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Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
2 and 3. Not 1. Also as I posted before, constant outward shifting of the demand curve means increased supply won't reduce price.
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Riffing on this theme a bit more, what’s to keep a relatively amoral group like organized crime from setting up their own card doctoring operation to supplement their other economic activities?
They certainly wouldn’t have any moral objections. They have an army of low-skilled labor at their disposal. And enough capital to buy the equipment and training to set up shop.
You could imagine an army of buyers trained to sift through auctions to find raw and low or mid grade pieces ripe for grade bumps with a little doctoring. All those cards end up funneled off to some warehouse where a sweatshop filled with card doctors labors day and night with their tools and a little training to improve those cards for superior grading. If they wanted to skip the learning curve, they could even hire one of these existing doctors to manage the operation. Or if they wanted to skip paying for it, they could squeeze him to give up his secrets.
The thought is a little terrifying, as thousands of cards per day could be doctored and pushed through grading, and out onto an unsuspecting hobby. Before you know it, the number of high grade copies for every issue and every player would swell to the point that supply might finally exceed demand. Might take a lot since demand is so deep. But when that point finally arrived, the prices would inevitably fall.
And if you’re worried that a domestic group would worry about detection by law enforcement, then there’s nothing to prevent international groups in Russia or North Korea or Sicily (or all of them together) from setting up such an operation.