[BobC]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Not wanting to get the least bit involved in the Joe Orlando Stock Sale speculation/discussion...

I think the vast majority of your last paragraph (in bold) did indeed hit it out of the park. This is where the TPGs have failed us. I only take exception to the portion highlighted in Red. But for the most part, some very good perspective IMO.

Mark,

The reason I mentioned that is because there are a lot of people involved in the PSA Registry, and they probably don't want/need to have that changed or become unavailable. And as I also mentioned, there are different people in the hobby with different collecting concerns/needs/wants and interests, which is perfectly fine also. And for that reason, if PSA was to say they didn't see or weren't able detect these alterations that are being discovered and pointed out, they can go ahead if they want and continue to leave those cards in the currently graded PSA holders they are now in and not change their grades. And the people who own those cards can then continue to have them listed in the PSA Registry at the current assigned grades. In effect, what that would do is make it so PSA is effectively accepting of some alterations/restorations/conservation of cards, as long as it was apparently done so well that it couldn't readily be detected by them. And if those collectors owning those actually altered cards didn't care, that is fine and their business and no one else's.

However, if you had an organized collector run group that set up specific, unified grading standards and measures and PSA passed on agreeing and adhering to them and to the oversight by such a collector group, that is fine also. It would just be that people involved in the collector group would know that PSA did not agree to and adhere to standards of the collecting community, and hopefully the members of the collecting community would then view PSA graded cards going forward with a definite taint of doubt as to the veracity of the grades given, and possibly the authenticity as well. You'd potentially end up with two (or possibly even more) distinct collector groups that all operated under their own set of rules and standards. And there is nothing wrong with that. Collectors in both groups would eventually know the differences between the two and their standards and how they viewed things differently in the hobby. That way if a person was more of a hobby purist and didn't want to take a chance on accidentally acquiring an altered card, they would probably stay away from any PSA graded cards like the plague. Card doctors would also know that if a TPG like PSA didn't really worry about a card being conserved/altered/restored as long as they couldn't really detect such work and that if it passed through their inspection procedures without detection the card would thereafter be considered good as graded, they could go ahead and just submit all their work to PSA for grading, and not have to worry about potential persecution and legal issues going forward. The collectors who still wanted to follow and participate in the PSA Registry could then do so and continue to pay the prices they saw fit to pay for such high graded cards in PSA holders, altered or not. Meanwhile, people who preferred to follow the path of the more purist collector group wouldn't want to take a chance on PSA cards and would look most likely to only purchasing raw cards or those graded by other TPGs that did go along and adhere to the collector groups singular, unified standards and measures for cards and their grading/authentication. In other words, to each his/her own.

The not so easy to resolve problem/dilemma comes from the vast amount of already graded PSA cards currently owned by collectors who are more on the purist side of collecting and do not want potentially altered cards, at least not without them being properly designated, graded and priced as such. How do you resolve that with those collectors and get those now suspect PSA graded cards either out of their hands/collections, and/or reholdered by a different TPG that follows the more purist collecting groups ideals and standards? Or do they just hold on to them and deal with it? Great questions for which I have no answers. if something like that was to eventually occur, I think the market and collectors themselves would eventually figure out and gravitate toward the most acceptable/palatable solution on a collector by collector basis. And this dilemma to me is the gist of your non-agreement/non-acceptance of my statement about my being okay with PSA possibly accepting altered/restored/conserved cards as legit if they couldn't detect the alterations. I can fully understand how someone who has a number of suspect PSA graded cards in their possession would not be happy and concerned if PSA did not somehow address and possibly make redress for their potential approval of such altered cards being accepted as legitimately graded. But remember, it is only their opinion, to which everyone has a right to their own opinion. And if there are a sufficient number of collectors who may not think like and agree with you, but instead follow and accept PSA's view of the issue, if that is what they want to think and believe, who are you and I to say they are wrong? One of the things I've always heard is to collect what you want and like? If so, who are you or I to disparage someone else if that is what they like, accept and want to collect?

And here's an even worse potential result/dilemma should such a dichotomy emerge in the hobby. The more purist collectors who looked at altered/restored/conserved cards as only worthy of an authentic grade would expect the value of such cards to be severely discounted for the non-authentic grade. However, if collectors who followed the PSA way of thinking still viewed the undetectable altered cards that passed cleanly through as completely legit and accurate for the grades, those same cards that the hobby purists would give little value to would still be considered highly valuable by the PSA Registry crowd. So now you may not only have two potentially different thinking groups of collectors out there, but those two collector groups may also be assigning very different values to the exact same card(s) that both groups look to collect. If that were to end up being the case, how long do you think it would be before whichever collector group had the most followers (and money) would begin to exert pressure on the overall hobby to where cards and collectors would start to gravitate more to one side or the other?

Think about it, if the PSA collectors kept on looking for the consistently higher graded cards, altered or not, and there were enough members of that side of the market (with enough dollars), card doctors would be out there trying to acquire and buy up all the cards they could from the more purist collector group side, and then work their magic to make more money by altering those same cards, having them run through and graded numerically by PSA, and then offering them for sale on the PSA side of the hobby. The purists, not sure if any PSA graded cards then were altered or not, would likely value those highly graded and thus suspect PSA cards a lot less than members of the PSA side of collecting. And in that case, inevitably more and more cards will end up following the money and be moved into PSA graded holders (at least I can see this on the vintage side of collecting). So in that case what do the more purist collectors do as the cards they want, at prices they feel are correct, keep moving more and more to the PSA side of the hobby and getting graded and put into PSA holders? Eventually they won't be able to find/collect a lot of the cards they want and need for their collections, and will only accept and purchase cards in non-PSA holders or raw condition, which would in effect make such cards rarer and rarer to find and likely push prices up. Or they will have to bite the bullet and just accept and purchase the PSA graded cards after all, at potentially higher prices than they feel those cards are worth. And then at some point, the more purist collector group starts to lose members as they either can't find/afford what they are looking for and maybe drop out of the hobby, or just accept or go over to the PSA side. Lose enough members and that whole purist side of the hobby could eventually fall apart and go the way of the Dodo bird.

And on the either side of the coin, if the purist hobby group ends up having more followers (and dollars), and collectively steers away from PSA graded cards because of a potential alteration taint, that could end up having a negative impact on the overall value of all PSA graded cards as potentially fewer people will be interested in them. Law of supply and demand, right? In that instance it is likely over time that more collectors would start to move cards from PSA holders to those of other TPGs that followed the more purist hobby group's grading standards, or even raw condition, to take advantage of the perceived higher prices and value of non-alteration tainted cards. And if the prices on the PSA side start to get negatively impacted enough, that should also start to undermine the confidence of the investment minded people who are part of the PSA side of the hobby. Get enough of those people more interested in the investment side of things to start seeing the value in the higher graded cards on the purist side of the hobby not affected by a potential alteration taint, and you'll see them start to move over towards that side of the hobby and start getting out of their PSA graded cards.

In other words, if something like this were to happen, and that is one huge IF, I can inevitably see money will be the leading factor in determining which side of the hobby thinking will ultimately appear to win out and garner the most followers.

And for the record, there are suspected altered cards in not just PSA holders, but in SGC and BGS holders as well. And when I use the term "purist", I am not inferring or implying in any way that one side or group is better and pure/right while another group is somehow impure/bad in any way. I was merely using the terms purist and PSA as designations to name two potential sides/groups in a hypothetical situation as described above.