Zero chance it simply bumped. Those marks, while common, were removed and touched up. Card fibers on the reverse prove they are the same card.

I don't know the OP, though he seems like a good guy and I sincerely hope he gets the restitution he's looking for. That said, it's impossible to convince me that he and his ilk aren't the source of this entire problem. Of course not knowingly, but the happy willingness to spend $22k more on a 10 than a 9 is ultimately what is being taken advantage here. It wouldn't be entirely fair to put this squarely on the guys with deep pockets, as no one deserves to get ripped off, regardless of their financial standing. However, they do have a seat at the table which, like or not, is what money buys you in this country. I just wish enough of them would be willing to take their money off the table to make a difference.

Actually, there’s a good chance it bumped to a 10, and was photoshopped for resale and not altered.

Hasn’t anyone ever received a card that wasn’t quite the same as the scan? Even from PWCC?
Of course, doesn’t mean it’s trimmed/altered

Before I grab my pitchfork and torch I’d like to hear from the owner to see if the marks are there.

He has indicated he is attempting to return it. If it was just a bump, don't you think Brent would have told him that? And would have urged him to compare the card in hand with the 9 scan?

If it was an in the holder bump the cert would be the same. Out of the holder re grade for a bump is definitely possible.

I he's returning it, that's good enough.

I agree with you and would add his risk is much less then the 9 to altered value delta. If PSA kills it, it goes to SGC then BVG then back to PSA. Guy has altered thousands of cards and has enough data to know what his chance is of it slipping through, somewhere. He knows they consistently miss these types of alterations. I mean these guys are getting 52 mantles through, its incompetence at the TPG IMO

Regarding the '52 Musial:

Here's a picture of the card from Heritage Auctions (it is from their April 2009 Signature Auction, where it sold for $1,673):

https://dyn1.heritagestatic.com/lf?s...oduct.chain%5D

Now, here's the image of the card, apparently from September 2017:

https://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/3/9/...30283230_o.jpg

Finally, here's the image of the card as a PSA 10:

https://img.auctiva.com/imgdata/3/9/...30283221_o.jpg

So, if it was worked on before PSA graded it a 9, this work was done before April 2009, as that is when it was auctioned as a PSA 9 by Heritage.

Steve

Yes, his auction partner throws a HE sticker on it and rally’s his big time buyers to run up the price, with Moser playing shill. Even a 9 likely ends with big profit. Thats a big part of the racket, the auctioneer is not impartial. He is coaching buyers, would be fascinating to see the bid history on the cards Moser buys vs those he sells, and analyze for bid history / retractions etc

I just noticed something:

If you look at the scan of the PSA 9 from 10 years ago (Heritage), the white spot on Stan's left sleeve is NOT there. This matches with the PSA 10 scan.

So, on the scan from 2017 of the reholdered PSA 9, the visible white spot must simply be a speck of dust either on the slab, or on the scanner.

It would be interesting to know if the black dot in the left upper front border of the card is actually there on the PSA 10. Some scanners, depending on the setting, are known to automatically take out extraneous dots, due to their auto-correct functions.

Steve

Edit - didn't realize what happened here.

Here's 3.5X, the black dot is barely visible while there's and extra one lower

http://www.net54baseball.com/picture...ictureid=27012

Well said, agreed completely.

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Cert Number 08168192 is already registered by another member.

If it is two different cards, PSA really needs to contact the owner, if they haven't already, to see if it's still owned. I'm still holding out hope!!

A slightly better image of the PSA10

https://forums.collectors.com/discus...sa-gem-mint-10

There are a lot of dead cert numbers still clogging up pop reports and set registries. That's one reason I recommended they delete both the before and after certs.

What I mean
 

Is there could be a grader inside. Not saying PSA actively complicit but I would expect a guy who is actively doctoring cards wouldn't take such a risk of loss. I was talking about the Musial and it appears the jump is price is much more than $3k if it got a 10, which it did.

