no sense in looking at your collection with rose colored glasses now. I think Kevin and some others have proven to me that alterations can be made good enough to fool the best graders out there. If you've amassed a lot of graded cards and now are wondering what to think, I don't have an answer for you other than welcome to reality. The hobby's holy grail card has been suspect for years ...some people believe it's unaltered , some don't. I heard the story long before the book came out , and made a decision to not rely on 3rd party graders for peace of mind or to somehow increase the value of a raw card I bought. I trust my own judgement and knowledge when it comes to spending $5 or $5,000 on a card. Some dealers back in the 80's and 90's used to think my brother and I were just cute kids walking around shows with a 10X loop looking at cards. It helped me become better at spotting fishy looking cards and at judging the conditions of cards.
I don't think that card altering is going to cease any time soon either. People can make a good living doing it and to be honest some guys may try to pass altered cards off to grading companies for the thrill of it and for the $$. Once they do it one time it is a green light to continue down that road. I know noone wants to think of it, but I'm sure out there somewhere is a guy who "works" on cards every day for several hours a day with the intention of defraudind someone.
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