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[steve B]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

Jim,

The first card had a mark erased and re-submitted to PSA for a higher grade. They should have detected that alteration. Stevie Wonder can see that erasure mark.

The second card has been trimmed to enhance the appearance.

If nothing else, PSA has the ability to determine who submitted those cards and ban them from ever submitting again.

Long, and some off topic, OT stuff below the line

I'm a bit ambivalent about the first card.

The pencil was an alteration to begin with, and the erasing wasn't that badly done. Maybe it's my monitor or something, but it's not that easy for me to make it out in the scans. Eventually I can spot the clean area where the pencil used to be mostly because I know where it was. There should be an indent which PSA should have caught, unless it was really that light and was removable along with a bit of the surface soiling.

The second card I have a bit more of a problem with. I don't think it's trimmed in the traditional sense, but it's obviously had some work done. The upper right corner seems to have had a bit sticking out from fraying that was removed to make the corner look better. The frayed edges on the back were either pressed flat so they were less obvious, or were removed. Pressing them back I think is questionable. If I had it ungraded I'd probably flatten them by hand and put it in the sleeve/toploader. A few years of storage would flatten them, just as a few years in bad storage created the fraying.

Cutting the frayed bits off is a bigger problem, and also should have been caught. And should have resulted in an "A" grade. But without knowing they were frayed that way, depending on how they were removed it might be very hard to tell it was recent, or simply additional wear appropriate to the new grade.

Both point out clearly what I see as the largest problem in grading.
The more expensive cards cost more, which is appropriate, but the time spent grading them is either the same or less than the time spent grading a common.

Another thing I find interesting is that the majority of people in the hobby probably wouldn't have any problem with the same stuff being done to a common. I suppose it's the money invloved, but that shouldn't matter.
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With other collectibles like stamps there's more cost for expensive stuff, and no set turnaround time. The easy ones are supposedly pretty quick. At the international show in DC in 06 they had a quick opinion available as a sort of antiques roadshow sort of thing. I brought a couple stamps I felt confident about but wanted some reassurance. One I thought was "good" the other good but altered to be a more expensive item. Those conclusions had taken me a couple weeks to reach. The expertiser reached the same conclusion in under a minute. The good one was good Slightly off center, perfs slightly oval as they should be - He said yes, it's that stamp and a nice one it really needs to be sent in for a full certificate. The other was a proof that had been perforated and gummed as I'd suspected. Too well centerd, wrong paper for the issued stamp and the wrong gum. Not worth a cert, and now a question of what I do with it. I'll probably eventually remove the faked perfs and gum and keep it as the proof that it is.

Both of those are "easy" to expertize. Other items take longer or need to be seen by certain experts which takes time (They actually mail some stuff to 3 or more people) It can take as much as 3 months, rarely longer. And sometimes the answer is "We decline to render an opinion" which you still pay for.

The point is that they take a long time, but make a very serious effort to get it right. And with a very few very complex items, they may actually rescind the certificate if the item is proven "bad" later. I'm not sure how they handle that financially, those types of items are usually WAY out of my league, and it hardly ever happens. It's probably handled quietly and by insurance. There are a few organizations that keep those bad items as reference examples. Once they know a cancel is fake they can compare and condemn any matching examples. But that's also done carefully.

Steve B