$117K SGC 8.5 DiMaggio WWG trimmed heavily, previously an SGC 6
 

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In case one of you big spenders purchased this card, see if you can get a refund. Anothe point for the BODA.

wow great investigative work there

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Agreed Great work and also great how you made that image work one over the other

I am not the OP from the blowout thread; my handle over there is mjohnatgt. However, the BODA (Blowout Detective Agency) guys have done a tremendous job outting fraud over the past 5 years. If you haven't seen that type of overlay before, you should go over to blowout and read about 50 threads.

Here are some of the top ones:
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1298835
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1289859
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1297767

Wonder if the FBI is still doing any leg work? Most of their discovery has already been accomplished by volunteers.

Props to BODA, doing the Lords work for half a decade, keep it up guys.

This hobby’s fraud and greed never stops amazing me. I wonder how many high grade, rare cards are legitimate? I suspect the number is shockingly low. This is the reason I’m a low to collector-grade guy.

This is why TPGs should use a minimum size requirement for cards with RAZOR sharp corners.

If the card doesn't meet the minimum size requirement and it has RAZOR sharp corners, then have a QUALIFIER that indicates it doesn't meet the minimum size requirement but has been graded as if it were. That would put the thought in everyone's mind that it could be trimmed (which it probably is). Think about it.

When you look at the number of cards out there and find that a large number of high grade cards doesn't meet the minimum size requirement, then people may start asking why most cards with lower grades meet the size requirement but higher graded cards do not. I mean really? Are we this stupid?

When it comes to most humans on this planet, the answer to your very last question is a resounding YES!

They reject cards and send them back unslabbed with a label that says MINSZ or similar, I forget the exact phrase. They seem to ignore this suspiciously often to keep slabbing very small cards. Strange!

People are sadly this stupid. Strangely thin high grade cards continue to outsell by huge margins unaltered cards that are of normal size. What the slab says overcomes actual reality in the market. Reality is annoying, the card in the 9 slab lets you flex on the poor with the same card in a 6 slab. Being altered is irrelevant.

At this point in the age of opinion sellers I actually enjoy seeing a trimmed card go for 6 figures.

Anybody who likes cards enough to pay THREE figures for a card should be able to tell the difference between trimmed and not trimmed, when it's to those degrees. Obviously it's harder to tell until they get the card in hand, but as soon as they do...

Nobody who buys a trimmed card has any excuse.

The person who bought the DiMaggio in 2021 knew exactly what he got moments after he received it.

Nice looking slab, though.

Doug "I wish I could get trimmed to an 8.5" Goodman

For the most part, investors don’t care what may have been done to a card as long as it’s in a PSA Slab with a number grade it’s gold. This is the bottom line of where we are at in 2023.

I don't think that's true. I think they don't know. They assume the TPGs are making sure the cards are not altered.

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WIth a card like this in that high a grade holder, there really should be a presumption that it's been altered, IMO, even if it may be hard to tell given the expertise of the work.\

BTW I wonder if Dave Forman graded this one personally. I'll leave it at that.

Bbwaa....and that isn't supposed to mean BB writers association of America...

Bbwaa... I guess that's the point, they're trusting the TPGs. Trust'em? Bbwaa...

Bbwaa... :p

100 percent Johnny. Many of these “collectors” have bowed down to the almighty grading card companies. As long as the card is in a holder and is high grade, they don’t care what was done to it.

Amazing that it got graded. But it sure looks great in that tux!

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Yep, exactly.

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This is why TPGs should use a minimum size requirement for cards with RAZOR sharp corners. admit they have no idea how to perform the one service they are expected to.

You are assuming it wasn't done knowingly.

Very possible but my point is they don't want to know or care to know. It's in a holder end of the discussion for the investor it's good to go.

A $100,000 card has to be reviewed by the head grader, I would think. It's hard to believe that SGC blew that review because of incompetence.

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Sad but true commentary. As long as someone can flip the card for a profit and not have to be held responsible for the actual condition/state of the card because people blindly rely on TPGs that fall back on "subjectivity" (or worse).

Back in the day the biggest concern about slabbed cards was that someone would exchange/swap a card in the holder (WIWAG was one of the first) and defraud people to make their money. Today, TPGs grade on a much larger scale and do it less accurately which results in a lot of people that are not getting what they paid for. What boggles the mind is that we're not talking hundreds of dollars but 10s of thousands of dollars (and more).

PSA Wouldnt have graded this it's so narrow a blind bat could tell it's trimmed. SGC to me losses credibility with this one...sad hope they tighten up.

I know you've been paying attention. Not sure why you'd trust them either.

