Mike Baker Authenticated

[MattyC]

Originally Posted by Snowman

For reasons I may never understand, I decided to give the video a listen while I was getting some work done...

This is a classic example of the type of content that drove me nuts over at Blowhard. Here I was thinking from the clickbait/screenshot that this hobby hero blogger had uncovered another major scandal! He buries some "card trimmer" who supposedly submitted a card he knew was trimmed to PSA 4 times, then decided to try BGS and they slabbed it for him. Then he sent it to Mike Baker to get a gold diamond sticker to try to further hide his crimes. Then he is "associated with PWCC" and tries to sell the card through them, but PWCC gets informed that this card is "TRIMMED"!, as does Beckett. Then Beckett supposedly decertifies the card because they are informed of PSA's evidence of it being trimmed [lol]. Then PWCC supposedly removes the card from their sales history because it was either shill bid or they wanted to hide their crime from the "ongoing" FBI investigation.

Of course, however, this is ALL NONSENSE. Here's what ACTUALLY happened...

This guy bought the Kobe Bryant card already in it's BGS 9.5++ holder with the Gold Diamond sticker on it. He thought it would/should cross to a PSA 10, so he tried to send it in as a crossover. PSA rejected it for "evidence of trimming". His dumbass then supposedly tries to send it in AGAIN as a crossover IN THE SAME SLAB WITH THE SAME SERIAL NUMBER to PSA because he's an idiot who doesn't realize that PSA asks for the serial number in the crossover submission form for a reason. They enter that number into their system and log the results. If someone submits that same card again with the same serial number, instead of doing the honest thing by informing the customer that they've already looked at the card and rejected it, they just take your money and the card and then send it right back to you with the same reason for rejection. That card never even makes it to a grader's desk the next time it gets sent in. This card probably hasn't even been trimmed. This "trimmed card" opinion is from ONE GUY (probably one of those near-minimum wage teenage graders) from PSA who looked at a card in a competitor's slab and said, "it's trimmed" despite it having passed both BGS's and Mike Baker's eyes. That "trimmed" tag is then forever associated with that serial number in PSA's database. The owner of the card, now surely furious as he's basically just been ripped off by PSA multiple times, decides to sell the card. He lists it with PWCC, not because of anything whatsoever to do with some trimming scandal of which this card does not apply, but because it's probably the best marketplace to sell a high-end Kobe RC on (despite the lemmings saying otherwise).

Meanwhile, the guy making this video claims that the card's cert was taken down by BGS. He even shows himself logging in to their website and entering the serial number only to have it say "No match found"! "AHA!" he declares. "See, I told you so!". Nevermind the fact that he's looking it up on the BAS lookup site, and not the one for BGS lol. I checked the cert number myself. It's still there. The card is not tainted. He also claims that PWCC purged the sale from their records. Again, not true. I looked that up too, and it's right there on their website. Sold for $120k.

This is entirely a nothing burger. There is zero evidence of anything even remotely shady about this card. It's just a Kobe RC that PSA rejected as a crossover. Happens every day. But these conspiracy theorist lemmings over at Blowhard are just all over this type of nonsense all day long. It's absolutely insane.

The real crime here is that this card is going to keep getting passed around from one person to the next and every single buyer is going to send it in to PSA expecting it to cross over to a PSA 10 because it is a BGS 9.5 "true gem plus plus" with a 10 subgrade for corners and a 10 subgrade for edges, and it has an MBA Gold Diamond sticker on it. But since one random guy at PSA thought it might be trimmed (despite the fact that the card is in a BGS slab with inner sleeve that PSA themselves admits they just can't see through well enough to accurately asses the card), it gets forever tainted in their database. But meanwhile, PSA will just keep taking everyone's money on this card over and over and over, handing out the same (and quite possibly bullshit) rejection reason.

Here are screenshots of the record of the sale at PWCC and proof that the cert is still valid at BGS.

Damn. Well done. Good write up, good read. Just goes to show, we all gotta buy the card and not put stock in what the stickers say one way or the other.