PSA needs some heat on their A $$. They are either willfully and blissfully ignorant in their grading to let so many big time, big dollar cards that are fraudulent hop-skip-jump through the grading process -or- they , or more specifically a couple of rogue graders, are complicit in this whole mess.

I'll sign that comment and add contact info if need be as I will stand behind my comment and feelings on the matter and don't give a Sh*t. $25k of fraud on the Musial, that was already a great card!!. That's outrageous and every collector who loves this hobby should be completely furious with this. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

David Riley
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VERY well said!

I do not see enough evidence to be convinced any fraud was committed in this case. Definitive statements like this are not fair to the owner of this card, or to the owners of some of the other cards in question. It may turn out this card was altered and it might not. But just as in more serious real life situations a false allegation can do more damage than can be fixed if it's later determined there was no evidence to support the charge.

Imagine if you spent a few thousand, or tens of thousands on one of the cards listed on these threads and it turns out nothing was done to the card. How difficult do you think it will be to sell it down the road?

and purchased from PWCC I say the same thing, probably fake:)

Four fake corners gets preferential treatment? The hell you say...:eek:

I'm way behind in reading this thread. Saw the subject line and thought of opening a few times but never did. Until this morning...over coffee...I decided to dig in. And it's at this post, that I will take intermission...as I surely need a beer and bucket of popcorn for everything that comes next. And unfortunately, I just ate breakfast. Until tonight...

Pretty damned easy, as long as it still resides in a PSA holder, and is presented to the collecting herd of sheep via auction or on eBay.

Smarter than a deer without a gun anyway.

I'm guessing it's much easier to deconstruct a perfect card. Keep your eyes peeled for a PSA 8.

Seriously? The card was sold twice by PWCC in the period of 7 months. First time to a proven card doctor and one of PWCC’s biggest buyers / consignors. Second time the card ends up in a 10 grade with what appear to be alterations. Or at minimum, photoshop scans. Buyer asks PWCC about the card and they claim NO knowledge on provenance. Buyer buys card and 2 weeks later send it back due to concerns.

Ya, nothing to see here, prob just a misunderstanding.

I thought he sent it back just recently, he bought it last year.

I want to know more about the restoration business Brent had/has. Is it a current business or something he ran in the past? All starting to make sense now.

In the e-mail Betsy sent me, she wrote that PWCC is dealing first with the cards that are obviously trimmed, colored and had corners built up. If some cards were "clearly altered," why were the cards being sold without disclosing the information?

I am not an attorney, and I am not pretending to be one, but isn't that fraud?

Every time either of them speaks.... but what she may mean is it's now obvious in light of the before and after pics which are not evidence.

and they will just keep submitting the same card time after time until they get the desired result. That's what they do, crack, flip, cut, soak, spoon, color, flip crack repeat...all day everyday for 15 years. Let that sink in

I agree with Peter. I don't think this implicates PSA.

I agree with Barry on another point. The difference between a '9' and '10' is largely subjective, except maybe as to centering. Like Barry, I have never understood the enormous difference in values at the high end.

Brent actually owned/owns a separate business restoring antiques.

Except they're supposed to be experts at authentication.

True. I was speaking to the fraud. Hopefully, these recent disclosures will result in PSA and/or other services stepping up their game in identifying alterations.

Too little too late, isn't it? How many dollars have they taken for a service they weren't capable of delivering? It sounds like there are some VERY forgiving people on this forum.

I don’t get the blind forgiveness either... other than they are already so monetarily invested in PSA slabs. Time for a new competent TPG to step forward. Or better yet, less emphasis on TPGs, period.

Just as the stock market moves or not in response to new information, this market either will or won't respond as it collectively deems the new information important. Nobody is coerced here, it's the aggregate of thousands of individual decisions. We'll see. Given the low entry barriers, theory at least would dictate that if there is a significant opportunity for a new grader, someone will make a go for it.

For the record, I am the OP of THIS thread and was simply pointing out what I thought was amazing card. :p I see people referencing the "OP" but I believe /hope they are referring to a different thread.