Remember, they knew Gary was passing trimmed cards through them 20 years ago, and did nothing to stop it. And many of the cards outed over the last five years have been laughable, even from PSA.

I have but PSA They're not even this bad....

It looks narrow compared to the very wide SGC 80. Not so sure it looks that narrow compared to the average card in this issue. I am guessing if someone had just posted the 8.5 by itself, you wouldn't be making that blind bat comment.

It is about a 50/50 shot on being complete incompetence depending on who the submitter is.;):rolleyes::D

I don't know I think if you have seen this card in your hand raw you would say something is wrong here, you know better. Just me idk...it’s small... that's all.

Look at all the WWGs on ebay and tell me if you still think it's obviously narrow. Size seems to vary.

That's not true, either. Anyone that is concerned about future value wants to know their card is legit. No "investor" wants to be sitting on a fake.

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Fake I agree with you....trimmed not so much in a holder they don't care.

The buyers of the most famous investment card in the hobby seem to disagree. PSA 8 it might be, but it's been well known pretty much from the start that it ain't unaltered.

Are you just trolling? If you really think the buyer knew (or suspected) the Dimaggio was trimmed, let's hear it.

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They wouldn't?

They have a 'real' 8.5 slab.

Are you just not reading? People are saying investors don't care if a card is trimmed, not that the buyer of this card knows for a fact it is trimmed.

I understand it is easier to argue against this claim you made up instead, but nobody said it. Try harder.

That's ridiculous. The strip that was removed from the left could be used as a shoelace...or belt.

The problem is if the card meets minimum size requirements, I don't see how SGC could conclude it was altered.

That's the thing, imo. Numerous cards from way back then did not all come from the factory all the same size so trimming off whatever small amount the trimmers do (Thousandths of an inch?) is very hard to detect if the card still remains in spec.

I've heard before, however, that the TPG's can/should be able to detect, based on the edge color (and maybe some other things?) compared to the rest of the card, whether it has been recently trimmed or not?

Imo, it is a tough one for the TPG's to grade, especially if the edge looks like the rest of the card, (color/age wise) if one has been trimmed or not if it still falls into the size parameters.
(This is just my uneducated thought anyways)

In hand, it's usually pretty easy to separate a likely trim job, I think. Color of the edge itself is one of several clues. True microtrims where only a very tiny strip is cut off very modern cards (which still vary in size - a stack of 2023 Topps base are visibly different sizes if you look closely) are the ones where I just can't tell. Telling from a scan is often tough because it doesn't show most of the edge of a card.

Natural variance should lead, overall, to a roughly equal number of oversized and undersized cards.

As far as vintage cards are concerned, size is not the way in which to determine if a card has been trimmed. If that were the only criteria then it would explain why there are so many trimmed cards in graded holders. The consistency of the grain (ways the layers of paper appear), the cut itself, as well as toning compared to what is typically seen on a factory cut card.

It can be hard to tell that from a photo, or if the card is already graded but with before and after images we can certainly now see SGC messed up...again.

I know the pay-off is substantial, but I'm still shocked at the cajones of somebody to trim a card, that is already 20K+ card nowadays. They've gotta have a lot of confidence that it's gonna pass.

I don't even have the confidence to cut cards from sheets or strips that are meant to be cut, with my crappy Staples issued paper cutter :rolleyes:. But I do understand that people with the right tools and skill-set, can make it seem imperceptible to most.

I've said this before, but I set-up at hundreds of shows in the 80's and into the early 90's, and truly vintage NM to Gem Mint cards, were very, very few...and far between...and most of those were also trimmed or flattened out in brick like lucite holders to make them look better then they actually were.

Even cards I pulled right out of packs, I had a hard time, in good conscience, calling them MINT. I'd always just call them NM to be on the safe side.

That they started to become more common, when these huge price fluctuations began to develop between mid-graded stuff and high graded stuff, has proven to be not such a coincidence I guess.

That Dimaggio "6" would have been the centerpiece of almost any dealers table, because that "8.5", would have never existed in the first place.

Altering cards is not NEW. Back in the 80's, dealers used to color in the borders of 71' Topps cards, to get an extra buck or two a card. Can you imagine what somebody would do for an extra 100K a card? :eek:

+1. Altering cards isn’t new, but the ‘old days’ alterations were thankfully pretty easy to detect. The card doctors toolkit is a lot better these days and there are finally cards I look at, in hand, examine closely and cannot tell they have been altered. Modern cards with microtrims sometimes fall into this bucket, to make an 8 a 10 they can shave off way less than 1mm, and without the signs of age since it’s a new card, I can’t tell it’s altered. It’s well within size spec.

