GAI has a "whoops"

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

The 10-11-02 SCD has a great expose on the fake 1963 Bazooka cards auctioned lately under the FGA grading service slabs by bassmaster. It's a must-read--way to go Bob!! About time we started seeing some investigative journalism. It only helps the hobby to expose its scummy underbelly.

The most interesting part (besides the Appalachian mining town interrelatedness of the card sellers, graders and marketers) is that GAI graded five of the fake Mantles, then when confronted, Steve Rocchi admitted it was a "mistake". Right. . .

Mr. Rocchi, my three year old wetting herself at camp is a "mistake". Picking up the wrong tray at the fast food is a "mistake." Missing the bowl at 3:30 a.m. is a "mistake." Your supposedly sophisticated grading service grading FIVE extremely high end fake Mantles from the same source is gross negligence.

For those of you playing at home, the score now stands at SGC with a fake Doyle, PSA with a fake Ruth rookie and a color Fro-Joy, PRO with everything it slabs trimmed, GAI with five fake Mantles, and Beckett and CSA--oh, frankly, who cares.

By the way, I also love how the Shop At Home buyer who picked up around 100 of these Mantles sent in five to GAI and the other 95 to FGA, which just happens to be a company he financed and consulted for. No conflicts there, dude. Ironic isn't it that his chums at FGA weren't good enough to authenticate the first five of the bogus cards. Sounds like this guy cleverly covered his @$$ by having a "legit" company opine favorably on a few of the cards so that he could send the rest to the clown college with a legally clear conscience. I wonder how many times he had to shop the cards to grading services before some got through?

I hope that somewhere in hell there is a special room for guys like this to have their genetalia repeatedly slabbed and cracked out throughout eternity.

"I am depressed" -- Taggert in Blazing Saddles.

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Posted By: David

A problem with grading companies is that they grade way too many items.

From what I understand, the counterfeits looked distinctly different than the genuine. If this is the case, this would mean that GAI examined a card without either knowing what a genuine one looked like or without having a sample card in thier files.

Old trading cards and related can be authenticated without having samples (in some cases samples are not obtained as an item is unique). This authentication happens when the card was produced with antiquated printing that can be easily identied by someone who knows what he/she's doing.

For modern cards, ala Bazooka, it's much more difficult and, barring obvious problems (i.e. printed from a computer printer), having samples or, at the least, a good experience with the issue, is essential.

I've long thought that the graders, even the good ones, will encounter inevitable problems because they try to grade as many cards as is possible. I'm not naive enough to think that they will ever choose to slow down.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Sad.

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Posted By: David

Referring to the above paragraph three-- from what I have seen, PSA has an essential ignorance about printing techniques, and this has lead to some of their goofiest bluders (including Andy's Sporting New Ruth). In my opinion, identification and understand of printing is essential to authentication. I also beleive that some people at MastroNet lack a grasp of the subtlties of printing and photography which has lead to occasional (not common) labelling, description and dating of items in their auctions.

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Posted By: Paul

I have two of the fake Bazookas and have been helping Bob Lemke gather information for his story (which I haven't seen yet out here in the remote wilderness of California). The fronts of the fake Bazookas are very good. The backs are a noticeably different color than the originals. I am no expert in Bazookas (I have only one real one) so I was fooled. (Fortunately, I paid only $5 each for mine).

The FGA holders are interesting. They are by far the most difficult holders to break your cards out of. They have a lip all the way around, which makes break outs real tough. These holders have to be real expensive, an odd choice of holders for a forger.

Paul

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Posted By: Bob Lemke

A couple of point's in Adam's synopsis are incorrect. GAI did not authenticate/grade five 1963 Bazooka Mantles; they did one Mantle and four other players. Also the fake Mantles sold on Shop at Home were sold ungraded. The Oct. 18 SCD, now in the mail, has a follow-up on the other types of cards faked in this scheme.