PSA Response from President Steve Sloan

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by benjulmag

Again, in your order.

1. Worn corners are apparent and need no disclosure.

2. A successful fraud prosecution has nothing to do with whether the grading standards are codified in law.

3. If you are submitting it to a TPG, you disclose it to them. If the card is raw and you are selling it privately, you disclose that what a rational buyer would reasonably regard as material that otherwise the buyer would not reasonably be expected to know and from the circumstances reasonably would not expect to have been done to the card.

4. No argument.

5. Again with this issue, a murky area to some, but to me, I would be okay with it. The fact that this dealer did a better job cutting them, because he was an authorized subcontractor of Topps, would be analogous to different, say, tobacco factories cutting Piedmont brand t206s having better cutting processes. Despite that, those tobacco cards would all be properly regarded as factory cut.

Conclusion: The card doctors could properly be charged with fraud. Whether law enforcement wants to devote the resources to pursue this, that is another matter.

Someone owns a baseball card. That's legal. They do something to it to enhance its appearance. That's legal. The consistent theme of your responses seems to be, if what was done to improve its appearance is disclosed, no problem.

But if nothing of that nature is committed to paper, couldn't it come down to:

Card Doctor : I told them I was improving the cards appearance some.
Auctioneer: I don't remember him saying that (or) I didn't know altering is what he meant.

Basically, He Said, He Said. Then when the card is sold to a third person, because of the claimed confusion above, no mention of "enhancements" is communicated to the current owner of the card, and now its circulating out there.

Thanks again for your thoughtfulness in this conversation. It's so nice to catch a break from the snarkiness, once in awhile.

And again I am not suggesting nothing wrong was done, and I appreciate the fact you get that.