Here we go yet again -- alleged trimmed and recolored CJs at auction
 

Another day, another significant allegation about altered cards, this time SGC graded CJs in the current Heritage among others. Including an SGC 9 1915 Walter Johnson allegedly "improved" from a 5. As always, form your own judgments.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1460488

Have we reached a point to where the grading companies are just Guessing ????

For me, that’s been the real question for awhile now. Are the TPGs incompetent or are the corrupt, giving higher grades and ignoring altered cards for preferred/ high volume submitters?

That may have happened long ago. We just didn't know it.

I can't believe someone would work on a CJ graded a 5 or 8.5. That's having
confidence in your work and no respect for the grading company.

Interesting that the OP can trace this down to original submission numbers.
Good thing SGC uses random cert#'s now.

This is disgraceful. Perhaps it is time for the Heritage Rep (Pete) to come onboard here and have a frank discussion. We need to know what Heritage is doing specifically to combat this ongoing fraud. Are they confronting their dirty consignors at all? If so, what are the consequences? Who (if anyone) have they blacklisted? Heritage's track record has been to turn a blind eye and let these fraudulent auctions run their course.

Heritage is very adept at hyping their own auctions and promoting their wares. No hesitancy there. Now it's time they use their advanced communication skills to explain how these altered/numerically graded cards keep showing up in their auctions.

If we are complacent about this, it will only continue to get even worse. Any collector who cares about the hobby should be bombarding Heritage with calls and concerns. Otherwise, if collectors are too blinded by greed to recognize the massive failure of the TPGs, I suppose they'll get what they deserve.

Just my two cents.

That's my first thought to. These cards were already high-end.

I'm always skeptical when one of these threads pop up. Mostly because I don't want to believe this is as pervasive as it is. Then I look at the evidence shown, and almost every time it's a no doubter.

It's a miracle any Cracker Jacks survived through the years in 4 or 5 condition. Let alone 8's, 9's, and 10's with pointy corners and snow white borders. :rolleyes:

These cards simply didn't exist when I was doing card shows in the 80's.

Sure, there was plenty of trimming and re-coloring going on then by raw card sellers. Hell, I think re-colored 1971 Topps have been around since 1972, LOL! ......But it was almost always sloppy as sh*t, and easy to spot from a mile away.

Sad it's come to this. Those cards were beautiful already.

You build a better mouse trap, they build a better mouse.

They don't exist now either. Not in their natural state, anyway. :rolleyes:

I think it's only a matter of time before the skill that goes in "restoring" these cards, becomes an actual selling point in the resale market.

Too many high dollar collectors have waaaaaaaay too many of these cards in their collections for it to go any other way.

I mean, if we can sell NFT's to the general public..........why not "card art and restoration"?

"I turned my 5 into a 10", will be flouted openly among "market traders".......and likely sooner then most people think.

:(

We are at a Point Where People Spending Big Money on these Cards in Auctions DO NOT CARE HOW MUCH WORK HAS BEEN DONE ON THE CARD AS LONG AS IT'S IN A PSA OR SGC HOLDER WITH A NUMERICAL GRADE, THAT"S ALL THAT MATTERS.

SADLY ZERO IS GOING TO CHANGE, OTHER THEN RECORD HIGH SALES.

To be fair. They exist. They just happened to find the fountain of youth at some point between 1985 and 2021.

A little nip here.......a little tuck there..........presto, bingo, you're a Super Model now. :)

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/65/33...aa75bd29bb.gif

https://www.smalltraditions.com/Item...33662a_lg.jpeg


https://i.imgur.com/3DthTCK.gif

https://beckett-www.s3.amazonaws.com...r-2018-600.jpg

https://64.media.tumblr.com/dfcef14c...39d320673.gifv

Pretty good hypothesis, and definitely a possibility. Not much difference between a virtual image and an enhanced one.

I suppose if it really goes that route, the TPGs will pretty much be rendered as useless and obsolete. The grade of "A" will be the same as "10". And in many cases, it already is!

