Thoughts on CGC potentially "Restoring" Cards
 

With CGC getting into the card grading game, I noticed this discussion come up on Facebook. CGC currently offers a restoration service for their comics, and then slabs and grades them with a special label. One could only wonder if they'll eventually offer this service for Trading Cards.

This is potentially Pandora's Box. While I certainly own cards that are graded as Authentic Altered, that's only because they're a little more on the affordable side. The proespect of "Restoring" a Card seems almost sacrilegious to me. I'm curious to hear what others think. It's certainly something that could happen. Comics get restored, so does Fine Art, what is stopping cards from being next?

Restored
 

I don’t mind comics being restored and labeled restored. I have daredevil 1 in a restored holder. It’s great.

I think the shitstorm begins when cgc holders cards restored and then they are bought and popped out. Then they get Massaged and sent in to receive 8-9-10.


I don’t think they will do it. No upside in it only downside.

It's already happening. Moser and Huigens could each buy multiple houses from the cards they've funneled through PSA.

Shitstorm is already in progress.

I'm familiar with Moser and Huigens, the entire situation is disgusting. I'm talking about cards being restored and hen being disclosed as "restored." But as Bigfish pointed out, what's to stop the restored cards from being cracked and then graded by a new company.

Absolutely No

They have qnd actively promote a restoration service? Link please

Same posters
Same motives
Adding.nothing to the topic.

Most likely they will offer the service. Any way to make a buck!

They have been restoring comics for years.

You would think that means that they'll eventually restore cards, and how that will play out. I know some comic book purists who are staunchly against restored comics.

I don't like this for comics or cards.

Sorry Ted!

Obviously it's a bad idea that should not gain any traction with cards. Toby's point alone in post #2 should immediately put this bad idea to bed.

It's not against any law to restore something and then mark it restored. Although I don't like the idea, it's exactly on par with SGC offering the ability to cut cards and then grade them with a "sheet cut" designation. The market will adjust accordingly, and cards like that may sell for what a nice looking PSA AUTH sells for, in the PSA 2-4 price range.

People are going to commit fraud, and if they alter cards as a business model and then catch the alterations if they are submitted later to them, they're doing the right thing. If they alter the cards and then cannot tell they're altered and give them grades on the unaltered scoring chart, there will be major issues.

Does SGC still offer to cut your cards for you?

Restoration is dumb, IMO, in most cases. But it's also very detectable on comics, so i don't see why it wouldn't be for cards.

I know there's a portion of the hobby that's skeptical of the grading companies, and what they've slabbed and let through, throughout the years.

Restoration almost caught on with cards in the early 90's, but what did instead was professional grading.

To me, the fear that restored cards being accepted could then lead to said cards being busted from slabs and thereby adding an additional dimension of confusion to the current alteration scandal mess with TPG's is silly. The answer to this all along has been more individual collector responsibility and knowledge, and demands of accountability out of hobby partners like graders. PSA and other TPG's have largely gone unimpacted by the events of 2018 - present with the scandal because at the end of the day, there is not a quorum of hobbyists who give a good godd@amn.

At the end of the day what matters is that you are satisfied with your cards as a hobby / investment. Don't buy examples that might be suspect of fraud or alteration - or even restoration - if you don't like that. Short of TPG's investing a ridiculous amount of time, money, and resources in a move towards becoming something more like forensic examiners than people who rate pieces of cardboard on a 1-10 scale (not ever going to happen...), collectors who care know they are responsible for this anyway.

when
 

is this grading company going to debut?

Why not? It's not expensive to at least begin, and that's what has been done in stamps for over a century.
Very early experts marked the back of the stamp with their mark, a practice that has been fading for decades and is now pretty much gone. Certificates began sometime before 1930.

A similar service for cards wouldn't be all that difficult.

Yeah, they could use a glue or ink or paper that fluoresces under black light, as part of their restoration.

At the end of the day we need to buy what we like and what we're satisfied with. I have purchased cards that are slabbed AA, mostly because they present nicely and are usually cheaper. We are always going to be responsible for what we collect.


I don't believe there is a definitive date with everything going on, but I believe they're supposed to be grading at least starting this year. The Restoration, who knows if it happens. With them offering a comic restoration service though, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest, if they eventually take on restoring cards.

First, I wouldn't do this.

However, Let's not forget that there are all different levels of restoration, even for art. Soaking glue and adhesive off the backs of cards is restoration. No one objects to that when it's done right.

With the money that has flowed into our hobby it's almost ignorance to believe the same people who restore their artwork, classic cars, and jewelry wouldn't take the same opportunity to restore their cards. An investment in the eyes of many needs to be maintained or improved.

Just got an email from them about the launch of the service. Currently no restoration available as a service.

"Restoring" cards
 

I have collected cards and comics for decades, they are my collecting passions. There are collectors who buy comics that have been artificially improved- they call this "conservation/restoration/repair", depending on what specifically is done to a book. I own ZERO such books and will never, but that's just me. CGC slabs these books with a different colored slab than unaltered ones and denotes what has been done- ie, "spine reinforced", "cover color touches", etc. Some collectors even put a replica cover on a coverless book (not uncommon with comics to be coverless), which boggles my mind...
I sent multiple emails a couple weeks ago to someone at CGS, asking questions about their premier graders, their fee structure, and their launch date (and how to sign up). It took someone weeks to reply, and it was not the person who I sent the original email. They did provide a link so I could read about a couple of their "premier" graders, but were silent on the topics of signup and fee structure. I sent yet another email basically begging for concrete information on these topics but have yet to hear back...
One key difference between serious comic collectors and card collectors, is that many more comic collectors are content with loose books (we'd use the term "raw" in cards) than are card collectors with unslabbed cards. People do pay a higher amount for slabbed comics, but CGC has been known to be inconsistent with grading and, often, more forgiving of grades assigned certain vintage books- especially lower grade ones.
I am left wondering, in the end, if CSG has bitten off more than they can chew by entering the card fray. Only time will tell... Trent King

Slippery slope and a conflict of interest. Nothing stopping an internal person from accidently not disclosing/labelling a slabbed restoration.

