Trimming Frauds Revealed | How Does It Impact Vintage???

[egbeachley]

Another scammer identified

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...llectibles-com

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

Another scammer identified

https://www.psacard.com/articles/art...llectibles-com

This links to an article from 2013 about "JTM Investment Group." Can you explain, I must not be following.

[drcy]

Altered "high grade" cards in holders is nothing new and I assume has been common knowledge. This has been mentioned (including by me here on this board) numerous times over the years. The head of once biggest sports memorabilia auction house even said how he would "prep your cards" for grading. A lot of high grade professionally graded cards should be graded AUTH. That's just a fact. How people want to deal with or approach that fact is another matter. Much of the approach is how one prices things. One approach would be to take the grades with due grain of salt, and price accordingly. If you want to pay an extra $50,000 for the same card because it's been "better prepped," that's a choice. Not a choice I would make, but a choice.

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

This links to an article from 2013 about "JTM Investment Group." Can you explain, I must not be following.

Jason Stern from thereandnowcollectibles has allegedly been linked to many of the alterations. The link was someone’s way of identifying the details.

[egbeachley]

But here is another interesting nugget posted today.

Apparently these Upper Deck cards are laser cut to incredible precision. For a TPG to consider 1/32 inch tolerances (allowing trimming 1/64 inch to each side) is ridiculous.

[irv]

Originally Posted by drcy

Altered "high grade" cards in holders is nothing new and I assume has been common knowledge. This has been mentioned (including by me here on this board) numerous times over the years. The head of once biggest sports memorabilia auction house even said how he would "prep your cards" for grading. A lot of high grade professionally graded cards should be graded AUTH. That's just a fact. How people want to deal with or approach that fact is another matter. Much of the approach is how one prices things. One approach would be to take the grades with due grain of salt, and price accordingly. If you want to pay an extra $50,000 for the same card because it's been "better prepped," that's a choice. Not a choice I would make, but a choice.

Color me naive then because I certainly didn't know. I always assumed there might be some shenanigans sometimes with vintage/prewar cards/memorabilia but reading about all the modern cards being trimmed is certainly an eye opener.

I guess I gave the TPAs some grace with Vintage and maybe being a little more difficult to detect certain doctoring/trimming, etc, but I certainly didn't think they would be unable to detect modern cards that received the same types of alterations.

Your auction house comment sounds like these alterations are the norm and that everyone has been desensitized to that fact. What a shame!

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

But here is another interesting nugget posted today.

Apparently these Upper Deck cards are laser cut to incredible precision. For a TPG to consider 1/32 inch tolerances (allowing trimming 1/64 inch to each side) is ridiculous.

It's confusing because in the same thread guys keep saying they pull short cards from packs.