I think it is already in existence. I do not remember if it was posted here or a different forum, but there are groups on facebook where card fixers get together to share advice on how to restore cards. Maybe it was here. I don't know if these groups go as far as being considered buyers clubs, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Especially if the grading companies continue to accept the restored cards and people are making money off of it.

But there will always be purists in cards that do not believe that anything should be altered or restored. Same as with anything. Such as for years we are always hearing about the purists of baseball hating on this rule or that rule or players flipping bats or celebrating. It is just part of life.

We are at a crossroads in this hobby - stop buying the high end nice stuff, or go ahead buy it and beware. I am having trouble wanting to buy the lower than "EX 5" stuff as that has always been my bottom line, but then the higher stuff could be doctored, ugh. And with todays ultra high prices, do I dare go after higher stuff anyway? Do I just keep what I have in vintage sports, call it good, and dabble in 1977 Star Wars cards and new Pokemon and the like for the rest of my collecting life?

And then I am hearing about buyers opening boxes in the mail from sellers and claiming nothing inside - or so they say, and demanding refunds. ebay always sides with the buyer. Makes me scared to even sell stuff anymore.

At this Point the grading companies serve one purpose, to facilitate a higher sale...end of discussion that's all that matters.

I like my CJ's "dirty", 100+ year old cards just don't look right when graded a 9.
-

I remember when purists used to think that autographs on cards lowered values on the cards and PSA 10 might be only double the raw price. Doesn't seem that way anymore.

Things will change and evolve.

Sent from my SM-G970U using Tapatalk

It has nothing to do with purity. It has everything to do with fraud and nondisclosure. If it's so acceptable, why doesn't anyone disclose it? QED.

Peter its systemic nothing is ever going to change

Right, nobody is going to come out and say I trimmed this card or removed creases or added color, which to me proves that all the talk about how it's acceptable in the hobby now is a crock.

If it was so acceptable there would be no need for deception.

"Peter its systemic nothing is ever going to change"


Then why even have grading? If an A is the same thing as a 10 (and it's deemed ok to transform any card into a 10), then where is the need for a TPG?

And why is the valuation of a card graded "10" any higher than the one graded "A"? :confused:

That logic would dictate that the prices realized should be about the same for each.

One of the ones in the BODA thread is that someone tinkered with a $100,000K PSA 8 CJ Joe Jackson !!! and got an SGC 9/96 out of it.... What a tragedy (and what nerve).... I wonder if he cracked it... sharpened it and then resubmitted to PSA (without payoff) before settling for the SGC 96/9 (and a mere $26K profit)
The guy must have the steady hands of a Mohel* to even try this.


* The man who performs circumcisions in Jewish tradition.

So will 'brissing' a card become a thing? They could put 'brissed' on the label. Would it be possible to attend a brit milah for cards?

Sadly the only purpose TPA have is to make your cards worth more not to determine if your card is altered or not. It's their opinion that matter's when bringing the most money to cards, it's just the way it is, nothing is going to change.

Obvious nobody involved cares. These are not passable trim jobs. I've spent the last year buying higher end cards in lower grades because authentic/unaltered 5 or 6's are going to become the premium if this continues. No evidence to suggest that any end is near. FAT BORDERS or BUST!

My gut feel is that the new NFTs are going to ultimately replace cards, i.e new cards will not be released anymore, but NFTs will be released instead. This will ultimately mean no more new cards to trim, and it will greatly diminish the need for TPGs in the future. Unfortunately, we still have to deal with trimmed cards from the past.

I'm a vintage person, and I personally do not buy any card graded higher than a 4 or a 5. My rationale is really basic.....What was the highest graded Cobb in the Lucky 7 find? These cards supposedly were purchased and than stored in a bag all these years untouched, and the highest grade I believe was a 4.5. So I personally find it hard to believe that any card graded higher than a 5 or so from back than wasn't doctored to some degree.

I love this stuff, too bad that the back up at the opinion sellers is so long. Did one of them double their rates to cut down on submissions? Good for them, same money for half the work, I need to double my own salary in my next tour budget.

Hahahaha, you graded guys all deserve what you get.

