Every slabbed card has a story, don't it?

[G1911]

Originally Posted by jchcollins

I was using the grading companies as an example, not the gold standard. Clearly all of them have had issues at this point, either with just making mistakes or in some cases actually being complicit in getting altered cards into legit slabs.

My point with the graders was that unlike many on this thread who seem to think it's enough to shake their fist at some card doctor in abstentia, grading at least is an attempt to evaluate the physical condition of the card that cannot talk about what did or did not happen to it a year ago, or 70 years ago. It is an attempt - such that it has evolved to at this point - to examine the physical evidence.

Even well into the future, if there is no obvious physical evidence of alteration, if high powered magnification and scans with x-ray devices cannot prove it - whether that is a grading company or just a collector detective on his own using such methods - then the card is not going to be called or considered altered. The speculation beyond that just leads back to the conclusion that we all already reached a long time ago: Alteration is bad. Sorry we can't prove more than that.

They have missed thousands upon thousands of altered cards that collectors have been able to show and prove just the last 2-3 years alone. They have been busted gifting grades to former graders. It is at best incompetent, sometimes corrupt.

We don't seem to be at the point where we have no idea when things have been altered - the graders are just bad at it and don't really care to improve (which is the most generous possible statement to give them). Your scenario is a future possibility, not really current reality. PSA is not the arbiter of actual truth.

I suppose we could declare being against literally anything as 'shaking ones fist in absentia' unless one has the active power to stop it (what am I realistically supposed to do? Private citizens are not really in a meaningful position to do anything about a host of bad things in the world and regulating crime, shock, does not eliminate it either). Because I cannot stop bad thing X does not mean I should not be against bad thing X. I know it is increasing in hobby popularity to support, tacitly or openly, alteration and fraud (which is the whole and entire point of the alteration - show me these sellers redoing corners, removing creases, micro trimming to sharp perfection and disclosing that honestly when selling them) but a number of folks are not going to go along with these soft justifications.