Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
To put some legal context on this, selling an item in interstate commerce knowing a material fact has been misrepresented or omitted certainly can be mail fraud and/or wire fraud. Travis' point, essentially, is that we have reached the point where the fact that a slabbed card is trimmed is no longer material. Incredibly, and sadly, he may be right. The flip is the commodity and the slab sanitizes.
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Yes, precisely. The market doesn't care whether or not a card is trimmed. The market only cares whether or not a card is labeled as trimmed by a TPG.
And to take that a step further, a raw card's value is determined by its ability to pass through grading, or more specifically, by whether or not it bears evidence of having been trimmed, not by whether or not it actually has been.
Billy Bob can sell you a raw card at a steep discount because he believes it has been trimmed. After all, the person he bought it from told him so. Billy Bob keeps good notes and he cares about his integrity. He goes to church on Sundays AND Wednesdays. But if you resell that card, you have no obligation whatsoever to pass that information along after having it graded by a TPG. Billy Bob's opinion is irrelevant. The market doesn't care what he thinks.
Also, if you think the card is less valuable because you sold it below comps after you attached a note to it that read "the guy I bought this from told me it was trimmed", despite the PSA 9 label suggesting otherwise, you'd be wrong. All you did was sell the buyer a full value PSA 9 card at a discount, effectively handing him free money by shooting yourself in the foot. You might reason that your integrity is on the line. Others might argue that it's just your ignorance on display and that you're virtue signaling and paying off someone else so you can feel better about yourself. Again, the market doesn't care. The market is a cold beast.