Alteration vs. Conservation Defined

[tschock]

Altered cards are like HPV.

• They are pervasive.
• Many people have them but don't know they do.
• And the people that do have them, and know they have them, don't want to admit they have them.

[drcy]

Before they come to auction I think down the road the very expensive cards will be more closely and seriously examined for alterations, likely by a new service, and the provenance of high end cards will be taken more seriously. Cetainly, for a $100,000, or even $40,000 card, this would be quite reasonable, and, perhaps some day, the norm.

Interestingly, with the T206 Honus Wagner sales, the provenance (history) is usually pretty prominent in the description.

I suspect things will change, at least for the extremely expensive cards.

Duly note that with art and artifacts, there are scientific devices (call them 'ultra advanced blacklights') that are used to test the molecular structure and can identify all the chemicals and compounds. They are so advanced that not only can they identify a real diamond, they can tell you, by the molecular tests, where in the world they originated.

I write for the SABR baseball card committee, and it could all start with a serious article on the topic at SABR.

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by drcy

Before they come to auction I think down the road the very expensive cards will be more closely and seriously examined for alterations, likely by a new service, and the provenance of high end cards will be taken more seriously. Cetainly, for a $100,000, or even $40,000 card, this would be quite reasonable, and, perhaps some day, the norm.

Interestingly, with the T206 Honus Wagner sales, the provenance (history) is usually pretty prominent in the description.

I suspect things will change, at least for the extremely expensive cards.........

I agree with this. Should this really come into play, it will be interesting to see how this plays out with recent six-figure acquisitions that have no provenance.

I suspect the last thing a seller of one of these recent no-provenance-come-out-of-nowhere cards would want is to do such an analysis for fear what it might reveal. If I was selling raw high-grade vintage cards worth big $$$ that I had reason to believe were not worked on, I would feel a strong incentive to undertake such an examination before or even instead of submitting the card to a TPG. I would then be in a position to credibly make the claim that my "slab" does in fact reveal all that was (or, from another perspective, was not) done to the card. If it was really high grade I likely would want it numerically graded by a recognized TPG, but presumably that grade would mean a lot more if accompanied by the report from my forensic analyst.

Should this ever become the norm to sell raw and/or no-provenance high grade vintage cards (and also condition-rarity post war cards), potentially it could have major implications for TPGs and the hobby, given my belief that most of these cards that have no provenace have been worked on. How much of this can/will happen depends I suppose on how much alteration can be conclusively exposed by forensic analysis.

[drcy]

There was a very rare 'missing text' T206 that had a scientific examination to determine if the text had been artificially removed. I assume in response to the examination that concluded there were no alterations, PSA entombed it. Scott Forest and I were the ones who did the 'Pre-grading; examination.

So it can be and has been done.