Another PSA mess up? major card - AA to 5
 

This was posted on another site I visit (not blowout)- sorry to have to do this via pics. SuperDan from BODA believes that a PSA Altered, t206 Red Cobb, Carolina Brights, now sits in a PSA 5 flip.

You all decide. To all PSA apologists, this is not mere PSA-hating: even if there was no foul play, there is simply no excuse for a card of this caliber to go from an AA flip to a 5, period. I am fairly sure it is, or was until recently, part of the David Hall collection, which if true, does not look good either.

I would hate to be the guy who spent all that money for a card these experts once determined was altered....

“Never get Cheated”

Thos epics are very very low quality. Can you link us to original images?

Can you please post better photos

Yes, please...better pics.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Lets see if these are better. I will link the site/thread if I am permitted to do so.

Technically David Hall still owns it. He purchased it in the PSA 5 holder and it
hasn't come up for sale in one of his auctions yet.

Wow, cut and dry same card. Thank you for posting

Pat, I think this card may been purchased from the David Hall collection privately before the auctions began.

Match!
 

That's a match Ryan. There are several small spots on the top border which are the same on both images. Thanks for posting,

Prior to the Altered -

https://i.imgur.com/vsShBDc.jpg

Nice find Chris. So the same card went from a 4, to an A, to a 5.....

Unfortunately, this is part of the whole crack and re-submit (maybe with some doctoring in between) that is common. Have seen it dozens, if not hundreds of times.

Agreed. Clearest indicators.

Yeah, definitely the same card as others have said. I wonder what the supposed alteration was? The card does look super sharp for a 4, let alone a 5.

If they are all the same card, the latest version appears darker to me. The red appears darker.

The latest version is also missing the small white speck near Cobb’s ear. The A-A version shows a white speck near Cobbs left ear (card’s right side) while the latest one does not.

Such a shame, looked like a great card before. I wish people valued and paid more for wider borders. Wider the border, higher price for the card. That'd be hard to fake.
But I'm also a guy who thinks school teachers should get paid more than school administrators. Don't think either one of those is happening anytime soon.

What if nothing was actually done to it? 1st submitter gets a 4, he or the next owner thinks it's nicer, cracks and resubmits, gets an A. He or the next party that owns it, cracks and resubmits again, get a 5.

This happens all the time, cards are continually submitted, cracked and resubmitted just to get a better grade, without actually doing anything to the card. Not saying that is the absolute case here, as the card cannot reasonably be examined via scans. But on first glance it appears identical in all three holders.

After further review of the scans, the AA does appear to have a narrower right border....

I know people who already do this. :)

.

Scott, I get the crack and resubmit game. But if PSA is an expert, then there is no way that the grades on a t206 red Cobb, Carolina brights, should range from a 4, to an AA, to a 5. At best it shows the total inconsistency of PSA’s product. At worst it shows their absolute incompetence. And, the fact that this belonged to David Hall at some point does not help.

Next steps
 

I completely agree PSA was incompetent with this card.

Does the owner of this card know of these issues? And, if so, what does this person do about it? I'm sure PSA will not do anything about it. If they do a grade review, they're not going to admit to slabbing an altered card.

Assuming that it is the same card and that PSA cert # system follows actual numerical order, then the card went from AA, to a 5 to a 4.

Chances are, the people looking at these, know less than you and I and about 50% of this board, about vintage cards. Just because they are grading cards does not make them an expert. They may have been doing this for only a few weeks or months, who really knows.

Many things can come out of a grading submission that will make you really shake your head, both good and bad. So yes, consistency is an issue. Take ten-twenty cards with the same numerical grade from the many years(decades) of grading and you will see a wide variance of appearances.

The 90M number precedes the other two. The earliest PSA flips used odd number jumping for the cert numbers, but had those distinctive rounded corners on the flip. The AA was next, then the 5.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification. Does anyone know why PSA skip numbered certs?

Some regions were set aside for when they do grading away from California, some for regions where their PSA/DNA autographed cards go. But at the beginning, they just weren't consistent. So a lot of the cards starting with 30M, 50M, 80M, 90M were all done like 20+ years ago, before they started going straight through the numbers. Once they got back to regions they already used, they had to skip them recently. Like three years ago or so, they were at 29,999,999 and then had to skip over their previously used region and started back at like 30,700,000 or whatever. Then they had to skip at 40M and will have to again at 50M, right around now. So they are filling in the gaps.

Thanks for the explanation John.

This card is up on Heritage right now

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...ageDesc-040218

No mention of the altering

If you expected otherwise, you are a wonderfully optimistic person.

Of course not. Sell sell sell baby!

Wow! I can’t imagine Heritage won’t yank the card. What a joke.

I’m sure heritage will do the right thing and pull the card asap.

It's at 42K now. I have my doubts this will get pulled.

Surely somebody at Heritage tunes into Net 54 and has seen this post. I know Pete Calderon does. If Chris Ivy and team don't pull this item with an apology, I think Heritage is sitting on a time bomb.

