Quote:
Originally Posted by veloce
People put up with shenanigans for a while and then it stops being fun and the market crashes. In 1990 everyone knew that card companies were intentionally printing error cards, but they kept paying for them because it was fun... for a couple years anyway. Right now people believe the grading system is a bit sloppy and arbitrary, but that it is fundamentally honest. Unfortunately graded cards are very vulnerable to a big scandal. Either good fake slabs will make it into the market or else there will be a scheme of organized bribery/kick backs for grade bumps. Given that there are millions of dollars at stake, I think it isn't a matter of if, but rather when this will happen. I don't think there is a business model that can both grade cards for a rate that collectors are willing to pay, and also guarantee security and competence. $100,000 cards are slabbed in the same plastic as $5 cards... and they are assigned grades by people who probably aren't making a high hourly wage. There is a lot of potential for someone to exploit the current grading system for big money and given that this hobby has had more than its share of people willing to rip off collectors I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet. When it does, the market will crash.
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Good fake slabs have already made it into the market in force. There are many threads about this. Preferential bumps have been a fact of life since shows in the 1990s. Preferential grading is essentially a given, look at the biggest ebay store and tell me anyone thinks he could have submitted these same cards and received 20,000 or whatever the number is PSA 10s. The hobby didn't even blink when Mastro admitted he trimmed the Wagner, and Allen admitted he rebacked a T206 Plank. This is all old, old news. Respectfully, your assessment seems somewhat behind the times. You sound like Dennis Purdy writing in 1994 or maybe it was 1996.
20 years later, PSA and card values are doing just fine, thank you.
Hyper inflated values always will correct, but I don't see a major crash on the horizon. One of the great things about this hobby is that everyone thinks HIS cards are immune from the shenanigans.