Quote:
Originally Posted by LOUCARDFAN
I can tell you for a fact that one certain auction house used to get preferred treatment from PSA as I have experienced it first hand. I consigned a very large ungraded collection to Mastro back in 1999 and when discussing the collection and potential cards to grade, I was told by Brian Marren with Mastro to let them send the cards in to grade as any cards on the fence would get the bump to the higher grade.
Don't believe for a second that any auction house submissions aren't known by the graders.
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This, above. My problem on the whole right now with TPG's. Due respect but the Buck Barker provenance thing sounds like an anomaly. I would have been pissed too, but sounds like it would have been a huge PITA for them to authticate that at the show based on the fact that they themselves didn't seem to know the rules, and they just didn't want to do it.
The larger issue that I agree with is known auction houses and huge dealers getting preferrential treament. How many times either here or on Facebook groups do you see jokes about Probstein/PWCC/4 Sharp Corners? Oh, that's a "4SC 8". The foundation of it goes back further than that. The evidence today is kind of scant, but it stands to reason depending on what you read - that back during Mastro's heyday the man employed a virtual department of card doctors. How many of those cards wound up in PSA slabs due to a cozy arrangment? It stands to reason at least some (and of course I'm not including here the example of the most expensive card in the hobby...) I've seen primers you can find on Google on card doctoring - corner restoration, etc. - and some of their examples of bad cards you can clearly see the card is IN a PSA slab while this is being pointed out. That kind of thing is the more egregous stuff. What you do increasingly see evidence of is auction house submits a card with a wrinkle on the back that gets a 6, Joe Blow collector submits the same card and gest a 4. I don't have personal evidence of this but I've seen enough examples to more or less believe it's true.