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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

Jim,

I have been very supportive of your efforts to rid the hobby of altered cards. And I have taken at face value the sincerity of your feelings toward this goal. Yet I have to say that I find your failure to be willing to break your PSAS 8's out of their holders and anonymously resubmit them to be quite hyprocritical. As you correctly suspect, a number will come back as either altered or with a lower grade. And as such you will take a financial hit. But what better way to lead your crusade than to have one of the preeminent PSA 8 collectors put his money where his mouth is and let the chips fall where they may. You will gain instant credibility and respect, and if in fact more than a de minimus amount of the cards come back as altered, and you go public with that information, you will have done tremendous good to your cause. PSA will feel pressure to do a better job of detecting alterations. Customers will demand that all grading services have a buyback policy analagous to what SGC has. In addition, you will demonstrate that the issue of card alteration is in fact a serious problem and does merit the hobby's attention.