so true. there are probably 100,000 cards or more, IMHO still a good ratio for PSA. But isn't this what we pay them for? The grade is secondary. I just want to know they are not altered and they can't tell either or they are scamming with guys like Brent Mastro, which is a distinct possibility.

By your posts everyone and their brother can tell what kind of person you are. You do a great job in that respect. With respect to Mastro, I dare you to ever find one instance when I said he was innocent (without saying until proven guilty or something to that effect). That is a fallacy carried forward by El Chapo's lawyer. BTW, I also wrote a letter to the judge on the matter and it was not flattering to Mastro.

Hmmm. I really am trying to picture that. :D

Exactly. This is far beyond Moser and Brent but they are a good start. And even if it’s only a thousand cards or a few thousand or whatever found to be missed, PSA has a guarantee that needs to be upheld. Doing some quick math it seems their exposure will go well past the 800K they are holding in reserve.

Professional Sports AUTHENTICATOR. Indeed.

As I see it, if PSA was confident this was a limited problem, they should have no objection to releasing their submission records.

Parenthetically I wonder if PSA or Beckett has any clue what it does to the stress level of any collector who has put what for him/her is a meaningful sum of money into cards, to see card after card after card exposed as altered, and to see a major seller who most of us have bought from exposed as an outlet for a card doctor? That statement from Sloan suggests complete indifference, to me anyhow.

Even people who don't care about alteration surely are concerned with the value of their cards. And people who care about alteration are beside themselves, that I have talked to. This also is raising the stress level of every honest dealer.

LOL, maybe a bit too passionate but otherwise just hate scammers in all areas of my life. The list is growing but not limited to cards. Thanks for clarifying that for me. I must have somewhat misremembered. All the best!:)

I think you can tell from my posts how I feel about it after spending 75K the past year. :) I don't care what happens to the value as 3/4 of them are PSA. The truth will always trump everything for me personally. I won't buy another card until BM (no, not Bowl Movement), Brent Mastro goes to jail and PSA sues him.

From your diplomatic posts I never would have guessed how you felt.:eek:

Busiest person at PSA right now? The guy going in and lowering all of the SMR values so if they have to pay out it won't cost much.

"Oh, PSA 7 1960 Yaz rookie? I think the SMR reflects that to be $15. We honor our guarantee. Just send it in and we will send you the $15."

I wonder if this was looked into by the media a little deeper if that would bring some of this to the attention to the broader public that would force some hands......perhaps an ESPN Outside the Lines special, or something similar...…

If anyone truly believes PSA will guarantee all these cards you are being grossly misled. I have several contacts with first hand experience both good and bad. Some with the exact same scenarios being played out here and the results are not "guaranteed". I am afraid many will be told to go pound sand. Good thing PSA sits near Newport Beach.

But we know they are going to resist and hope this all goes away quietly with them only refunding a few squeaky wheels. This time I believe it is going to be different though. Assuming what we are hearing from BO is true, there has been a blatant disregard by PSA in many of the procedures we rely upon when paying money to them to authenticate cards. And they need to be held accountable and honor their guarantee whether it was negligence on their part, getting duped by some fraudsters or whatever. Their guarantee is pretty clear to me as well as the lawyers I have spoken to. In no way does it say go back to whomever you purchased it from for recourse. And it doesn’t say if someone is intentionally deceiving them then they won’t honor it. I suspect regardless of where this heads, the guarantee will soon be reworded.

And Martin that’s why we have high priced lawyers in this country.

To claim that only 1,000 bad cards have made it into PSA Holders is a ridiculous understatement. It takes a ton of work and research to positively expose just one single card. For every one that is exposed, you can figure there are about 10 that get by unscathed. The fact is nobody will ever know how many bogus cards are circulating in various collections, now that the cat is out of the bag.

So the "THREE THOUSANDTHS OF ONE PERCENT" claim is completely baseless.

You can really tell from these posts who cares about the integrity of the hobby, and who is motivated by money. I urge anyone here who truly cares about the hobby to boycott PSA and stop sending them submissions. They'll likely not make good on their supposed "guarantee", so this is one of very few meaningful actions we can take to instigate change.

If someone deceived THEM, they would have a claim over under the submission agreement, like an insurer would against the party at fault, but in no way does it affect the guarantee as I read it.

I wonder if PSA has asked to contact the seller because PWCC has already agreed to refund purchases in exchange for not being banned from future submissions and not falling out of PSA’s good graces (i.e PSA promoting their record sales price on card X).

