I'm not laughing but I am smiling because I have known for 10 years or more that this stuff was going on and I never thought it would be exposed so dramatically.

Good for the hobby my body part.

I'm not convinced you've read all the threads if you don't think PSA is being criticized. There's plenty of anger directed both at PSA and BGS for letting these cards through. Yes, there is somewhat more focus on PWCC at some level, but they're also the only ones who have said anything official since this all started.

If you have read through most of those threads, are you really not at least persuaded that PWCC is involved in this in some way or another, and very likely pretty significantly involved in it? There are HUNDREDS of cards at this point that were sold by PWCC, to a known bad actor, that reappear in later PWCC auctions in higher graded slabs. But I guess that's all just all coincidence? That's just one person that has a pretty significant internet paper trail, but there are others that also getting exposed and others still that are being researched.

The below are statements directly from Brent's posts on alteration/conservation/tenets - these are his posts, they're not made up.

Bold is mine to point out the statements that are essentially an admission of their working with these people in the past, including the final line which based on my reading says they knew they were dealing with people who had previously been banned at TPGs from submitting. Some of what has been published so far sure seems to indicate that PWCC was responsible for submitting raw cards to PSA on behalf of these individuals since the consignors couldn't do it themselves.

Is there any other way to read these statements than to conclude that PWCC knew these people and knew these cards were running through their auctions in massive quantities?

Maybe all this isn't good enough in a courtroom, but it's pretty clear what happened here.

"We at PWCC will not tolerate our brand’s use as a front for bad behavior. That day is over. Today is a new day, based on facts and enforceable policies for which we expect the entire market to hold us accountable...

PWCC will officially cease working with any individual who has a proven track record of consistently hurting trust in the marketplace, the brand of PWCC, or the reputations of the grading companies upon which our market is based. We will collaborate with the grading companies to ensure bad actors are flagged, uniformly known, and that all is done to prevent them from affecting our market. PWCC will not work with any individuals whom the grading companies have banned, regardless of their individual track record with PWCC."

Me too. Many did. But the depth and breadth is more astonishing than I had anticipated it would be, to say the least.

You have only been collecting for 10 years.:)

I have been collecting for almost 35 years now and found out about the shady side very early on.

Trimming is very risky, they must have some kind of “back up” Incase it does not grade.

Um, I wasn't referring to the peanut gallery. More like the people in the soup.

I am sure there are many people who could testify based on direct dealings that he knew.

And the jokes just keep coming...

I meant the specific person and relationship now in the spotlight.

Yeah. The irony is these young guys (I am assuming) over on BO were initially out to expose the trimmers in their modern segment.

Very smart move Bobby. At least someone has eventually given you good advice.

I'm not the peanut gallery.

I have plenty of soup, I just don't pay people for opinions on mine.

Everybody who has purchased a card in the last 20 years is effected by this issue, but anybody who is just now finding out about this issue must not have noticed that the very first paid opinion delivered by the king of all paid opinion givers was for a trimmed card.

It's all been down hill from there, and anybody who ever thought it wasn't, well, they were / are delusional.

EVERY card EVER given a paid opinion is suspect.

Break out those kitchen knives (at least that's what I use) and get back to where this hobby was when (many (most?) of us) started, and before it was hijacked.

Each and every one of us who has paid for an opinion is part of the problem.

Doug "but maybe I'm completely wrong" Goodman

It started around the Copeland auction, right? Wasn't that auction full of trimmed cards besides the Wagner?

No, it started the moment we started paying people for their opinions and then treating those opinions as gospel.

Actually, the opinions were never completely treated as gospel, because most of the card "deserved a better opinion" according to their sellers.

So even though nobody ever seemed to get an opinion as good as they deserved (by definition a bad opinion), they still continued paying for them.

Yes but you said let's get the hobby back where it was. I think where it was, was riddled with trimmed cards.

TOTAL SPECULATION on my part...

I think they were submitting the altered cards under "minimum grade" service.

We know there are chunks of certain submissions with missing/unused numbers around cards that have been shown to likely be altered.

I don't submit cards for grading so I can't say this for certain, maybe someone who does can chime in.

My understanding is that if you just submit under normal service and they think it's been altered, you get it back with an "evidence of trimming" or "altered" label on the card saver.

However, if you submit under minimum grade and it doesn't make it for any reason, it just comes back saying it didn't meet minimum grade.

If you didn't want to "know" that PSA thought it was trimmed, the min grade service would be a good way to do it.

Again, not sure I'm right on this so hoping someone else who really does know can confirm or correct.

Not sure which response is best :

1 - Which we didn't buy because we were buying the card instead of the opinion...

