussion that I find most interesting is where many of the posters seem to believe that they can tell whether a card has been trimmed just by looking at it. I assume they are correct, but that doesn't do me any good. The world I live in has me making bid decisions based on the scans of slabbed cards. I have no notion that I can tell whether a card is "factory cut" or not from a scan. As such, my decisions reward cards with larger borders. Just as, all other things equal, better centering is better, bigger borders are better. Bigger borders are better because the probability of trimming is smaller. Smaller borders are bad because the probability of trimming is greater. Probably off topic, but that's my thought.

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oh and how could I forget that it's been also chemically altered!!!!

I disagree in part. If a card has been altered, it has been altered. That is a fact. If a grader says so he is either correct or incorrect-- about a fact. He can explain why he makes that statement of fact, but the bottom line is he is right or wrong. This is different than assigning a subjective overall numeric grade based on ostensibly objective criteria that tends to vary over time.
So if a card is slabbed authentic/altered, that is a statement of fact, correct or erroneous. If you knew you were buying a card that had been rejected previously as altered or graded as such, would you want to know that and/or do you think the market places any importance on that fact? I believe those are rhetorical questions. You can discount or disregard altogether the prior grader's determination of alteration, but you should be made aware of it nonetheless.

IMO, a similar argument follows this notion of minimum size not met, although as I stated earlier, the whole concept of such a grade should require a clear set of parameters as to what minimum size is allowed. The card is measured, and you can disagree that the measurement was done correctly or that the finding of the stated size is not outside what you believe to be the "minimum" size. Argue all you want that the graders get measurements wrong-- it measures what it measures, and you can measure it yourself once its yours. You can also cling to some notion that the card should be allowed a greater variance than what the grading company allows so that the measurement is fine by you, and in doing so, form your own beliefs on how and when you are willing to rely on that grading company. However, these are not opinions that a card should be graded a 3, 5 or 7 because of various attributes or defects that might be of different importance to different people. Rather they are simply statements that the card measures X, and the minimum size in our professional experience is Y. Disregard or qualify it as you wish, but know that someone made a statement of objective fact, whether right or wrong, and not opinion.

Again, you are not proving the market believes minsize is material. You are proving having a number grade is extremely important.

The fact is, the opinion of SGC and PSA are NOT wildly different on this card. They likely are very close on condition. One just chose not to give an opinion on the card's condition.

No matter how you slice it, minsize is not an opinion on the condition of the card, the authenticity of the card, nor whether the card has been altered. So SGC gave no relevant opinion on the card.

I get the logic, but it's not necessarily true. Many trimmers choose large border cards to trim and/or flatten them to make them oversized before trimming. A small card is not more likely to be trimmed.

But it comes to the same thing. If having a number grade is material, so too is NOT having one, in the other direction. MINSIZE is materially different from 6.5. Here, MINSiZEs sold for 17 and 21K, and 6.5 will sell for 150K or more. This is not complicated. The case for disclosure is very simple.

Then explain why it isn't material to disclose that it received a lower number grade from another company. It's the same logic. The lower number will sell for less and is therefore material, right?

Further, there is an actual material difference between those minsize sales and this one. Those didn't have another reputable company verify that it wasn't trimmed. The subsequent grade alleviates fears that minsize might mean trimmed.

You can't assume materiality from differing circumstances.

I answered that before. It's a good question, but I think the difference is in how people understand these things. I think people understand that there is wide variance in grading, that it isn't consistent, and generally accept that graded cards might have a grading history. On the other hand, rightly or wrongly, there's just a big perceived difference between grade x and grade y, and a graded card and one where the $1 or #2 TPG in the industry said the card was not worthy of a number grade in the first place. As you said, having a number grade is very important to people. Perception is reality.

Let me put a question back to you. Since obviously many people think this is important information, even if they might be misguided, what's your reason NOT to disclose? If you're right, and it's irrelevant/immaterial, it won't affect anything. If I'm right, it will mean that a fact relevant to price was disclosed rather than concealed, which is a good thing, yes? Or do we really want people concealing facts that could bear on price?

"A small card is not more likely to be trimmed".

We'll have to agree to disagree on this. I can accept that small doesn't prove that a card has been trimmed, but I think the correlation between small and trimmed is very strong. I would much rather have a larger card because I think the chances of trimming are less. Not zero chance, but lesser chance than the chance that a smaller card has been trimmed. For this reason, the "eye appeal" (to my eye) of a card with larger borders is enhanced even if the other considerations (centering, edges, corners) are not as sharp.

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So you are of the opinion that someone who was willing to trim this card, and who possessed the skills necessary to fool both SGC and PSA into believing it had not been trimmed would also choose to leave that giant left border in tact? Really?

That is some serious pretzel logic there.

The card is being sold as an authentic card that in PSA's opinion is a certain stated grade. I have no problem offering up additional information. It's just not necessary as all relevant information to the card as sold is disclosed.

If the additional information would result in a substantially lower price, or if it matters to a large group of bidders, how is it not relevant from an overall standpoint? I get that to you it isn't.

I don't believe it would result in a lower price. The card will bring PSA graded price whether you say SGC wouldn't grade it or not. You can't assume it would just because a minsize card with no subsequent grading history sold for less.

It might not, especially if there is a registry angle. My only point is, disclose and let people decide, don't conceal.

Please don't turn this into a political discussion, but did you not just live through the same pandemic the rest of us did?

