Which cards must be graded/authenticated to be sold online?
 

Net54, in the vintage card realm (which includes nonsports and all varying sports), which cards would you never purchase online without it having already been authenticated by a grading company? Which cards are the most heavily faked?

Depends who you are buying from. There are sellers and auction houses that it's safe to buy any cards from ungraded.

Though the obvious one to buy graded is the Babe Ruth Fro Joys. I think it's best for collectors to buy the 1933 Goudey Ruths graded too, as there are many fakes.

I can't imagine many veteran collectors buying a raw '52T Mantle or Jordan rookie. I sure wouldn't, even with a good scan, unless from the most honest of sellers with a stone-cold money-back policy.

I'm asking because COMC is putting together a more exhaustive list of cards that they will not take for consignment without them having already been graded. Here's the current list:
1909 Cy Young (T206)
1909 Eddie Plank (T206)
1909 Honus Wagner (T206)
1909 Ty Cobb (T206)
1933 Babe Ruth (Goudey #53, #80, #144, and #181)
1933 Lou Gehrig (Goudey #92 and #160)
1951 Mickey Mantle (Bowman #253)
1952 Mickey Mantle (Topps #311)
1966-67 Bobby Orr rookie card (Topps #35)
1979-80 Wayne Gretzky rookie card (O-Pee-Chee and Topps #18)

Here were the ones I came up with off the top of my head:
1909 T206 Honus Wagner (wouldn't that be great?)
1909 T206 Fred Snodgrass "Nodgrass" error - some people just take an eraser to the S to try and hide it.
1909 T206 Joe Doyle "NY Nat'l" error
1909 T206 Sherry Magee "Magie" error
Note: The Eddie Plank isn't really an error card, just a tremendous Short Print, but it should stay on the list
Any Shoeless Joe Jackson pre-1930 card
1914 Baltimore News Babe Ruth
1947-66 W461 Exhibits with a white or gray back; to my knowledge, only creams are authentic. (Known subjects: Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ted Williams?)

I will probably go through etsy and some other sites to add to the list of commonly faked cards. I also recommended they put in some kind of floor, like every card over $5,000 value must be graded/authenticated to be listed for sale on COMC.

I am going to do the modern cards (post 1980) on Blowout and get that list from over there.

I don't think there are any I would flatly decline to buy raw. Many of the biggest cards most frequently faked are not very difficult to discern the real from the fake (I've never seen a convincing but fake T206 Wagner, for example). The issues most difficult, or I find most difficult to tell fakes from and would be extremely wary of, I'm not confident the grading companies have mastered either. Fro Joys, as an example, come to mind immediately here. Not that I'm rich enough to be in the high-end market for T210 Jacksons and T206 Planks anyways!

An E121 Hornsby

That's just weird. None of the three are good at catching alterations, and won't back up their grades.

And yet here's everyone wanting to make it required to give the incompetent still more money?

There is nothing that I trust the opinion sellers with enough to say that I would "never" buy without them having been paid for their opinion.

The very first card that they graded, they purposely graded wrong, doesn't that tell us all something?

Doug "continuing to beat that dead horse, because so many didn't notice it getting beaten while it was alive" Goodman

This made me laugh! Thanks Bill!

Well, to me, this is for liability purposes for a company like COMC who is doing the best they can to filter out altered and fake cards from their inventory. They are not always the card experts; most are just guys processing cards. If COMC is on the hook for a $5,000 + refund because the card was counterfeit or trimmed, it's better to have to make sure their submitters had to go through a first line of defense. Necessary evil? The Hornsby is funny to see PSA/PWCC screw up on, but that's really a once in a blue moon kind of thing. And theoretically, now has PWCC's refund guarantee and PSA"s grade guarantee to fall back on. COMC has removed thousands of trimmed cards in altered slabs from these same companies from their servers and processed a ton of refunds even though the cards were graded. I'm really just talking about authentication here.

1914/1915 Cracker Jack stars/SPs are another one.
1933 Goudey Sport Kings?

I’d buy Any card raw
 

Any card I’d buy graded I’d buy raw as well

LOL. True dat.

They do ok on authenticating - as far as saying a card is what it appears to be. A 33 Goudey instead of a reprint for instance. But that's the easy
part.

As far as figuring out if it's the same as it left the factory aside from normal wear? Nope.
And their "grade guarantee" is only "send it back to the seller" so they dodge all responsibility. I'm not sure where things stand with PWCCs guarantee, there hasn't been any updates in a while.

I suppose the liability thing has something to it, but personally I wouldn't want to shield myself behind a company like PSA.

If I was organized enough...