2 - oh, you mean like today (based on this thread)?

I don't disagree, just questioning whether pre-grading was so great either I guess.

Their back up plan is "oh well, bummer" on to the next one.

Compared to the potential profit for a successful upping of opinion level, the cost of losing a card is minimal, and they can always send it in again.

Cost of doing business, all factored in based on years of knowing what percentage get through I would imagine. Plus I think they use inexpensive cards for practice to reduce risk, see what gets by, what doesn't.

Depends on what part of pre grading you are referring to. The prices was a lot better back then. If you are buying trimmed cards anyway why not spend less.

At the end of the day, there have always been, and always will be, assholes who will lie about what they are selling, and will game whatever system is in place for their benefit.

Since the phrase "buyer beware" comes from the Latin "caveat emptor" I will assume that means there were assholes when Latin was a more popular language... (ergo, a long time ago).

True enough. As I've said before, the first bushel of wheat sold in the Agora was probably shilled up.

There was plenty of shady stuff going on before TPGs got involved.

I imagine there always will be anywhere big money is involved. Seems the best you can hope for is that the bad guys get caught/punished and that minimizes people doing the same thing in the future.

The sellers of opinions have actively promoted the "shady" stuff from that first paid opinion #00000001.

They probably didn't charge for that one. :D

See, the jokes keep coming, and EVERYBODY laughed at that one.

I told you this thread was hilarious.

Good one Peter.

Agreed. Cards have been shilled pretty much since the first person started selling them. But the Registry took that to an exponentially higher level. And people bought in. Something about "Pride goeth before the fall" I suppose is now the situation. What a complete shit show.

The most famous / valuable card in our business (oops, I mean hobby) was trimmed, and EVERYBODY knows it and NOBODY cares.

It's always been a shit show, at least since after the founding fathers stopped writing notes on their cards and gluing them in folders.

As I've posted before, it shouldn't have been graded even if Mastro didn't trim it, because it was a post-factory sheet cut AUTH to begin with.

Ahhhh, but you are wrong young Peter, for the sellers of opinions have spoken and deemed it an 8 on a 10 scale.

I never understood why this aspect of it didn't get more attention. The Plank on the same Piedmont three card sheet that was cut in the 50s or whenever is an AUTH, so why not the Wagner which was never cut in the factory or put into a pack? But people seem obsessed with the trim job, which to my mind only made a nicer AUTH.

Don't disagree, but that is now somewhat irrelevant because it was. IMO, the current question is where do we go now? I damn sure don't have much confidence in the graders and have a even larger lack of confidence in eBay and most internet scans.

I'm not shooting at anyone here because I think that the BST has been wonderful for the most part. But for the rest? There are about 2 auction houses I personally trust currently (LOTG and REA) and not so much any of the others. Once you get to a certain level of collecting, that makes it pretty hard to go on. Do we go back to shows? I'm good with that but unless you have lots of free time, it certainly would make collecting more difficult.

Good questions. I've developed some damage control measures over the years, but I highly doubt it's been a perfect solution.

It strikes me that LOTG and/or REA have a vested interest in maintaining these reputations and may very well develop the technology to accurately and objectively determine that none of their auction lots contain altered cards. It would be good for business on several levels, including less frequent returns/buybacks, and selling more product for higher prices with certain assurances. Frankly, with so many auction houses selling vintage baseball cards, there would certainly be a competitive advantage if they did, especially in light of this full blown disaster.

If PSA can't do it competently, which is PSA's stated job, I'm not sure why you would expect Al or Brian to. Hopefully they can. But I think that's probably overreaching a little. They rely (or relied) on the PSA grades to do their stuff just as we did. I am sure they will look at things more critically than before, but I would guess that they both have to depend on the assigned grade. Time will tell.

Doug, solid post, but the scenario you suggest is farcical. The hobby is not going back to the good old days of having raw cards that may or may not have been altered anyway.

I agree that all cards in TPG holders are now more suspect than they were before. But come on - cracking all cards of my TPG cards out of their cases is going to do exactly what? There won't be much value in this purification ritual and it won't make them any more or less pure.

If the cards we have purchased with 3rd party opinions are trimmed/altered/conserved whatever you want to call it, then how will breaking them out of their holders fix anything? Will it somehow purify the cards? Are raw cards more pure and thus less prone to trimming, recoloring, or as PWCC calls some practices - conservation? While I am discouraged and feel that this fiasco cannot help but result in the diminution of the value of everyone's graded collections, I don't for a minute think that my cards would be worth more cracked out than not. I would bet that even though there will be a cloud over the TPG's opinions, a slabbed card will continue to carry a premium over a raw card because it has a better chance of being the grade shown than a raw card that looks like it might be.

