[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I disagree about point #1. At least for some of these cards. The bottom left corner on that Monte Irvin has been completely rebuilt. Paper stock and top layer/paint. This is not some amateur job. This is the work of an expert. You could probably count on one hand the number of people in the hobby who are capable of performing an alteration like this.

If we're talking about trimming, then sure. A lot of people have paper cutters. But even at that, I don't think you can just grab a random vintage card, take a slice off of it, and get a 9 nowadays. If that were the case, these pop reports would indeed be blowing up. But that isn't happening.

Perhaps it is worth pointing out that during his interview with that podcast, Mathis talked about buying up several PSA 9s of a card that he wanted a 10 for with one of his registry sets and sending them all to a card doctor in hopes that just one of them could be turned into a 10. They weren't just grabbing random cards, like 5s or 6s, and cutting them up and getting 10s. They were looking for near-perfect cards and trying to make very minor improvements. This tells me that nobody within even his well connected circle of highly skilled card doctors was capable of performing an alteration like the one we see on this Monte Irvin card.

Fair enough. Some of the work is highly skilled.