Card doctoring video
 

Presented without comment.

https://www.tiktok.com/@evanmathis69...40015920319790

Looks like the video is gone, along with the account.

He was "caught" buying doctoring supplies off his Ebay account in the past. I guess he's just owning it at this point.

Damn it. It was from Evan and had a nice demonstration.

https://www.tiktok.com/@evanmathis69

It's the first video. TT videos copy/pasting is weird. I don't use TT, but I've seen sharing errors in the past.

https://www.tiktok.com/@evanmathis69...40015920319790

This works for me but not sure what the story is.

Every bit of suckage and not cool IMHO.

Gary went 58 years in amazing natural condition just to get violated by some idiot. Gotta hate it!

Cool video…..no way in hell I would buy a high grade anything that is expensive. If it’s that easy….:eek:

That video was disturbing.

Did he have ties with Pwcc or that guy that has some other grading company ?

What I find most interesting is that he just flaunts it.

I guess with the apparent failure of the FBI investigation to lead anywhere, it's a safe world now. Hack em up, grade em, sell em or consign em, repeat.

This exact video is why high grade slabbed cards, especially prewar, need to be viewed with suspicious eyes.

I thought our beloved TPGs were supposed to have suspicious eyes. Oh, wait.

i don’t know how i thought it worked…but pretty sure i didn’t think it was that easy.

Look at you, Peter Spaeth, roaming Tik Tok. My kids won't allow me on that site for fear I'll break the internet.

LOL. It was posted on Blowout, so really I am only roaming Blowout.

That's awesome to see how the criminals do it.

I can't wait to practice on some of mine. Much easier than I thought. Even fat ex football players with sausage fingers can do it:rolleyes:

It's about time. This is what every shady slimy dealer, doctors and PWCC's own conservator, Brent Mastro has been able to hide & kept quiet for 20 years or more.

Can't wait until he shows exactly what soaking solution they use and the next tic tac on coloring.

Great new business idea!!! Endorsed by all the 3rd party graders too.

I think there are more sophisticated techniques involving pressing out the card, so that hacking it does not yield a short/narrow card. But you may not need to be very sophisticated to get it by our beloved TPGs.

Glad he posted it. Hopefully this sort of thing eventually takes us from these card prices that increase exponentially by numerical grade back to the good old-fashioned prices that increase linearly (and barely) by condition. I much preferred when the NM-Mt cards were 2x the price of VG cards.

I admire your optimism, but I think more people than not understand that this goes on and don't care.

Sometimes shinning a flashlight in the darkness can get uncomfortable, but I'd rather be uncomfortable and aware than not.

That’s the bottom line...many if not most know and do not care.

Here's an article about Mathis selling his 1952 Topps Mantle for $2.88 Million years ago.https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/04/20/19...rd-topps-sells

doctor
 

WOW,
Im not saying its easy..but it sure looks easy !!

Former NFL lineman who has been caught many times before.

Sad

Collect cards with big borders.

https://luckeycards.com/pt216ve.jpg

I agree...big bordered cards are the ideal ones to trim down.

Brian (not a trimming expert, but now I have a video for guidance)

This too is Evan. Also presented without comment. I am not sure how it connects to trimming cards.

https://godseer.com/

I am shocked, shocked I say.

But when you can turn a $5 card into a $2000 card because there are people lined up for that $2000 card and they don't care why not.:eek:

And this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5tEBz1LFVg&t=1844s

The irony made me laugh. Evan repeatedly advised the audience to carefully perform certain doctoring tricks a specific way to avoid damaging the card. He then proceeds to cut the card’s entire top edge off. :D

This is why my collection is all PSA 1-5 quality. In 25 years, when all of the low grade cards are altered/doctored to be PSA 7+, my low grade cards will have unlimited potential, much like the allure of an unopened pack today.

I have sold several Authentic and low grade cards in PSA slabs to see them show back up in a new holder. The exact same card magically being a little nicer and one to 2 grades higher. Collecting lower grade cards does not mean they haven't already been worked on.

That guy is a poor excuse for a human being with no moral character whatsoever.

I wonder why he's posting this video? Wasn't he previously denying the card trimming allegations? And wasn't he allegedly being investigated by the FBI during that whole trimming scandal investigation that ended up going nowhere?

