[chadeast]

Originally Posted by Eric72

There are also the people who get stuck holding the bag somewhere down the road when their "mint condition" card is exposed as Authentic Altered. This would presumably cause the value to drop significantly.

For this to happen, though, there would have to be a larger number people who care than there are currently.

Sadly, I believe that the number of people who care will be less and less as time goes by. And when there is this much money to be made altering cards, the amount of time and money put into making those alterations will always greatly exceed the limited time that the TPGs put into grading the cards. Personally I have never believed that the TPGs had the ability (not to mention the motivation) to truly detect micro-trimming and other expertly done alterations, a belief that kept me away from high grade cards since I began collecting vintage.

As much as many of us would like to believe otherwise, great looking cards in A holders could be one of the best long term investments that you can make in vintage cards right now. If at some time in the future ALL high grade vintage cards are suspected to have been altered, even if most weren't, why would the great looking card in the A holder be worth a fraction of the price of the others? And if, in the future, some great new technology does somehow allow the TPGs to detect alterations accurately, do you think that they're going to start putting 30% or 40% or 50% of all previously high grade big dollar vintage cards in AA holders!?! There is no way that would happen, they'd be slitting their own throats financially. They are more likely to spend their money burying that technology to make sure that it never sees the light of day.