I think I need to clarify that my comments weren't meant to excuse PSA's failure to identify alterations, but rather that I did not see evidence of fraudulent activity. The company should, of course, be held accountable to meet whatever guarantees it has made with regard to its services.

The edge had a questionable trim in the 9 holder to begin with

Yah, they mean the guy who bought the card.

Unless they can offer a better alternative to the PSA registry, it would be foolish for a new grading company to start up. The registry is what drives everything.

I imagine there are tons of collectors who don't have any registry presence. Yes, a competitive advantage for PSA to be sure, but not insurmountable.

A good friend of mine has a really great wrestling card collection and is working on high grade Wrestling All Stars sets and he isn't remotely worried about the registry. That said the scarcity of the cards can drive market behavior.

No one is taking on PSA unless they were to get shut down. In order to use another grader for the majority of your collection you want their grades to be the most coveted. It is too great of feat to get the market to switch.

New grading companies certainly would be welcomed because competition forces companies to get better but the landscape is very well defined.

If people completely lose faith in PSA's ability to detect alteration, and many are close right now I think, that would offset the registry to a great extent in my opinion. Cards on which people spend 4 and 5 figures are being outed by the hour by three guys behind a keyboard. Imagine the real scope of this.

One of the comments you have made is that many collectors are so heavily invested in PSA that they have no incentive to change or appear concerned about recent findings. I think this is true and reinforces my belief the risks are too high for collectors to run from their PSA collections.

Maybe. I am not sure what to think at this point honestly, I'm bouncing around from hour to hour on what I think will happen. After I see another disastrous card I start thinking people have to care at some point; then later I think well maybe not just too many people invested in the status quo.

I don't play in the really expensive segment of the market but I am someone who has submitted a lot of cards that are in my own collection and so the game doesn't stop just because of a bad call.

I have tried to track down cards in a specific grade for years and you need people to get totally turned off from graded cards to have things change significantly.

What else do many of us have to do? We like to collect cards and so grading creates challenges that are really tough and make trying to keep searching worth while. You can still rip packs for the price range of cards I collect and so hunting in many cases is still possible. Grading is the final step in the process for me. I got to catch the fish first and then go to the weigh station. If it doesn't get the grade I want I generally keep it and just keep trying.

I can't even remember the last time I opened a pack. Having known about this fraud for years I've been pretty diligent and follow a number of rules but even then there is only so much you can do.

I have never been able to keep one pack sealed I have bought in the last ten years.

So many times I said I am going to keep this one sealed and cave pretty quickly.

When it goes your way it is ridiculously fun. I ripped a 1985 Topps WWF rack box and it was amazing. I bought a few packs as a kid but any money I could get my hands on was going to 85 Topps baseball instead looking for a Dwight Gooden so it was incredible to get to tear through a box. I self subbed a Hogan Yellow 10 and a Roddy Piper too. This keeps people like me addicted.

Yeah for many of us of course packs are where it all started. As pure as it gets. The closest I have come in some time was breaking my own rule and buying a raw card from a seller I normally am very cautious with -- a fairly pricey Brady rookie. Huge scan, I just couldn't see any possible issue with it. Submitted it and sure enough got a 10.

I bet you were excited when you saw the screen. :)

I think I waited for the box. But yeah. I mean the whole thing on one level is absurd, it's now worth 6x or more what I paid.

I was going to start building high graded PSA vintage (1910/1911, PSA 8+ 1951 Parkies, etc) sets this year but nope, can't do it with all that's going on. No way. I'm doing these raw and in binders instead and that's coming from a loyal PSA customer of 15 years.

I am invested emotionally in a PSA/DNA set (signed79.com) and will finish getting that upgraded and slabbed, but no more PSA projects for now.

Just another reason people get addicted.

I love collecting but I have made no bones about the fact that when I send in cards for grading I want to increase their value. The potential margins are shocking in cards. Find me a stock you can magically make worth six times what you paid. Obviously that can't be done and so this kind of massive escalation in price that takes place in every segment gets money chasing cards.