The opinion sellers are laughing at you all on their way to the bank.

Doug "correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the first paid opinion wrong?" Goodman

Your post is spot on. I always try to buy the best card of whatever I'm buying. Seems that the best cards are probably just raw.

I just find it incredible that a supposed professional grading company could, in this day and age, receive ANY prewar card with super sharp corners for grading and not immediately suspect trimming.

I suspect the great majority of these altered card are altered by methods that CAN be scientifically detected. Assuming this is the case, then it seems inevitable to me that it is just a matter of time before a TPG emerges that grades cards scientifically. By that I mean that besides the usual subjective assessment of aesthetic appearance, there will be a scientific component that uses certain objective scientific criteria (e.g., presence of foreign dyes, chemical differences between newly trimmed borders and borders that have been exposed to the environment for over 100 years) that will make the conclusion the card has been altered a scientific fact, as opposed to a mere opinion. Once we get to that stage, I simply don't see how a card that has been shown by that method to be altered can hold its value.

It wouldn't surprise me if someone is out there now working on just such a model. True it will take millions in startup capital to build such a startup, which capital will include the need to to buy slabbed high condition cards and expose them to be altered. And true it will take a market willingness to pay the hefty grading fees such a startup would need to charge in order to be profitable. But inasmuch as we are already well into 7-figure territory for desirable sports cards, what is spending an additional 4 or 5-figure cost to ensure the card is what it is represented to be? The economic impact of that to the purchaser would be the equivalent of the BP being raised by less than one point.

And here might be the kicker. If, as has been speculated, much of the recent price rise is being fueled by funds regarding sport cards as investment vehicles and marketing them as such, then I would think in time such funds will put themselves at risk of violating their fiduciary obligation to their clients if they do not require that their sport card acquisitions be vetted by such a high tech grading method.

As to the point that there will be insufficient demand for such a high-tech grading service since what creates the demand for sports cards is the number on the slab (as opposed to the "real" condition of the card), that may be the case now. But I do not see how that mentality will be able to sustain the market once such a new TPG enters the scene and enough currently slabbed cards are shown to be altered.

What incentive do these grading companies have to actually discover these altered cards?

Doesn't PSA get a lot more attention if they have a 1915 CJ Joe Jackson in a PSA 9 than a PSA 4? They aren't going to research every card like the skilled guys over on blowout do. They have a 6 month backlog as it is - and they are grading a card ever 90 seconds.

It really is a shame - but until buyers stop paying up for altered cards it won't stop.

unreal
 

Huggins and Scott knows who bought them

SGC knows who graded them

Heritage knows who consigned them

Omerta is the rule of this hobby. As I've said many times, the unholy alliance among card doctors, TPGs and AHs.

Just for those of us not "in the know"... what the hell is Omerta?

Mafia Code of Silence.

I see the 1915 Tris Speaker 9.5 on the thread. I went to Heritage and blew the image up and can't see anything that looks obvious as alterations. But I'm no expert. Does anyone else see anything that looks off?

That's an interesting take on things.

I'm not sure what the state of the art is for coins , but they seem to have tightened up a lot on things that were common, like nearly 100% of shiny silver coins being technically cleaned.

With Stamps, the major expertizing groups have added grading, which is almost entirely based on centering.
I've met a couple people who do expertizing, and the depth of knowledge is amazing. But they also tend to only work in a fairly narrow field, like US between 1873 and 1890. Not that they don;t know a LOT about all the other areas, and even about many foreign stamps, but their primary area they get paid to work with is just that. (Some may work more generally, most of the information applies across many areas)

The first step for them is "is it a genuine stamp" followed by "which exact stamp is it?" any major flaws will allow a certificate saying it's real, but with noted flaws but no grade. They take their time, and apparently do compare notes between three different expertizers.
Very little of that is done with scientific equipment, but there are groups working that way. They just don't do expertizing (although members might)
They also take their time.