I wonder if PSA and SGC cut him off or something like that, and this is his retaliation? Because he cross-posted this video on Instagram, and he tagged Nat Turner in the comments, saying "this is how all of your vintage cards got high grades".

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...ter%20fire.jpg

And a card:

https://photos.imageevent.com/exhibi...0Cochrane.jpeg

Trim this, you jagoff.

That is hilarious and true of 99.999% of all high grade vintage cards.:)

.
 

Going to give it a try..

Yes, but it’s a far lower loss if it is found out to be manipulated over a high grade card. I try to get low grade with solid eye appeal for this reason. Not because it’s not possible that it has been worked on but because it’s much closer to the floor if anything has.

I think Mathis is just angry and bitter ….he is one of the few guys to have owned a high grade 52 Mantle and not make money on it over the past 20 years. He had a great card, a PSA 9 and he made no money and who bought it flipped it real fast and made $3 million!

That Tik Tok video makes card doctoring look very easy.
It should make anyone who is buying high grade cards think twice (or more).

He did make it look easy, but he also was starting with a card that was a little over standard size so after trimming some off, it just involved trying to get rid of the evidence that it was recently trimmed. For cards that are already at standard size, I would imagine there's a lot more work to trim them then to get them back to the correct size while not making it obvious.

Some card doctors will press out cards before trimming them. Also, though, countless cards are a bit short of standard size but nevertheless get slabbed. I think you can microtrim with relative impunity.

Certainly a very valid concern for many, but I'm more worried about how many idiots with a razor blade and some wax paper this is going to inspire.

It’s things like this clip pretty much bashing calling PSA out that assure we aren't going to be getting anything higher then a 7 on Pre 1960’s cards. This video plays a part in us getting hammered on Grades.

Guess psa and himself aren't pals anymore. Seems like a guy who wouldn't last a minute in the old neighborhood without an elder giving him "one off the head"

Ya, there's no such thing as a gem mint vintage card. If you think you found one, you've probably been duped.

LOL the hobby is a mess right now. Time to play Zevon's lawyers, guns and money.

I think the hobby has been littered with people altering cards more than just right now. Do you think it's more of a mess these days or just more in our face w/the information we get today versus, say, 30 years ago?

Altered cards are only part of the mess right now. I agree they have always been a problem, but the failure of law enforcement to do anything about it does to me raise it to a new level of concern. But I am also referring to all the craziness of the modern market, the influencers and pumpers, the vaults, the museum pricing on fixed price sites, the social media idiocy, the youtube videos, all of it LOL.

I feel every day that goes by brings more uncertainty to collectors' and investors' minds about PWCC’s business practices it’s beginning to pile up massively.

The concern I have for pwcc is how many collectors have moved their cards from their platform. I know several that have and I envision many more will follow. Too many other options out there.

What would you like law enforcement to do?

Guy buys oversized card, trims it to an accepted industry size , gets it graded, sells it. Where is the crime?

Did any of the sale ads say it was or wasn’t altered?

Brent certainly had a first mover advantage but not clear how long he can maintain it in a competitive market.

The best plot twist in this entire saga so far, for me, is learning that the SCR clown who shits on PWCC daily, calling anyone and everyone who deals with them unethical, actually had cards in the PWCC Vault himself. LO f***ing L

This guy should run for office somewhere.

Exactly.

I feel he is using their platform to buy and sell flipping cheapo cards through their vault for low fees/costs to prove a point that he and others can easily score making money on the ease and cheap on them avoiding shipping fees etc. He does the same poking fun at PWCC’s Vault Services as he does with Goldins Vault….it’s all about attention. It's comical all the way around.

Definitely caught me off guard when he said that. Just a wee bit hypocritical.

Load of fooey, but still interesting to watch.

The "experts" at the grading company did.
If you think this is acceptable....

Now that's funny. Like selling a stolen bike and saying that the ad didn't say it wasn't stolen.

Or a car with a turned back odometer, without saying whether it had been turned back or not. Nope, no crime there.

Stealing a bike is a crime though. Rolling back or "clocking" an odometer is also a crime. Trimming a baseball card is not. It's just a shitty thing to do because the majority of people in this hobby have decided that they don't like it. I don't think these comparisons are equivalent.