Tom Brady has proven to be a total blue chip investment. His cards are like Amazon shares and when they came public there was little fanfare but have done nothing but go up over time. Incredible.

This won’t shake anyone major player out of the registry. I think this incident just points out that PSA needs to add graders and improve inspection methods. I have no doubt that they will do this and they will come out of this a stronger company with improved grading procedures.

This is what i believe as well
 

I agree with Jay 100% on this.

He only has to make it work 1 time in 8 for this to pay off.

"Pot odds..."

Some rose-colored glasses up in here. The core reason for PSA and BGS' existance is keeping their customers safe from fraud. lol 'This is fine' comes to mind. As if these companies will police themselves.

You get a flu shot every year to minimize your chance of getting the flu. You don't smoke (hopefully) to minimize your chance of getting heart and respiratory disease. You wear a seat belt to minimize your chance of getting killed in an auto accident. Nothing completely eliminates bad outcomes; you can, however, reduce the probability of them happening. Grading cards substantially reduces the chance of getting doctored cards; it does not eliminate it. Procedures will improve over time to reduce the probability of getting a doctored card still further. However, like in the prior examples, the probability will never go to zero. If you can live with that great. If not, you will never be happy.

Jay perhaps but they've been doing this for 28 years now. What's your basis for thinking things are improving? For me these revelations are confirming my wildest fears.

What is really being overlooked here, imo, is how good is the work that is being done? Nobody has answered this question no matter how many times I have asked it. It is pretty easy, in most cases, from what I have seen to tell the alterations from before and after pics. But what about cards that have never been previously holdered or cards that have never been sold online to have an electronic footprint? Is the work so good that it can't be reasonably detected by the advanced collector or by TPG's? I'm not interested in another response that "Oh the TPG's are the professionals and should be able to....". Yeah, I get that, but would this work be undetectable by 99.9% of people without before and after pics??

And it's a good question. I've never seen one of the cards in question in person.

I have posted several times that in my opinion, at least some of the work is very very difficult to detect given the level of review. This isn't crime lab review by any means.

Peter- First, I think grading has gotten marginally more accurate over time. I also think that because of the current situation, really a wake up call, PSA, if they are smart, will try to upgrade their procedures. I know if I was running the company that is what I would be doing. It's a public company. If management doesn't do this the board ought to step in and find management who will.

I think their grading may have improved, but I have no confidence that their authentication has. Big difference. Their corporate culture over the years does not give me much confidence that they will do anything more than close ranks, maintain their usual secrecy, do damage control, and try to shift blame and responsibility to others. And above all else, minimize by whatever means necessary the hit to that guarantee. So far their response has been a page out of that playbook. We will see and I hope you are right.

Procedures will also improve over time to increase the probability of getting a doctored card past the graders. But everything happening now is small potatoes compared to what eventually kills off the TPG business and probably the hobby itself -- AI and 3D printing technology advanced enough to fabricate new "old" cards identical to the actual old cards. It's not as though the molecules that make up a T206 Wagner are particularly scarce on our planet. At that point though I guess we'll have bigger problems to worry about.

Nail Squarely Hit!

Steve

The recoloring seems pretty evident, even to the naked eye in the scans. Maybe because it was pointed out?

That's entirely possible. If you know where to look, you'll be able to see it every time.

I'd really like to get one of these cards in hand to see how good the alterations are and if I can tell.

I will say that if the time allowed for inspection is under 1-2 minutes, the work doesn't have to be all that good.
Given a bit more time, and even pretty good alterations should be detectable without much technology. And given a very good amount of time and some specific info on that particular issue, there should be almost no undetectable alterations.

Present, ever growing list of doctored cards, notwithstanding...

Not sure if anyone read this ..

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/y...fraud.amp.html


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How was this resolved? It looked like you might have gotten hit with other Mosered cards, right? Did they inform you of all the cards you bought from all the possible known scammers when you contacted them?
Thanks!

https://beta.washingtonpost.com/spor...outputType=amp


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