Someday, either a new grading company or an existing grading company will come out with a process to remove the humans from the grading process and use optical scanning and CMM tools to measure card size. They might provide this service as an upgraded service alongside human opinions which will be viewed as less reliable but perhaps ok for lower priced, lower grade commons as an authentication option.

When that day comes, there will be a new class of graded cards whose value will exceed those of the human-graded slabbed cards of today's TPG's. I would expect that PSA will actually do this themselves to clean up their image but more importantly, open up a re-grading market for themselves. It will be like the after-market parts business is for cars. It will be more lucrative than the first wave of grading and it will cost them less.

In the process they will create another pool of over 3M cards that will be the target of their next money making endeavor - regrading their previously PSA human-graded cards, but with their new technology.

This will be the only reason that I can think of (other than to alter and resubmit or play the PSA lottery game of hoping for a bump up for a re-grade) that would result mass waves of people cracking out their cards from their holders.

Until that day, I will continue to use my kitchen knives to butter my biscuits.

Tony

Someday, either a new grading company or an existing grading company will come out with a process to remove the humans from the grading process and use optical scanning and CMM tools to measure card size. They might provide this service as an upgraded service alongside human opinions which will be viewed as less reliable but perhaps ok for lower priced, lower grade commons as an authentication option.

When that day comes, there will be a new class of graded cards whose value will exceed those of the human-graded slabbed cards of today's TPG's. I would expect that PSA will actually do this themselves to clean up their image but more importantly, open up a re-grading market for themselves. It will be like the after-market parts business is for cars. It will be more lucrative than the first wave of grading and it will cost them less.

In the process they will create another pool of over 3M cards that will be the target of their next money making endeavor - regrading their previously PSA human-graded cards, but with their new technology.

This will be the only reason that I can think of (other than to alter and resubmit or play the PSA lottery game of hoping for a bump up for a re-grade) that would result mass waves of people cracking out their cards from their holders.

Until that day, I will continue to use my kitchen knives to butter my biscuits.

Tony[/QUOTE]


And there you have it. We should just end this thread right here. We've come full circle to the ultimate motive of this entire debacle. A new high end grading service from PSA that will detect any form of alteration, conservation, trimming, etc., of any card, either raw or slabbed. Using state of the art technology and forensics, you can own a card that is as original as they day it was born.

It makes sense that if the technology exists to in a cost-effective way provide a significantly more reliable method of "grading" cards that it is just a matter of time before such a service is introduced to the market place.

Whether PSA would be the one to do it, that is another question. If it is PSA, that would be some spectacle -- PSA offering a new service that would put into plain view all the trimmed/altered cards that were missed by its old service. Just curious -- would a submitter be willing to pay a company for a service that shows that the company misgraded the card initially? In my view the reason many of the cards were misgraded initially was not because the old grading methods could not reasonably spot the alterations. They were initially misgraded because of sheer incompetence. So why then should someone have to pay the company to get it right the second time? And even if PSA would not demand the submitter pay if the re-grade established the initial grade was wrong, what about their warranty that accompanied the initial grade? I would think the first thing the submitter would do is demand PSA buy back the card. Then we would be getting into the whole mess of whether PSA would be required to make good on its warranty and the legal issues that could follow. In fact, the more I think about it, given this contingent liability, I question whether PSA would have any incentive to offer a more-technologically advanced grading service.

I continue to marvel at the spectacle of people caring little what was done to the card as long as the flip says what they want it to say. I'm trying to think of another "commodity" where the price is based not on what the commodity is but on what false branding says it is. An analogy would be the price of, say, gold being independent of whether the product being sold is real gold or gold-plated bronze. Maybe I am being naïve but I just can't believe the day will not come when such a superior grading service has become common-place and the market will demand that for a card to hold its value it will need to be re-graded by this new technology. Should that happen, I sure would not want to be an investor holding a long position in high-grade PSA vintage cards graded under the old method.

Sure trimmed cards were running rampant pre-grading, but if you took the time to educate yourself - learn the difference between a factory cut and a non-factory cut - you probably wouldn't fall victim. PSA came along and what did they bring to the table? Nothing. Did they have some special lenses or some kind of special software that detects trimmed cards? No. They simply use their eyes (and maybe magnification, but any collector had access to that). The bottom line is that collectors were too damn lazy to educate themselves on what to look for. So, it's not that the hobby was so bad pre-grading (it sure is a lot worse now), it's collectors were too lazy. The funny thing is that what grading hoped to accomplish - catching altered cards so that buyers don't get burned - isn't being done. Is the hobby really better off with grading? Did grading really solve the doctored card problem? Or, and really think about this, did it make it worse with all the greed over high dollar cards?