Why can't there just be a simple, straight forward TPG without the shenanigans

That's not profitable.

I would be 100% for them restoring and slabbing cards as such. There are probably millions of "restored" cards out there already with numerical grades assigned to them. This would only bring about transparency, at least I would hope.

If they see it as a profitable venture – which it almost certainly would be – then they will eventually roll out the service. I know that I have raw cards that I wouldn't mind having touched up for a small fee, just to make my overall display look a bit nicer.

The only way for them to do this right would be to mark the card itself in some way. UV-reactive ink would be the best choice, though a small printmark might be the simplest way (and making it harder to crack, say, a restored Cobb and sell it raw, as there's significant value even without a TPG).

Interesting to hear. Concerning what you said about collectors buying raw, I think the only reason why many people purchase slabbed cards is because they don't want to bother with trying to make heads or tails of whether or not a card is legit. Especially when buying more high end/high priced cards. I think many of the older collectors and even some of the newer ones prefer to keep their cards raw.

CSG is going down a slippery slope. I'm hesitant to grade, to begin with. A good chunk of my collection is raw, and will stay that way.

Don't get me wrong; it's do-able, and I would agree from a startup perspective would not be over-the-top difficult out of the gate. The Philatelic Society is what I'm assuming you are referring to with stamps - I think that's great.

I meant that current TPG's have no market incentive to do this, so why would they? Aside from the noise that has been made on Blowout and here and in a few other spots, other collectors and investors largely don't care about the alteration scandal.

Yes, APS and PF and others.
My club had a talk by an expertiser, and while most of what he talked about was stuff I knew, there were some things I had never heard of.
Like one of the 1870's-80's papers being detectable because it's ever so slightly flourescent under a blacklight.

There's an outfit that's doing some very advanced work studying stuff like color and paper scientifically.
Someday I hope Something like X-ray diffraction is available affordably enough for hobbyists.

https://www.analyticalphilately.org/index.php

But a blacklight usable for cards is around $10, and decent magnifiers and measuring tools can be had for well under $100 total.
Going with a really good dual range blacklight, magnifier and measuring tool would be possible for under 500.

So then why do these people pay such an enormous premium for a card graded "9" vs. one graded "A"?

Why even have a grading scale if nobody cares? What's the point of it all?

Like Trent, I have been active in both hobbies over the years. One thing to keep in mind, which might help explain the lesser disparity between graded and ungraded comics, is once you grade a comic, you are only able to view at most 10% of the item. With either graded or raw cards, you can still see (very close to) 100% of the card and still seem to be able to enjoy the 'purpose' of the card, which is viewing the front and back. Many comic collectors still like to enjoy the purpose of comics by looking at the inside of their books as well: :)

Not really a valid comparison. I'm saying they don't care about the scandal, and in many cases will continue to buy vintage graded 9-10 range, despite the fact that some cards there probably should be in "A" slabs.

"A" to many people implies alteration / skulduggery. PSA will put "Altered" on the slab itself; SGC puts A without an explanation on whether or not the card is altered, is for some other reason intact but cannot grade on a numbered scale - or whether or not the grader simply wanted it encapsulated as authentic and not rated on the 1-10 scale. I have a '56 Mantle I've had since I was a kid that I knew SGC would refuse to grade, because they have before. So I sent it in just to get an "A" tux. They slabbed it for me quickly and sent it back with no questions.

I digress. The point of it all is that consumers in the vintage sportscard marketplace don't always act rationally.

CSG update for grading fees
 

Hi all- a couple days ago, I made a comment on this thread about CSG and a lack of specifics regarding their launch date and grading fees. I finally got specifics on the fees (no launch date though). Highlights include:

1) "economy"- $15 per card, max card value $500- FORTY DAY turnaround
2) "standard"- $25 per card, $1000 max card value - 25 day turnaround

There is an option for subgrades, $10 extra and 5 more days waiting. They also add a $5 "handling fee" for online submissions and $10 for paper form submissions.
The biggest groin punch is that they flatly state, WITH NO BACKLOG YET, that the turnaround times are "approximate"; however, I don't think they'd agree if you paid an amount "approximate" to their fees but not quite what they want.

There are other details, I merely selected some for brevity's sake. Website is www.csgcards.com

I think these prices are high and that they are wringing every dollar they can- while naturally refusing to be held to their stated turnaround times. These are not the "droids" I was looking for", for Star Wars fans. For those who are not, I am underwhelmed by these details. I thought the idea was to compete rather than to conform...

Trent King

Agreed. I can live without grading, but for those who can't - that would lead me to sticking with the devil I know.

I collect both comics and cards. Comics that have been restored and are slabbed by CGC are clearly labeled as such. They are essentially red headed step children among the comic collecting group. Comic collectors refer to the restoration labels as PLODs (purple label of death). If they would get into restoration of cards I would anticipate they would similarly label cards as such and the perception would be even worse with cards than it is with comics.

Purple Label of Death is quite a funny term. And I would agree they would receive a similar label.

The issue for most isn't that the grading company does that, it's that the submitter would get it back, crack from holder, and then submit to a different grader that sucks at detecting alterations.

I don't think they go into the card conserving business but who knows?

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