Regardless, you seem to have fallen into the trap of believing that these graders are experts. They're just not. 90% of them know less about the cards they're grading than nearly everyone here on this board.

Try this on for size... There are a significant number of people in this hobby who highly value my opinion on what a card should grade and whether or not it has been altered (I know, shocking). I get consulted almost daily about whether or not someone should buy cards X, Y, and Z. My opinion affects whether or not these people bid on those cards. If you were to auction a card off at Goldin and I mentioned that I was confident the card was trimmed and thus not deserving of the PSA 8 grade it received, would you/Goldin then have an obligation to disclose my opinion? No? What if Mike Baker chimed in and agreed with me? Do they have an obligation then?

Same as if it had a lower grade from SGC. You can use pretzel logic all you want, but you can't have it both ways. Either reveal every detail that could potentially affect the price, or not. You can't pick and choose. That's why my position is we don't need to try to decide what is necessary to disclose or not. The card is what it is and is in the slab that it's in. No mental gymnastics to decide which piece of info is important.

Lots of arguments are nuanced and are not all or nothing. Sure, you can do a Socratic method/slippery slope pushback on my point of view, but to me that doesn't necessarily invalidate it. As someone once said, just because there's a slippery slope, you don't have to ski it to the bottom. Justice Ginsburg maybe. Anyhow, I get your point.

I don't think there would be an obligation to disclose individuals' informal opinions on cards under any circumstances, no. But it's a good hypothetical.

Of course it would affect the price. Maybe not in this particular case this one time, but if you were to run this experiment of slandering cards in the description 1,000 times it would absolutely suppress pricing of the cards in aggregate. But it wouldn't be because the card itself is flawed or defective in some way, but rather because you spooked a pool of candidate bidders (who as evidenced by this thread are entirely ignorant about the grading process) into believing that the card must be trimmed when it in fact has not.

Travis, genuine question. If TPGs are as bad as you say -- and I'm not disputing it and share some of your skepticism -- why do you think it is TPGs have gained such a death grip on the hobby, and flips matter as much as they do in the marketplace? I have my theories but curious about yours.

So how do you feel about the PSA 8 Wagner card? The fact that it's 100% known to have been cut from a sheet after it was printed at the factory therefore it should be disqualified from receiving a numerical grade.. yet PSA said it was an 8.

Does this "not matter?"

Not slander if it's true. All I am suggesting should be disclosed is the fact that the same card was graded MINSIZE by SGC.

So an expert's informal opinion wouldn't need to be disclosed but an ignoramus' formal opinion would because he gets paid $19/hr to grade cards in between Mountain Dew breaks?

LOL. I am guessing someone high up like Dave would have graded the DiMaggio, no? They're not going to entrust a potential 6 figure card to some kid.

So I'm just curious. If we can't pick and choose what should be disclosed, then what if that WWG card or any other were graded Authentic--Altered/trimmed and then later deemed by a different company to get a numeric grade? No reason to disclose the prior "altered" grade? Just an opinion no different than if the first company slabbed it with a lower numeric grade? Is that in essence the argument advanced by some here?

"why do you think it is TPGs have gained such a death grip on the hobby"?

Because you can buy a card on the Internet from a stranger and trust that it's not fake.

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Time to fire up that sticker enterprise that you've been talking about!

I suspect it's because most of the marketplace believes the TPG marketing puffery, and hasn't come to the dawning realization that the graders aren't really as infallible as they purport to be.

In any auction, all it takes is 2 bidders to set the price, even if the rest of us sit it out because we don't like what we see under the plastic.

I also think that there's a counterpoint, which is that cards with the same grade will still sell (at times) for dramatically different prices, if the underlying cardboard looks nice for the grade, or on the flip side if the cardboard looks like hot garbage for the grade.

So -- genuine question, not critical -- why instead of just collecting Mays are you competing on the Mays registry?

Don't misunderstand my position. I'm not against disclosure and always err on the side of disclosure. And I am always an advicate of disclosing known flaws, defects, and alterations. Minsize is none of those things.

It's not much of a competition at the moment, at least for the Master Mays set, as no one else seems to really be actively doing much.

But in terms of why I use the set registry, it's mostly because it helps me to keep track of what I have and what I'm missing.

And since 99.99% of my graded pieces are in PSA slabs, there's also an element that I do it because it's there.

Plus, of course, a man needs to demonstrate for all the world to see the size of his...collection.

I am not a fan of the term minsize... if the size is slightly off normal tolerances, yet looks unaltered. It should receive a number. if it appears to be altered it should not.. minsize should always be accompanied by possibly trim.

Agreed. I think that's the issue here and my initial solution. A real understanding of what minsize means results in treating them like a differing opinion on number grades when it comes to disclosure. But minsize, unaltered cards should get a grade.

Because of trickle down EGOnomics. Dumbass A wants to compete against Dumbass B so he can claim he has the best collection around. And of course ignorance about the grading process plays a role as well. If these guys knew that their PSA 9s were all just cracked out of PSA 6 holders and resubmitted, they might change their minds about which cards they choose to buy in the future. Then again, they might not.

A remarkable marketing achievement, to have built so successful a business on services of illusory value -- or just luck. Either way.

I think there’s also some bad actors in the raw market that help to facilitate the TPG marketing machine.

That and the rise of buying and selling online.

So the concept isn’t entirely based on smoke and mirrors. But the execution leaves a lot to be desired for sure.