Thankfully my budget has me hunting low grade gems, generally can't afford anything vintage above a 1-2. I do find this thread fascinating. Some of those doctoring jobs I have to admit are pretty astonishing to me, seems to me there's some real skill involved there. It's the dishonesty that's the problem here, but for a psa bump from 5 to 9 meaning a $29,950 profit, it's no surprise this is happening.
All that said, it's interesting to me that the grading companies haven't starting offering something like "restored" as a qualifier to take some of the stigma off of "altered". I can see someone not from this world looking at this process as more like art restoration which is a rather common and accepted thing for really old and valuable artwork.
|