Are you sure there are more cards being doctored today than 10-20 years ago, as opposed to just more of a concerted effort today and better tools to out doctored cards?

Agree here. If they actually review it, the recoloring should be pretty evident once the area is pointed out, not that it ever should have to be pointed out. They are supposed to make sure cards like this do not get into holders.

Unlike so many other alterations that are much harder to detect once the card is in the holder, the recoloring is not. I think they write checks on cards like this when they feel the alteration is not masked by the fact the card is encapsulated. This is why their guarantee is utterly worthless.

I would take this deal every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

The current value difference between a 7 and an 8.5 is well into 5 figures.

Now whether I should take the proceeds and invest it back into another comparable piece is another question, but I will cross that bridge if I ever get there.

At this point, I'm not sure what is being accomplished by BODA continuing to call out some of these cards. Particularly those which were altered by guys like Moser. It's not like we're going to further tarnish his reputation. I think the message that he alters cards is pretty clear by now. Continuing to post examples of his work can only hurt innocent collectors at this point. And the legal exposure for the BODA crew is very much non-zero. If they are wrong about a card and it costs someone money, they could easily be sued. Similar suits are currently pending, in fact.

Does every high end collector just sit around and wait for their turn in the BODA hopper now? Should we all just light our 401c on fire now?

Or perhaps the opposite will happen. The more that BODA posts, the more the hobby learns about what sorts of alterations are possible, and how they can be performed. Perhaps we will start seeing some of these well known card doctors offering their services with links to the BODA threads for free marketing, "As seen on BODA"

Very original Travis, see my post 16.

Lol. You must have planted a seed!

I read somewhere that Brian Brusokas is now working at PWCC. This is a joke, right? He's not really working there, is he?

I think continuing to out altered cards that have gotten past PSA has a lot of value.
Awareness and knowledge are important.

He has worked there for several months, I believe. Actually, I think he works for Fanatics, who owns PWCC (Hope that name goes away). Personally, I think he gives the new company a lot more credibility. I have always have been a fan of his, to the dismay of some collectors/dealers. One dealer whom I have called a friend for years will barely speak to me as he saw me chatting with law enforcement at the National. He's probably up to no good anyway LOL...

That all said there are FBI Special Agents who took his place, thank goodness.

I might add, I am a huge fan of Corndog and BODA at BO.....wish there were more of them!! Keep going guys....
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The latter. Much better tools than before. I am sure AI will make this work easier in the future.

Before bidding/buying any slabbed card, I now make it point to check the cert and any past sales before I jump right in.

Regarding the part in bold... That's good to know. Hope they are actually doing something and not just sitting on their hands. Would love to see some long overdue arrests, given the overwhelming evidence of fraud.

Pulling this out probably amounts to a non-sequitur at this point, but it caught my attention because I don't think I've ever seen KCC discussed on N54 before.

I would agree with you that what he does (at least on vintage) stops short of true card doctoring. If soaking a T206 is not a sin, then neither is using moisture / humidity to lift dents out of cards or to perk up pressed-down corners from screw cases. In the right set of circumstances in a musty attic or basement, the same thing could happen naturally. I know that his "spray" has drawn criticism too, but whatever it's ingredients - it's a quick drying formula that leaves nothing on the surface. I ordered a small bottle just to play with it, and had moderate success lessening the appearance of (not totally removing) light wrinkles and creases on postwar vintage on some test cards in my own PC. As I'm not setting out to do this for a living or even make it part of my hobby, (and his recommended practices if you do it on a lot of cards can be quite time consuming) I kind of quit after that.

Kurt does also have a "polish" for shiny ultramodern cards that seems to get out light scratches and imperfections. His videos are interesting to watch to say the least - and even though the polish to me seems to be a bit more in the vein of doctoring, I don't think he's ever had anything rejected by PSA or SGC. He's done everything from modern 1/1's to '52 Mantles it seems with good results.

This is interesting to me just because of the upfront, no secrets nature of it and the way Kurt runs his YouTube channel. Given recent events and indeed the original subject of this thread - it doesn't seem like he will run out of business anytime soon.

For those of us who grew up when cards were not worth much, or we didn't think so anyhow, I doubt any of us would have imagined doing any of this stuff to a card. I am not sure what that says, but it says something.

Yes, definitely. The question is to what extent? 2x? 5x?10x? More? Who knows. But it's far easier to get a micro trimmed modern card through grading than a vintage one. And now that the internet has effectively published a library of the different types of alterations that are possible along with the various techniques and tutorial videos on offer, paired with the overall growth of the hobby and a diverging opinion amongst younger collectors about what even qualifies as an alteration to begin with, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that the number of altered cards being submitted for grading today is probably at least an order of magnitude higher than it was 15 years ago.

The AI models would still have to be trained by humans though

I think it's more of a personality thing. If you have OCD like me, then you'd want your cards to be as clean as possible because you enjoy looking at them, regardless of value. I've cleaned countless $1 cards for my own personal enjoyment that I have no intention of ever grading or selling. I don't want a thousand other people's random funk on my cards.