As a collector, it doesn’t really affect me. I don’t care if a card is altered personally beyond an academic point of view. I fear the day may come where this same problem arrives with authenticity, and that’s when the hobby implodes.

Yeah, if they start convincingly 3D printing 1934 Goudey Lou Gehrig cards with ground up bits of 1934 Goudey Mark Koenig cards, then the high rollers are really gonna be in trouble. :eek:

Or a very solid relationship with their grading company of choice.

Very true, Johnny, but should this card surface again in the marketplace, then many folks with long memories will stay well clear.

Agree and hope so :-)

For most of us this would be true but most of us could not afford to spend 6 figures on a card. Those who can seem to have quite a large appetite for overlooking such details and simply want a card that absent the alteration might not ever exist.

More like Eric was running late for a date and palmed the job off on Hyde

If I was being paid hundreds of dollars to be sure if it was trimmed or not among other things I'd darn sure know how to tell. (I do now, but would be extra dilligent, which apparently isn't at all how grading is done.)

Unless of course it is a 47 Tip Top Spahn? ;)

But the opinion sellers don't care like you do, and they have proven that they don't care time and time again.

It really is laughable.

A small sugestion, and to some extent BODA is already doing it.

Other hobbies have Censuses, which aren't simply population reports, but are a more and more a visual reference of each known example of a rare item.

I think we really need something like that for most fairly difficult expensive cards.

Well that one left A LOT of cardboard on the cutting room floor. When will mistakes of this magnitude start to hurt the Opinion Sellers' business? I would have thought long ago. :confused:

On the twelfth of never.

Never, not a chance of it ever happening in any way shape or form.

Peter and Ben are correct.

The business is bullet proof.

'Too big to fail' I believe is the term the kidz use these days.

....... and that's a long long time!

Don't you find it strange that a company that is well paid to determine if a card was altered can't do it but someone who is not paid and doesn't even have the card in hand can detect the alteration?

I can only come up with three possible reasons why that would be the case (as it has been many times):

• Incompetence
• Laziness
• Corruption

Am I missing something?

You're missing "time!" It takes a lot of time to prove these trimmings...much more time than any tpg'er spends on any card.

I just want to note that it was probably expensive to have this card graded. It clearly behoves the TPG to spend time on it and (try to) get it right, That's always the case. But these are the obvious examples. Its not just some ultra high grade common that's sketchy its a 6 figure card (?) .... even as PSA 1 this one is big ticket item.
I wonder if the submitter went to SGC first (or PSA) after the card was "enhanced" .... likely PSA. We'll never know.
Sadly, I've always had a soft spot for SGC with the "real vintage" stuff (pre WWII) ... Most of my cards from this set which I've been slowly building for years are SGC... I still don't have DiMaggio or Gehrig and 3 or 4 others ...... I wouldn't be in the market for anything close to this grade anyway.

This was my experience also. Remember when American Beauty T206s stuck out like sore thumbs because they were so much narrower?

I just do not buy the idea that these cards were found in the wild in superb condition.

Yeah it’s pretty easy sometimes. Notice the use of the word often. Notice that the Spahn was trimmed to dwarf size. Pretty easy for anyone with eyes to see that one.

According to SGC's pricing schedule, this card would cost about $4k to grade. How much time should that buy?

from what i understand no more time than an 85 don mattingly.

You're missing the part about the opinion sellers not caring about you or your card, they care only about your wallet.



Does it really behoove them? Or does it behoove them to pump out as many opinions as possible in the least amount of time for the deepest dive into your wallet?

There have been threads in the past that explored the mathematics of time divided by opinion givers divided opinions given. Hint - the answer is smaller than you want it to be.


What's your recourse when you get bad service? They have your money.

Don't ever lose your sense of humor, Greg....oh wait.

Sick burn.

Guess what check the Pop this has now been bumped the Wagner that’s right to a PSA 10

Check the Pop WOW SO COOL WHAT A GREAT CARD THIS IS THE GRAIL now a 10 WOW

The card deserves it!!

Does anyone think this was done in error??

The person who originally graded it told me he couldn't see any trimming, and had no other evidence of alterations, so he graded it correctly at an 8. No conspiracy, no nothing. Now, after the fact and with other evidence, it's a different story. Trimming will never be an exact science and many are hard to tell, at best. .

As far as it being a 10...just some kind of gamesmanship or joke.

Concerning the original DiMaggio card, whomever graded it should have measured it first. Big mistake. The BODA group does a fantastic job. Kudos to them and I hope they keep going forever and a day!!