I had a couple stamps looked at during a "what's my stamp worth" type event at the international show in 2006. The explaining how to tell what they were took him longer than the identifying, which took literally a few seconds.
(I like done, had doubts about the other, and was pretty pleased to be right about both:D )
I've also sent in a couple, and the companies take their time so they get it right. One was probably easy, as it was one of the ones I took to the international, the other was a new discovery of a major variety, and the first of its kind expertized. Unlike PSA, they are totally ok with things that aren't cataloged yet in fact, getting a certificate may be necessary to get it cataloged. I included a copy of an article describing the variety, which probably helped. I haven't bought a new catalog in years, so I don't know if it ever got listed, or if I'd have to push a bit for a listing. (I had another discovery that was picked up on by a second tier catalog and listed. )

It's certainly possible to detect pretty much any alteration. But it does require knowing something about the item, and actually looking. Something the graders appear to actively avoid.

Thanks for the response Steve. What you describe appears to be materially different from PSA's business model, which is based on volume. I agree that many alterations that get by are detectable without scientific means, if graders took the time and had the expertise in the myriad of different card issues to detect alterations. But they don't, and the fact that PSA is for the time being not accepting new submissions until they clear up the backlog hardly gives one confidence this business model will be changing anytime soon.

And that is why the grading market is wide open IMO for a new type of company, one that should it come into being I simply don't see how in time cannot make obsolete the current model of grading.

If I wasn't hopelessly disorganized, I'd have given it a try a few years ago.

But I know that if I did I'd have a backlog with just a few cards, mostly because I'd get distracted to other stuff.

I'd also be more like the stamp places. A certificate with photo and a description of the flaws. I've tried to figure out how to have a slab that has a place to put an accompanying certificate, but I haven't really found anything that I think would work.
The closest I can get would be a sealed mylar holder a bit like a book, card sealed into one side, the cert in a pocket on the other.

Building out what people would probably want, a serious web site, with a database and high res scans and a workable registry would be way beyond what I could do.

The entire concept is completely subjective and ripe for problems. Congrats to people who love it and make money from it but this is one of several reasons I don't have any slabbed cards.
Just my .02

I've tried to figure out how to have a slab that has a place to put an accompanying certificate, but I haven't really found anything that I think would work.

How about a QR code on the back of the label.

That would work, but I'm so totally not a software guy. I've done all of 24 lines of modern code, and it took a long time.

I also prefer a hard copy cert, like this one.

https://www.net54baseball.com/pictur...ictureid=25804

It clearly lets anyone know what they're getting. A genuine stamp with a particular variety, and a faked cancel. The large red stamp calling particular attention to an alteration is a fairly recent thing, and a good idea.

I think it could work!!

Do you think that soaking also falls into this category? There are many posts on this forum about soaking, or how to safely remove a card that is in a scrapbook or glued to something.

Is there a difference in whether or not a person is doing these things with the intention of selling it later?

I know nobody Cares But another CJ Joe Jackson was discovered on Blowout the other day from a 4 SGC to a 7 SGC...


https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1460488

Soaking is a somewhat contentious issue.
Given time, most old scrapbooks will damage the cards.

My wife and I are currently working on soaking a scrapbook of tradecards. A hobby where at least the pricing is similar to where baseball cards were 40 years ago. The pages made the cards brittle, and some have taken pretty serious damage.

There's always a fine line between preservation/conservation and altering.

That's also true in other hobbies.

The list keeps growing.

Yawn.:confused:

I guess Mr. Calderon, who clearly knows how to post here (see below), isn't going to this time.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...light=calderon

This!!! I too was a regular at cards shows in the late 80s and early 90s and you NEVER saw high-grade vintage. I'm not blaming buyers, but it's kinda naive to think that a Cracker Jack card that's more than 100 years old could be in mint condition. Same with a T206 card that was packed in a tight little box with cigarettes. After all, protective holders didn't come out until, what, the 70s or 80s?

Soaking is part of a long hobby tradition, and is the only way vast amounts of material stuck in scrapbooks could have been made available. And to the best of my knowledge it typically causes no harm.

I will post on his behalf...

We had all the cards reviewed by SGC and they feel they are graded accurately.

LOL.
Oh wait, maybe it's not so funny.
This hobby is a cluster fork.