If the hobby majority suddenly changed its mind tomorrow by shrugging their shoulders and accepting the fact that most trimming is undetectable and therefore not worth worrying about, then there wouldn't even be an argument at all for charging someone with a crime. There's a fine line between someone leeching off of an industry by exploiting a loophole in the system and someone committing an actual crime, even if that leeching behavior is viewed as scummy and unethical. I've been saying since the beginning that trimming cards for profit falls under the scummy and unethical behavior bucket, but that doesn't make it a crime. It is not against the law to profit from being a scumbag, as evidenced by the fact that over priced magazine sales scammers still come to our doors every year with completely fabricated sob stories about needing "points" to get them into college.

I also collect rare casino and poker chips. In that hobby, everyone cleans and restores their chips with all sorts of various chemicals and oils. Many also remove the original casino inlays and replace them with new inlays. People even "trim" their chips by running the edges through a lathe to make them new and shiny again with sharp edges. In the comic book world, you can pay CGC to restore your comics. They will remove creases and surface wrinkles for a fee. The only difference I see between these actions and that of trimming cards is the percentage of collectors who give them a green light in their respective hobbies.

Yet, in this hobby, PSA does not disclose if a card was soaked in order to remove glue from the back, nor do any sellers I've ever encountered. Yet that is without question an alteration as well. I can't tell you how many times I've bought a card only to have it show up in a PSA slab with glue residue on the back that wasn't visible from the scans. Same with tape removal. They'll grade a card that has had tape removed despite the fact that someone either soaked the card in a solvent or used a scalpel and a hair dryer to get it off the card.

This is true.

Rolling back or "clocking" an odometer= trimming. To me, at least.

Well, if you trim a card and then sell it without disclosure it is fraud and may rise to the level of criminal fraud. If you mailed it or used electronic communications it may also be mail fraud or wire fraud, both crimes. Besides, is the metric so low in this hobby that criminality is now the line we draw when assessing the actions of others?

The metric is so low....ethics in this industry have always sadly been piss poor to say the least.

I agree with the sentiment the trimming is altering and should be disclosed. But I do spend a bit of time over on Facebook and a lot of the younger folks could not care less what has happened to the card on its way to its sacred coffin.

+1, to this entire post.

It would appear as though the FBI disagrees with you though. They had all the evidence they could ever need to bring charges against these guys, and yet they chose not to. I don't buy the arguments that it was just too difficult to prove or that it failed on some technicality.

OK let's correct some basic errors here.

If there was no possible crime here they would not have investigated, over a several year period, in the first place. If there were no possible crimes here, Brent's first attorney would not have advised him to cooperate and make restitution. There are definitely possible crimes here namely mail fraud and wire fraud. The problem was not the legal framework but proving it beyond a reasonable doubt with admissible evidence. What evidence do you think they had? The Blowout stuff, great as it is, and powerful as it is in the court of public opinion, is not admissible evidence in a federal court. But we've been there done that on this discussion and I don't have the patience to do it yet again.

And if you don't think the fact that a card is altered is material, such that nondisclosure is fraud, ask yourself, why doesn't anyone in the hobby ever disclose it? As they say in the law, the thing speaks for itself.

Can you imagine a listing by PWCC -- PSA 8 1948 Leaf Jackie Robinson, trimmed by Gary M. PSA 9 1952 Bowman Stan Musial, recolored. 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan PSA 10, broken out of an 8 holder and corners filed. 1915 Cracker Jack Honus Wagner, PSA 7, whitened.

By the way, the FBI does not bring charges, they investigate crimes. The U.S. Attorney brings charges, or decides not to.

Black Swamp Find?

I’ve got my doubts about the Black Swamp find.

Funny….Smart ass responses in leu of an answer….

Nothing was stolen.

Only a guy that “may” have trimmed a card within spec of accepted size. If it’s still within the correct size what crime was committed?

Undersized and graded is another story….

Wasn't the provenance pretty good? I forget the details now. I do recall some people being pissed when the family/Heritage held back huge numbers of them and later flooded the market, if I am remembering that part of it correctly.

In the hobby I grew up in, trimming an oversized (or pressed out and therefore oversized) card down to spec was never viewed as legitimate. Either edges are factory or they aren't.

A separate thread entirely, I just don't get the appeal of an uncirculated 110 year old card in gem mint condition. Much like the Tango Eggs find, they should trade at a discount to to the "real" thing.