[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

Do you think he was blindsided by the extent of the trimming scandal, or do you think he was mostly already aware that this was happening and he just didn't think it was that big of a deal?

The challenge I keep coming up against when entertaining this thought experiment is that even if they had tried to crack down on known trimmers, I don't think it would have made much of an impact on the problem at large since there are a seemingly endless number of group submitters that they could still send their cards through.

My opinion, and I acknowledge it's only based on educated guesswork and some speculation, is that he was pretty knowledgeable about what went on in the hobby and was probably more surprised by how much BODA was able to uncover than by what they uncovered. Put another way, I'd be surprised if someone that smart and that immersed in the hobby and its participants could have been blindsided.

As to your second point, there is some truth to that, but I continue to think that regardless of who submitted them, more scrutiny would have uncovered a lot of the bad cards. I can't believe, for example, that many of these recolored cards we've seen would not have stood out under a blacklight. Or that an experienced grader could have really looked closely at some of the trimmed cards we saw.

Tying in to another discussion, I speculate that TPGs scrutinize the man on the street's cards more closely than favored big submitters.