Posted By:
WhenItWasAHobbyEric,
You asked two questions and I'm not quick to rush to judgment but I'll give you some food for thought.
It just occurred to me that PSA has a webpage and an on-line video showing the grading process. After receiving the cards, the webpage explains, "The next step in the PSA process is called the Sticker Stage. At this stage, the cards are counted again and labels are placed on the outside of each card saver. The label or sticker assigned to each card contains information including the order number and individual certification number - that is the same certification number that will appear on the PSA label once the card is graded". See "Sticker Stage" in the link below. So it now appears that the '34 Goudey Grove was submitted with the '59 Topps football cards. Here's the URL to the website:
http://www.psacard.com/grading/process.chtml
L.J.'s explanation posted at 2:05 pm today, now appears to make the most sense. The card was probably submitted in a invoice with a lower fee rate per card and was overlooked as a premium card and was still graded in spite of its high market value. I personally don't believe PSA was complicit by allowing the cards to be reholdered with a new lower cert number by design because I believe they would have deleted the prior number from their database.
As for the circumstances surrounding the auctions, in my opinion, I'm not convinced the main intent of re-submitting the cards to PSA was to get bump-ups since some of these reappearing cards are vintage PSA 9's (did they really think they'd get a vintage 9 to bump to 10?) and the many that are less than 9 clearly show by the high resolution scans that they were correctly graded with no hope of a bump-up.
So why would a first time winner of the card, or a consigner who won his card back, go to all the trouble of changing the cert number to resell it? He could send the card to any number of different auction houses who seem to consistently achieve high auction returns and not go through the expense and trouble of re-sending it to PSA just to change the flip and drive up the pop report (to his market disadvantage)? Those are the questions that need to be answered.