Posted By:
runscottI haven't had any bad experiences with GAI yet, because I haven't tried them...and won't. Common sense tells me that if they are going to compete with SGC, PSA, etc., then they are going to have to succumb to the same practices, and probably already have. If they declare themselves to be an altruistic non-profit company, existing purely to introduce honesty and ethics into the slabbed card world, then I might change my mind.
Cards are NOT slabbed in order to prove they are authentic, or have not been altered - we have found way too many examples of violations for this to be true, from all the major grading companies. Cards are slabbed either for protection, display purposes, or to increase market value. The latter of the three reasons being the most common, think a little about the things that could be done to a card to increase market value, and the incentive to do them on the part of the card owner, and to ignore them (or maybe even encourage them) on the part of the slabber.