I also have dirty cards in slabs that I really really really want to clean, but to do so would come at a great cost because they'd just end up with the same grade again after cleaning and resubmitting, and the grading fees on them would be in excess of $1k each

That may be the exception I would think; most of what is done to cards today seems in preparation for grading, regardless of whether or not it's deemed doctoring.

That's fascinating. OCD can manifest itself in many ways, it seems....

I have OCD (which runs in our family) but mine affects my collecting quite differently. If a card has any hint of doctoring or alteration, my OCD will immediately dismiss the possibility of owning it. Unless the card (or any collectible for that matter) is all-original, my eyes will always be drawn to the newly added color, trimming or bleaching.

Any aspect that is not original to the card itself will automatically deem the card useless to me. Weird... huh!

Not weird to me at all in fact THAT sounds 100% normal. You must have a different kind of OCD: Original Card Desires. I have it too and not seeking treatment.

Both are in DSM V or whatever we are up to.

OCD-1 OK with Card Doctoring
OCD-2 Opposed to Card Doctoring

LOL. Priceless.

Oh, I definitely don't want trimmed, recolored, or bleached cards either. My goal is to bring them back at close as possible to their original condition.

DSM IV > DSM V

And I have "OCD-3 That's not card doctoring" syndrome

Also, perhaps worth pointing out is that there is a significant difference between someone being a perfectionist and someone being clinically diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. The two are often conflated in casual conversations or nomenclature. To have true OCD, you generally will experience actual physical distress or anxiety if you don't perform some sort of ritual. Which can often be something silly, such as Nomar Garciaparra's routine when he gets up to the plate. Surely, he had OCD as well. When I was younger, I used to have to get up from bed and flip my light switch on/off 3 times every night, or I wouldn't be able to sleep.

To me lifting out dents or wrinkles is altering. I have doubts that the cardstock stays undented once it becomes dry again.

If the stuff wasn't so expensive, I'd say the spray sounds a lot like watermark detector fluid. But one little 3.4 oz bottle is about $20-25.

I once bought a PSA 8 1950s card with an obvious crease. PSA bought it back. I assume it had been taken out and came back, there was no way to have missed it.

Perfectly valid opinion. And I am not sure the extent to which certain dents or creases stay removed. Is it still altering if you cannot detect it a month or a year later? Maybe. But if unable to be detected, the hobby obviously isn't going to consider it altered permanently.

I got some old beater Batman cards given to me 20+ years ago. Someone had them in the basement and they stunk. I soaked them and it got rid of the smell and most of the wrinkles disappeared and the major creases turned into minor wrinkles.

I still have them someplace. I noticed a few years ago when I ran across them the creases and wrinkles have come back but not as bad as they were to begin with. For many years they looked really nice so in my case they did come back but it took several years before they started to reappear.

We all miss the Axis II disorders.

It depends on the extent of the indent and how you "fix" it. If the paper fibers were broken or torn, then you're not going to unbreak them. But most card stocks are like sponges. If it's dry, it's rigid, if it's moist, it's malleable. If you take a warped or dented sponge and you get it wet, it returns to its original shape. You could say it has a memory of sorts. Most card stock is the same. The issues arise when people don't know what they're doing and they try to "fix" indents by just smashing the hell out of a card. All they're doing is damaging the paper fibers. This can often be detected.

But if you simply toss a card into a humidor, you're not going to damage it at all, and you can often get the card to "remember" its original form, just like a sponge.

Here's an example: I put my 61 Koufax into a humidor and these surface indents disappeared. No smashing needed. Just some moisture was all it took. If this is considered "doctoring", then so is shipping a card from Vegas to New Orleans.

I think this is where claim that creases can return comes from. People finding creases in high grade slabs and assuming there's no way it would have been missed if it was there during grading. This assumption places more faith in the competency of TPGs than I have though.

OCD=Occupational Card Doctor.

This was blatant.

Did you get a respond from PSA on your concern?

In spite of their autoresponse that they would make every attempt to get back to me within three business days, it's been (/checks calendar) ~5 business days with no response.

In related news, I actually had emailed them a few days before about another matter, and they haven't responded to that email either.

So either they're ignoring all of my emails, or they're just slow. Or both.

Frustrating. I hope they back to you soonest.

We'll see. I think I've worked my way through the grief stages so that I'm now halfway in the depression stage, and halfway in the acceptance phase.

Maybe I need to work my way back to anger now!

I have been told that a sure fire method to eliminate creases, wrinkles, surface abrasions and soiling is to apply a small amount of nuclear waste, ensuring you are suited up when doing so. Supplies are often difficult to find, although I believe Japan is selling small bits through the dark web.
The only down side is the fact that your card is now radioactive.

The acceptance phase meaning you are OK with having altered cards as long as they get you those registry points?

I think when a collector is motivated to be the top of a registry they have to accept or deny the reality of altered cards being in their collections.

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. :)