Begs the question of expertise. If the supposed experts cannot tell the difference, doesn't say a lot for their services: if you can't catch stuff like this, why would I spend thousands of dollars for your blessing? Oh, and when the TPG pulls the cert out from under a trimmed card because the grade was wrong and they now look stupid and have to "do something", the one holding the hot potato at the time gets burned. "Hey, man, it's just an opinion and we decided to change it. You can't rely on our opinion." I've had this case brought to me several times and the end result is the same with the TPGs. They all say the same thing: "We don't owe you compensation. Look at our disclaimer." Here is SGC's:

9. Customer acknowledges and agrees the grading and/or authentication of items requires the exercise of individual judgment and professional opinion, which is subjective in nature, and can change from time to time. Therefore, SGC makes no warranty or representation and shall have no liability whatsoever to Customer for the grade or determination of authenticity assigned by SGC to any item.

20. Except as expressly set forth herein to the contrary, SGC DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, REGARDING SGC’S GOODS AND SERVICES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

22. SGC OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, OR ANY OF ITS OR THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS OR AGENTS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, CONSEQUENTIAL OR OTHER DAMAGES, NOR SHALL SGC OR ANY OF ITS AFFILIATES, OR ANY OF ITS OR THEIR RESPECTIVE EMPLOYEES, OFFICERS, DIRECTORS OR AGENTS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES WHICH ARE BASED UPON ALLEGED NEGLIGENCE, BREACH OF WARRANTY, STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY THEORY OTHER THAN THE LIMITED LIABILITY STATED HEREIN, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SAME.

Oh, and the final kick in the nuts for the customer who trusted SGC:

"25. Customer agrees to indemnify, defend and hold SGC and (as applicable) its parent, subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, agents, and employees, harmless from any loss, claim or demand, including reasonable attorneys’ fees, made by any third party due to or arising out of or related to the submission of an item to SGC, related to the grade and/or determination of authenticity assigned by SGC, any services or products provided by SGC to Customer, Customer’s breach of this Agreement or the documents it incorporates by reference, or customer’s violation of any law or the rights of a third party. This indemnification will survive termination."

Yep, you read it right. If SGC messes up and the hapless buyer of the card comes a knockin', SGC will not only refuse to pay for its mistake, SGC will make its customer pay for its mistake. I wish I could write that sort of crap into my retainer. It would save me a fortune in malpractice insurance if i could just disclaim liability for any mistakes I might make. Hell, if i could do that I'd probably lose 40# of stress weight and not have gastritis every other day at work.

POP IS CORRECTED NOW IT’S back to a 8

At least according to O'Keeffe, the grader told him a different story, yes?

In any event does anyone claim it was pack issued as opposed to being sheet cut?

It's a sin to destroy a beautiful card like that.

One phrase I've noticed a couple times is "full boarders". For example when people are talking about the condition of a card they'll say "Great centering, strong color & full boarders". I suspect this phrase will become more & more common in the coming years.

Shout out to BODA (BlowOut Detective Agency) for all their amazing work.

O'keefe has 100% taken things out of context when he quoted an *auction house, concerning an item of mine, in at least one instance. I would take that into consideration when evaluating what he says.
The PSA grader, Bill Hughes, runs a baseball card and comic shop currently. He is super nice and seems as honest as the day is long. He also sets up at local shows. I have no reason not to believe him.

Also, I have not seen anyone say this was a pack issued card BUT, when graded, I am pretty sure the origin wasn't known, otherwise I don't think Bill would have graded it.

* I corrected my statement as it was an AH that was taken out of context, concerning one of my items. It was not me that was quoted.
.

Just a general observation, when you meet many of the criminals in this hobby, they can seem as honest as the day is long. There isn't much room for context or nuance here, either O'Keeffe misquoted Bill, or Bill has changed his story.

I have a feeling with the DiMaggio card, SGC just had some non-experience grader and sense it was already in an older holder - issues and problems with just getting this evaluated again could have been avoided with better eyes.
Not defending them, just saying things are happening with non-experienced graders more often now. This discussion is good to have either way and enjoyed the comments.
Also, this issue could be hard to identify the way these cards had been cut - really, we only have the standard catalog to tell us the size. Would be interesting to look more into these WWG cards - do we really know 100% it was the same card

Jimmy

No way an inexperienced grader was given a card of this magnitude without someone reviewing it.

again...so much for random, anonymous grading.

That is essentially (minus the grinding up perhaps) how this and the other collectibles hobbies will die. The question is whether, in the case of baseball cards, that quality of 3D printing and exact chemical replication of the constituent materials is still a few months away or a few decades away. I'm risk tolerant enough that I'm still buying, but I don't delude myself into thinking that this couldn't happen in my lifetime.