We just recently collectively determined that hosting fraudulent auctions for cards an auction house run by a criminally convicted fraudster doesn't even have is not only fine but commendable. Even the PWCC fraud ring has had its circle of open defenders and numerous posters who continued to do business with them through it all. Nothing an auction house does is going to make people hold them accountable or suffer a serious backlash, because too many believe that anything that helps increase prices is good. Accountability, transparency, disclosure and honesty is bad for business and can sometimes get in the way of making money, and unless and until that's not priority #1 absolutely nothing will happen. Heritage won't suffer at all if they choose to just ignore this, leave the card up, and make their money off the scam from some rich sucker. Everyone will line right up for the next auction.

No proof was shown that the card was altered. Indeed, BODA states there are no apparent alterations from the AA to the 5. The issue is with PSA and their terribly inconsistent grading. How can the self-proclaimed experts call the same card, of such significant value and caliber, both a 5 and AA (and apparently a 4)? This is a PSA issue.

I don’t see why Heritage should pull this. It sits in a PSA 5 flip and nobody has provided proof it’s altered. Perhaps they should disclose that it used to sit in an AA flip, but other than proper disclosure/description, I don’t see Heritage having any other obligation (including pulling it)

No, we never decided the auction was fraudulent. You did that on your own.

Agree though that HA is clean on this. PSA changes their grades all the time. I don't know why they should pull a card from auction just because PSA had second thoughts on thinking a card was altered.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

I agree — but the disclosure needs to be made. And since the card is already bid up without the disclosure they’d need to check with the current bidders if they’re ok with continuing to bid on a card that PSA has graded A at one point (and a lower numeric grade another). Really bad look for PSA but it happens to all grading companies.

I know many instances of people who have submitted the same card multiple times, getting many different grades including altered, before finally getting it into what they considered the right holder. We just saw it on a Nagurski -- the first submitter received an altered, the guy who cracked it out got a 5.5. If anyone ever funded a serious experiment to test consistency of grading, I am sure the results would be disastrous.

Is anyone confident the "altered" here was in fact the correct grade? Is it obvious?

While I don't think grading history generally needs to be disclosed (although of course if asked one should not lie), here it does seem material and so should be disclosed. I would be surprised if it affected the outcome much if at all.

Lol. What is there to disclose? The fact that PSA is incompetent?

I have a fairly large database of grading results for cracked and resubmitted cards that would make most people's jaws drop. I'm not talking about a half point grade difference here or there. I'm talking about mind-blowing incompetence on the level of graders actually throwing darts at a grade board.


How could it possibly be a material fact that one random guy, who probably had never even seen a vintage card before, under graded a baseball card once upon a time?

In one breath you seem to dial in on the fact that these graders have no clue what they're doing yet in the very next breath you seem to cling to the idea that one random grader's opinion on a Tuesday afternoon in 1997 ought to be remembered.

If it's unimportant in fact, the market will disregard it. But on a card this significant, the market should be given the information in my opinion. I'd much rather err on the side of disclosure and transparency. Maybe the screw up was the guy who deemed it a 5, not the guy who rejected it. Who knows? People can judge the value of the information. What's the downside?

In a previous life, I would always look for results that were accurate, reproducible and defensible. How does PSA (or any grader) stack up?

Accurate - Well, we don't have any widely accepted standard on how cards are assigned grades, and even the standards each company has change with time.
So, there is no 'truth' to measure accuracy against.

Reproducible - Many cards get resubbed, some over and over, looking for a bump in grade. If their grades were reproducible, then there would be no desire to resubmit for a better grade.

Defensible - Ever wonder why a certain card received a certain grade? Want to see the grader's notes? Mostly out of luck here.

As some folks said above, this is a PSA problem. However, it becomes a hobby problem when blind trust is placed on a result that is not accurate, cannot be reproduced and is not defensible.

I am with you on this one. I have personally had a card go from PSA Authentic Altered do not slab to getting a PSA 8. I have many others but this one was fairly recent.

If you want a real dose of reality go buy 10-20 PSA 10's. Crack them out and resubmit them and see what grades you get.

I'm sure at least a few would come back higher :cool:

And yet...

My view is that any t206 sitting in a psa 4 or better should be viewed as potentially altered at some point, particularly if it doesn’t appear to fill the slab all that much.

Heritage
 

How can anyone expect a Major Auction House like Heritage , REA Etc. to inspect or look up the back history of all of the cards that they auction.
They receive the cards already graded and thats how they list it . How are they to know that the card went from a 4-AA-5 and which grade is correct. Its in the eye of the Grader.. I dont feel that its their responsibility to investigate each card. This crack and submit game happens all of the time Where a one grade bump could lead to thousands of dollars for both the consignor and auction house. I know that this game is played a lot with the New Shiny Stuff , Submit, crack ,Submit, Crack etc until one receives a Grade 10 and sent to auction house for big bucks. Everyone seems to be making $$$. I Guess that Its a Win, Win for all involved .(Or is it?)

John P

I think for the most part the issue is what should they do once they're on notice of something. But more generally, they certainly know who is consigning cards to them, and the reputations of some of those people, so the protestations of complete innocence ring a bit hollow to me.

What happened to the crease on the top right corner of the PSA 4, just curious?