And that is EXACTLY why PSA is taking the position they are taking. To minimize the value hit on what is in circulation now so that the damage to collectors and to their brand is minimized.

Once all of the outed cards are taken care of the rest is conjecture as far as the majority of the hobby is concerned. Anything that remains in a PSA slab is assumed to be good until proven otherwise. By keeping the submission records private PSA minimizes the chance that someone with a non-outed slab that may be tainted actually submits it for a guarantee review. It’s worked for them this way before. And as I said earlier, as long as they are being legitimate when they do a guarantee review and not just rubber stamping it as good to avoid honoring the guarantee they will be in the clear legally.

Realistically there are always going to be some slabbed cards that are illegitimate from all TPGs. You will never be able to root them all out. Without the submission, sales records and photos I doubt many of the non-outed ones will ever be discovered. Providing that information to the public is not in their interests. One could also argue that it would also be contrary to the interests of those with a substantial amount of money already tied up in slabbed cards. Bottom line is don’t hold your breath waiting to get that info officially.

The real questions are

A) what can be done to minimize the ability of additional “re-works” from getting into slabs going forward?

B) will those who are caught trying to cheat be sufficiently punished so that others are deterred from trying to do the same?

Are you employed by PSA?

And here and there even a few good ones.

More like in hopes that PSA will not seek to go after them criminally.

PSA is now the puppet master and Brent is the puppet.

Stay tuned, there will be press coverage soon as I understand it.

No. My statements are personal opinions and observations based on consulting experiences I’ve had in the area of corporate crisis management. I was also one of the people who discovered and did a lot of the message board sleuthing on the hommade cellos issue a few years ago and lived through how PSA handled that one.

I see the court room now ...


Card Collector: PSA - Did you grade huge amounts of altered baseball cards?!


Judge: You don't have to answer that question!


PSA: I'll answer the question. You want answers?


Card Collector: I think I'm entitled to them.


PSA: You want answers?!


Card Collector: I want the truth!


PSA: You can't handle the truth!


Son, we live in a world that has baseball cards, and those cards have to be graded by men with plastic cases. Who's gonna do it? You, SGC? You, BGS? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for card collectors, and you curse PSA. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know -- that card investor's financial loses, while substantial, probably were lessened; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves money.

You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me grading that baseball card -- you need me grading that baseball card.

We use words like "alteration," "conservation," and "authenticity." We use these words as the backbone of a life spent grading baseball cards. You use them as a punch line.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very grading services that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it.

I would rather that you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a loupe and grade your own cards. Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think you're entitled to!


Card Collector: Did you grade huge amounts of altered baseball cards?!


PSA: I did the job--


Card Collector: -- Did you grade huge amounts of altered baseball cards?!


PSA: YOU'RE GOD DAMN RIGHT I DID!!!

PSA should honor their guarantee and then go after Brent, Moser or whomever to make them whole. Why then are they attempting to put the onus on the card owner to go back to whom they purchased it from for refunds? Shouldn’t they be handling that themselves?

Of course they should! Otherwise, why even claim they provide a guarantee?

In the other ongoing thread, we saw how it turned out when an affected buyer politely asked PWCC for a refund. He was put off and rebuffed. Everyone is now passing the buck, and it's the collector who is screwed.

Do not keep supporting PWCC and PSA and feeding them money. They do not act in the hobby's best interest (just their own). If you really feel a 3rd Party opinion is necessary, use someone else!

PSA is part of a public company and has a board and shareholders to report to and protect. I suspect the best interests of the hobby would come somewhat further down their list.

This.

Selectively quoting me does not make your mob mentality valid.

“3/1000ths of a percent SO FAR!”

“I too believe there is more to be uncovered...”

This is still America people. Remember innocent until proven guilty?


From what has been discovered it appears that PWCC was somehow involved in some unethical and possibly illegal things with some know scams artists. It also appears that they managed to slip some things through PSA and other TPGs.

And here you are, part of a mob that is spouting off all sorts of wild ideas about PSA being complicit in this, PSA is going to weasel out of its guarantee, and other generally unflattering conspiracy theories without any real evidence to substantiate it.

PSA is doing what just about any other publicly traded corporation does when an apparent primary product/service failure has occurred; trying to weed out what of that which has come out is indeed true and what is not, trying to identify what risks exist for the company as a result of it, trying to identify other parties that could potentially be held accountable, trying to minimize the damages to the company, trying to reassure customers, etc.