I'm like Doug. I, too, find this whole situation very funny. This situation doesn't effect me or my collection one bit. I'm a mid-grade raw collector. In fact, I think it helps the value of my cards. Maybe people will wake up and realize they don't have to have that card in high grade mint condition with a pretty label and hologram sitting inside a slab? Maybe they'll wake up and realize that a nice well centered Ex to Ex/Mt card could bring them as much joy as the same card in a PSA 8, 9, or 10 holder? Maybe raw, mid grade cards will make a comeback as people really do start buying the card and not the holder instead of just preaching it? To all the people with high grade cards sitting in slabs, I do feel bad for you, but I'm also laughing at the same time. You went to bed last night wondering if you have any altered cards in your collection. You woke up this morning wondering the same thing and you're still wondering that as you read these threads. I don't have to wonder those things.

Whether we want to admit it or not...this affects all of our collections to some degree. There will be an exodus of sorts of a % of people from the hobby. I've considered this myself. Overall values of many cards will fall.

I agree with you, but I think the key word is people. I think that's exactly what will happen - this will disgust some people enough that they sell off and exit the hobby. I'm not sure how that's a bad thing though. I think this really only applies to flip collectors - they only cared about the value and gains. They were people, not true hobbyists or collectors. Yeah, maybe this drives away some of the collectors too, but I think it will drive away more investors than anything and I think that is a good thing. I'm in this as a hobby, not an investment. If the value of my cards rise, that is great. If the value falls, that's fine too. If the latter happens (and it very well could), maybe I'll have the opportunity to afford some cards that I couldn't before.

"Someday, either a new grading company or an existing grading company will come out with a process to remove the humans from the grading process and use optical scanning and CMM tools to measure card size. They might provide this service as an upgraded service alongside human opinions which will be viewed as less reliable but perhaps ok for lower priced, lower grade commons as an authentication option."

Size among vintage cards should not be the sole determinant of whether a card is trimmed. There are many oversized vintage cards that are trimmed and many undersized vintage cards that are not trimmed versus a given set's standard size. Obviously an undersized card is more likely to be trimmed than a non-undersized card. The fact that all the statements above are true means that technology alone can not determine whether size was reduced post-production. That means that the likelihood a grading company will introduce a grading technology that will change many numerical grades to authentic based on size -- and presumably guarantee the loss in value of the card -- is extremely low. Common sense and anecdotal evidence reinforces that a large percentage of high grade pre-WWII cards are altered. That should not be a surprise to any knowledgeable person in the hobby. There will always be a cloud of uncertainty over the hobby, as is the case with most collectibles. It's up to each person how much they want to rely on faith versus certainty in what they buy. Until now -- and I don't see this changing much -- faith has trumped certainty.

I was thinking about this the other day...what I think should be done is a catalogue/resourse of every type of card ever made should be created using cards most likely known to be in their original state. Cards from the burdick collection for example can be used. High res macro photos/scans of all aspects of the card...especially the appearance of the edges...cut, color, patina from aging.

Then this resource should be used as the definitive for grading/evaluating cards as to whether they were trimmed.

+1

And it's my opinion that the trimmed cards are being stretched prior to trimming, so they're being trimmed down to what the card should actually measure. A computer or machine will never be able to distinguish the difference between a card that's been trimmed and one that hasn't based on the size of the card alone. It goes back to what I was saying just a couple posts above. People want to rely on someone or something else to do it for them because they're too damn laze to educate themselves. Sad really.

Or PSA could
 

Collectors Universe can simply start or invest in a competing company with better technology that is separate and avoid the need to refund original people duped by owning cards incorrectly graded by PSA. A great way to hedge their bets. Premiums for PSA opinions should fall no doubt.

My guiding rules. I feel like Satchel Paige lol.

1. Avoid sellers you don't trust.
2. Use VCP to make sure cards didn't originate with sellers you don't trust.
3. Don't buy cards that look short.
4. Don't buy cards if your first reaction is to question whether they're altered. Trust the unconscious reaction.
5. Don't buy high grade pre-war.
6. Past a certain value threshold, for 50s cards don't buy anything over a 7, and for 60s cards don't buy anything over an 8. And even there, consider 6s and 7s.
7. Don't pay huge premiums for perfect centering.

I get why you said it but number 7 is blasphemy. Just make sure the borders are big AND thick. :)

Oh, no doubt. But wouldn't you agree those cards are more likely to have been worked on?

Yes but I am not about to give up great looking, well centered vintage cards.