HA. Always straight to assuming the worst! Doggone killing me, smalls...

I may be a set registry goon, but by golly, I want it to be real and not based on some worthless card doctor creating it. I realize that some will suggest this isn't possible. But in that case, I guess I want the impossible. Hate me for being a gullible rube if you want, but not because my motives are impure.

Acceptance in this case just means resignation. Resignation that I've got garbage in my collection, and I need to figure out a way to deal with it.

And resignation that I may have more garbage in my collection than I've previously been willing to contemplate.

I didn't assume anything, I just asked what you meant. I am glad you are willing to deal with it. Honestly, as I've said before, the best way IMO is to downgrade a bit and be very careful on those purchases going forward. Stay away from certain sellers. Research every card as best you can. Don't buy small cards (they may be good, but if you have a choice, avoid them). Etc.

You most definitely do not have garbage in your collection. Please don’t say that.

I hope you are able to make the best out of your situation.

You're probably actually beating the odds. Since this thread has largely turned into a multi-pronged attack at you individually for reasons I can't understand and you have the detectives from an unrelated forum scowering your collection specifically, if they can only find one example in your high grade collection you're doing well.

I have tons of altered cards, it hurts their values but I enjoy looking at and sorting them anyways. If the worst outcome of a situation is that you lost some value and have a Willie Mays baseball card, it ain't a bad situation.

This is NOT an attack on Nicolo in any way, but whether or not BODA can trace back a specific card that is altered is meaningless. The overwhelming majority of altered cards are not traceable like that. Even more so on older certs.

And I also strongly disagree with your not a bad situation assessment. I can't speak for Nicolo or what is important to him, but if I found conclusive proof that an altered card was in my collection despite my best efforts, I would not be philosophical about it at all nor could I continue to enjoy it. I should amend that to say a trimmed or recolored card, there are some things some would call alterations I could live with.

Yeah no clue where 1911 is coming from other than to stir up BS again. As for the guys on BO, I sent a friend to them who was worried about his blind buying of PSA 8s and one of the guys said they are not able to vet a collection that way. Apparently they start by using photos of known or trackable purchases of suspicious dealers and try to find the same card in a higher holder. Sounds worse than grading cards for 8 hours a day.

Feelings are individual and personal. If the worst thing that happens to me one week is that a baseball card I have turns out to have been altered and I don't like it as much (still in a slab, so the fiscal loss is minimal), I've had a great week. It's just a baseball card without much of a definable loss.

Yes, we all have different takes on the issue.

If I ever do a registry set, I am going to call it "Schrodinger's Cards" because they are in a quantum superposition of altered or unaltered until someone actually checks them for alterations. The intermediate character of the card formed by superposition thus expresses itself through the probability of a particular result for an observation being intermediate between the corresponding probabilities for the original states, not through the result itself being intermediate between the corresponding results for the original states. Or something like that...

If I understood you, I would agree. :)

I think he (hey Adam) cut and pasted :)
.

You took the words right out of my mouth!

We have a name for this distribution in math-nerd-land. It's called the Tweedie distribution.

...

All but the idea and first and last sentences...that's mine.

In a physics class where the prof had a sense of humor I asked about how uncertainty changed is for example I did something to force knowlede of the cats condition without actually observing it. When he asked for details I said a large forging press or drop hammer should do nicely (Note, I would NOT advocate this in anything but a thought experiment. )

That class got "interesting" very quickly...... It also got nearly incomprehensible just as quickly.

I think that BO is doing good job...one thing that bothers me in their pointing out cards. I was in the screen printing biz for many years. So paper printing is similar but much faster speed. Now lint and things get on the screen so they need to be wiped down. But before it gets caught there must be a lot of cards with the same error spots....not just one card. So unless they can confirm the buyer and seller are the same person to call it out.

Ya, I always get a good laugh when they circle common print flaws that are on every copy of the same card. But ignoring that, they are still almost always posting the same card.

My favorite though is when they post a card that has a little white spot on it in the before photo, but which is missing in the after photo. Then they claim that recoloring was performed, and then the choir sings. Silly lint removal bandits! Lock em up!

card
 

...and this is still about the altered Monte Irvin card... ?? LOL

Some are more convincing then others.

To me the most convincing are the fiber inclusions in the cardstock. Those are as good as anything as an identifier.

Print flaws are a very mixed bag.
Some are very transient. One job we had we needed to go through looking for flaws.(the booklet was being given to people pictured in it, and theirs had to be perfect. The rest were for attendees, and flaws were fine unless they were major.) most were white spots, and most only appeared on one booklet. A couple were more common. But we were a high quality usually low production shop. On cards, I've seen similar flaws that are sort of common.
Other flaws are flaws on the plate itself. Those are very consistent, and some cane be white or colored dots. If those are there and then later not there I have questions.... Tempered by the fact that some scanners can be set to automatically remove random specks, or do that by default.

Sounds like a suggestion an economist (the pseudo-science that has successfully predicted 9 of the last 4 recessions) might make:

A physicist, a chemist, and an economist were stranded on a desert island with no implements and a can of food. They tried to figure out how to open the can. The physicist and the chemist were stymied. The economist shrugged and said, "I know how to open it: first, assume we have a can opener."

Any update from PSA on either? Curious what their response is (if anything at all).

The latter. Whole lot of nothing at all so far. Could be a long wait for them to respond to their email.

Long gone are the days of good customer service, in so many companies.