It may ultimately be proven that there are 100,000 tainted items, but right now there isn’t any evidence to back that up. There is evidence that has been developed that suggests about 1,000 so far. Are 1000 too many? Yes, but it’s far from the epidemic level that the mob is currently panicking about.

For someone who claims to be so concerned about integrity you certainly don’t seem to be very worried about the integrity and fairness of passing judgment on people like myself, and PSA for that matter, without proper basis in fact.

I really do think this statement is horrible.

If you believe someone altered a card, PSA thinks the best thing to do is return the card that they couldn't the alterations on to the same person.

Those will of course just be cracked and resubmitted for a clean number in a new slab, and in time the whole thing will be forgotten.
Or the same people who can't get it right in the first place will re-evaluate???

Here comes the competition!

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...ad7f723447.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...bddf357b43.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

IMO telling people to return the card to the seller, and only to go to PSA if the seller is unknown whatever that means, is not appropriate. The guarantee does not require exhaustion of remedies. The whole point was that PSA stands behind marketplace transactions, to inspire confidence.

Well, you are certainly entitled to your opinion, and although I don't agree, I do respect it. People collect for different reasons... some for profit, and others for the love of the hobby. I suppose I'm one of the voices for the latter.

Not part of a mob... just someone who does not want to see the collectors get burned. PSA/Sloan's Letter directly states that the affected collectors should go to the SELLER (not PSA) for refunds. PWCC has already demonstrated that they intend to make this process very cumbersome and difficult. And thus, it is the collector who is screwed.

So while we are apparently miles apart on this, we can still have a good conversation. I don't want to see Collectors take the hit for this, and do want PSA to live up to its long-stated guarantee. Otherwise, it's all just meaningless lip service.

Which is why legal pressure must be brought to bear. I think all the dots could be connected fairly easily if records are subpoenaed from all sources.

But in this case they already have a prior statement from PWCC saying that they will handle it for any cards they brokered. What we don’t know is what, if anything, PSA may have said to PWCC that PSA would do unless PWCC made this offer. We also don’t know that ifbthis offer for PWCC is a result of some conversation. Between PWCC and PSA, whether as part of it PWCC is required to turn over any cards they redeem to PSA to prevent cracking and resubbing them or selling them raw to unsuspecting people.

PSA is part of a publicly traded company. They have shareholders to protect. Why shouldn’t they take advantage of what PWCC is offering to do so? They also said that the guarantee review was an option as well. I don’t see them rejecting to do reviews. I see them trying to minimize the number of reviews they need to do.

I have plenty of gripes about PSA, but I really don’t see their early attempts to minimize their liability as anything other than normal corporate behavior.

If you have a recall on a vehicle or basically any other product, don't you typically take it back to the place where you bought it? I mean, I don't see cars lined up at the actual plant looking to get fixed. Might be a stretch, but kind of how I see it.

You don't necessarily have to be "going after" PSA for some bureau or other to request (demand) records to aid in an investigation.

That's because the dealer is designated by the warranty to take the return. The dealer is a representative of the manufacturer. The PSA guarantee does not say anything about gong to the seller first or designate the seller as an agent.

;)

lol, you beat me to it. I was going to ask the same thing.

I always try and straddle the issue...:D:D

No. Not always. I own a Nissan Titan. I bought it used from Ford franchise dealership. When my Titan did have a recall, I didn't take it back to the Ford dealership, I took it to the Nissan dealership. The warranty it through Nissan, not Ford.

Yeah, I get that...kind of an apples to oranges thing. While I do agree the liability falls back on PSA, I would attempt to get my money back from the person that sold it to me. This isn't with just in regards to this situation, just my general opinion. "You sold me a piece of crap, you take the time to deal with it.... return my money now". I don't care what the item was, whoever sold it to me should take their time and money to have to return the item.
As noted before, I think this will possibly their stance.
1. Return the item to the person that sold it to you for a refund.
2. That person(PWCC) can try to return in to PSA under the guarantee.
3. They get denied for violating the terms and conditions by submitting knowingly altered items.

What if you now discover a card on the list you bought 5 years ago? Not fair to go back to the seller IMO. Sellers who are innocent are entitled to repose at some point, I would think much sooner than that. It's PSA's eff-up if something is wrong, not the seller, IMO, unless the seller was complicit.

I think rather than taking $10 to crossover cards SGC should be offering to independently look at any cards and give their professional opinion as to whether the card has been altered. If it hasn’t they can crossover and if it has then the owner can go to PSA for recourse.

Isn't an authenticity review implicit here?

You would think it is but I know I would pay a nice sum to have someone take a professional and unbiased look at my overpriced cardboard without necessarily being forced to cross them over.

Upcharges ONLY apply if the card "crosses" to the designated minimum grade or higher (we will always call for approval for any upcharge necessary).


sounds like $10 gets you a review, and if it meets your minimum grade or higher for crossover, you pay a little more? The regular grading fee?

Ah got it. Well, it's a good idea, I would convey it to SGC. One issue though is any in slab review is limited in its ability to see the edges. In fact I often question how the TPGs really can do cross-overs properly with the cards in slabs.

I don’t think we are miles apart at all. We both want integrity. Neither of us want to see innocent collectors take a hit on this. But innocent collectors could take a hit in a number of ways. Beyond the affected cards themselves, the whole hobby could take a major hit if psa’s credibility were undeservedly and excessively undermined. Driving PSA into financial instability or insolvency could also cause a hit to innocent collectors.

I read Steve Sloan’s statement and I see a corporate executive trying to leverage what resources he has to protect the company during the early stage of a potential problem. This thing has a long way to go and could play out in many unexpected ways. Unless they have fools as attorneys I can’t believe that PSA would do anything with respect to their guarantee that contradicts what is written in their guarantee.

PWCC has admitted some responsibility for the current situation and has made a public statement saying they will do all that they can to make things right. It is not unreasonable for PSA to try and use that to their advantage, especially if PWCC is actually mixed up directly in it.

I see nothing in the PSA statement that says they won’t do a guarantee review if one is requested. And I think there are plenty of times in all of our lives that we’ve purchased something that had an issue and our first call was tonthe party we purchased it from, not immediately to the party that provides the warrantee.

Within the above contexts Sloan’s statement does not strike me as so far out of the norm.

I think after we see what has gone on here they use the word “properly” very loosely.

How many years later is it legitimate to go back to an innocent seller?

What is an "unknown" seller and why did Sloan limit the guarantee to that?

I think you are being too kind here. Way too kind. Sloan should be manning up not looking to say we're your court of last resort.

THEY graded the cards not the sellers.

I find both PSA's and PWCC's responses to this situation pathetic and ill-advised. If they want to regain trust in their brands, they should ONLY be responsive, helpful and proactive. They are being deflective and standoffish. Bad business.

Old established problem, but suddenly it's now a crisis?
 

I've been on a hiatus of sorts for the past four years or so, but just happened to look at the message board for old time sake and noticed the proliferation of threads regarding altered PSA cards. Needless to say, it should have not come as a surprise to me. Why it now seems like a scandal is perplexing.

I thought the issue of a substantial amount of altered cards being systematically slabbed and graded by PSA is old news going back at least 10 years. Was it just skepticism in the past and now it's an irrefutable crisis? What am I missing?

As for PSA's response regarding altered cards, based on my past experience, one should be cynical regarding PSA's disturbing history of dealing with the problem.

No argument here. I don't see anyone defending PWCC at this point, and I truly do not understand the defense of PSA's statement pushing burden back on to the collector, minimizing the issue, and disowning the full scope of the guarantee. I get it of course from a corporate standpoint. Not an ethical one.

Who cares. It's happening now. The past does not define the present.

Holy sheet is that really you? How are you my friend?

You cant properly examine a card in a slab.

Honestly, I don't even get it from a corporate standpoint. From a business standpoint, it makes zero sense to continue to damage your reputation with those who supply your profits. A smart business decision would be to immediately bite the bullet to regain consumer confidence. They aren't thinking long term, and that is bad business and shows me those in charge over there aren't very bright. If I had stock in PSA, it would be gone before it gets much worse. PWCC is signing their own death warrant. Even if getting through this costs them a couple million, it would benefit them greatly to be proactive and helpful. But they are clearly digging in, and that is bad news for anyone with stock or with investments in their graded cards.

No major complaints here Peter. Just enjoying life outside of baseball cards. :D

I'm glad to see you're still here fighting for truth, justice and the American way.

89 degrees uphill I am afraid.

I think their experience tells them all scandals blow over so preserve the bottom line.

Well then I hope it backfires on them.

I vote for REA. I’ve never had a moment when I doubted they would do the right thing.

Of course not but so what. :eek: A partial second opinion is better than none here.

It should have been dealt with twelve years ago when I approached PSA Customer Service about the problem and other times since and consequently more than likely tens of thousands of altered cards have been sold to unsuspecting collectors and the cards will exist longer than the collectors and just be repeatedly sold and bought with no knowledge of the alterations.

At this point, I would feel better with a TPG that ONLY slabs unaltered cards and does not do numerical grades. So their only focus is spotting fakes and alterations while using the best possible slabbing techniques and tech to keep cards safe. PSA and BGS are done, IMO. I love the BGS slabs, but they slab sheet cuts and can't spot alterations. I hate PSA slabs and they can't spot alterations. SGC slabs are ugly and flimsy. So now what?

Okay, but it wasn't. Should it be ignored now because it wasn't taken care of earlier.

You may have to bust wax, John.

I've not posted much at all on this, but have certainly been active in reading as much as I can. Maybe that's because I have a job, and a second small business on the side (not card related).

What bothers me about going back to the seller is what happens if that seller bought the card from another seller earlier. Now is that seller supposed to go back to the last seller? And then so on? Not all sellers are the original graders.

Back to the car comparison, if you buy a used (and relatively new) car from someone, and that car has a recall, do you go back to the guy you bought it from? Of course not.

The whole premise of PSA's business model is to remove the doubt around the product they viewed.

For me right now, my buying habits have in fact simply stopped. Have been that way for about three weeks now. This makes me sick, and I'm not sure how much I want to continue at the moment. While I'm a small fish, this hurts all dealers, and I will guess am not alone at eliminating my purchases.

Further, this fall I have planned and booked a trip to New York, primarily around finally bringing a large amount of my collection into the PSA offices in NJ, or at the New York Comic Con. My wife and I are spending ten days in the city, but the destination for this vacation was predicated around getting some of my higher end stuff graded. While it may not be much to some collectors here, it is a lot for me. Included in the batch is a complete set of V145-1 hockey with a nice Morenz, Clancy, and Joliat RC's and a host of HOF'ers, some 52 Topps including Matthews and Mays, and dozens and dozens of other cards in the $100-$1000 range. It would cost me, I don't know, a couple of thousand to grade them, if not more? In any case, it is now off the radar. Not giving these guys four figures of cash for an "opinion" that cannot be backed up. I will, however, have an extra day or so in New York, and some extra cash.

Dan whatever became of our buddy Scottie Scissors?

Did you make that number up? Nobody is saying it’s possibly 1,000 cards. There were 950 cards in just 1 submission.

I think he's playing the spin game of limiting it to ones with actual conclusive before and after photos. Whatever.

Excellent point... that "side view" is really obscured by the slab.

According to the link that was posted earlier in this thread there are about 350ish “verified” items that people bought for an aggregate of around $750k.

If you eyeball the list of alleged flip number ranges of suspected cards that is posted on BO the last time I checked it looked like there were on the order of 1000 items. I did say “so far”.

It’s early into this. Nobody knows how deep this rabbit hole goes. I also said I expect that the number would grow.

What you call spin I call letting it play out and in facts before rushing to judgment. Anyone who owns a significant number of PSA authenticated items has a vested interest in what ultimately comes out of this. I see no one questioning the person who posted that there were over 100,000 items about how he came up with that number.


I don’t understand the predominant need to try to hang PSA and significantly increase the damage to innocent collectors based on what we have learned so far.

Well, that was the sum of like 6 submissions. But there have been another 1000 just from Moser in the recent few years. The fact that Joe Orlando was quoted as knowing Moser was submitting bad cards 15 years ago and they did not ban his account is very telling.

You need to send a check or credit card in order to pay for the items, and who would vouch for Moser time and time again to cover his items or pay for his services? (Well Brent, but who else?)

They need to release all of his submitted cards, decertify them so that the website tells them to return them for a review under the grade guarantee, and then actually do their job a second time. If they have to crack the card to see the edges, no problem. They have the slabbing machines. No reason they shouldn't see the edges clearly and not have to worry about glare to detect reglossing/recoloring.

They need to post on the front page of the website their lukewarm initial answer to make their owners more aware of the issue. I did get an email response from Mr. Sloan today.

That’s along the lines of the J&J approach that was used with the Tylenol issue years ago. It was the classic “right” way to handle a problem of this nature, although admittedly the consequences of that one were potentially life and death

It would be nice to have that kind of approach taken, but given what has been done in the past by PSA I doubt we will see anything near that. The more familiar “circle the wagons” approach is more typical from their playbook.

And handling cards with “razor sharp” corners is not potentially a life and death issue?

and so is the second...DFA