PSA Response from President Steve Sloan

[dplath]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

So in the comic book realm...are there instances where altered/restored richie riches end up in unaltered holders??

I’m sure it happens but I don’t know of anything as widespread as what we’ve got going on right now.

[bobbyw8469]

Originally Posted by dplath

I’m sure it happens but I don’t know of anything as widespread as what we’ve got going on right now.

1000% agreed. Those guys are light years ahead of the PSA guys in regards to catching alterations.

[70ToppsFanatic]

Originally Posted by dplath

I’m sure it happens but I don’t know of anything as widespread as what we’ve got going on right now.

That’s a pretty incendiary statement to make given the information we have so far.

Just how widespread is what we have going on right now?


Last I checked there are around 375 or so cards that have been “outed” on BO, plus a list of additional suspects that currently could take the total over 1000 if all of them were to be similarly outed. Note that we have no information that any of the outed cards has been reviewed by the TPG and the finding of the review confirms the findings of the message board sleuths.

While I don’t doubt that there is some validity in what has been raised I think generalizations such as this are premature, not yet backed up by publicly available “hard” evidence and are therefore irresponsible as they can cause further unease/damage that may ultimately not be justified.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by 70ToppsFanatic

That’s a pretty incendiary statement to make given the information we have so far.

Just how widespread is what we have going on right now?


Last I checked there are around 375 or so cards that have been “outed” on BO, plus a list of additional suspects that currently could take the total over 1000 if all of them were to be similarly outed. Note that we have no information that any of the outed cards has been reviewed by the TPG and the finding of the review confirms the findings of the message board sleuths.

While I don’t doubt that there is some validity in what has been raised I think generalizations such as this are premature, not yet backed up by publicly available “hard” evidence and are therefore irresponsible as they can cause further unease/damage that may ultimately not be justified.

Barry Sloate has more experience than almost anyone here and has complete integrity. Read what he wrote about the extent and duration of this problem. Please Dave you are spinning in a contrafactual manner. I have been collecting since the outset of TPG and I absolutely agree with Barry this is a massive, pervasive problem. All the major industry participants know it too. I have had countless conversations confirming this over the years. Countless. With dealers, major auction houses, knowledgeable collectors, people who know the card doctors. There is nothing at all new about this, just a few items where some guys adept at searching were able to find before photos. It's a speck compared to what's out there.

[barrysloate]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Barry Sloate has more experience than almost anyone here and has complete integrity. Read what he wrote about the extent and duration of this problem. Please Dave you are spinning in a contrafactual manner. I have been collecting since the outset of TPG and I absolutely agree with Barry this is a massive, pervasive problem. All the major industry participants know it too. I have had countless conversations confirming this over the years. Countless. With dealers, major auction houses, knowledgeable collectors, people who know the card doctors. There is nothing at all new about this, just a few items where some guys adept at searching were able to find before photos. It's a speck compared to what's out there.

Appreciate the kind words Peter but let me say a few things. First off, I have no idea how many altered cards are circulating in holders. We are all speculating, I think, about just how pervasive this problem may be.

However, I have been involved in the hobby for 35 years and I have heard so many stories, some of them entirely under the radar and never made public, that I have to assume that based on these examples the number has to be substantial. I don't attend shows and don't converse much with other dealers and collectors. And I have to also assume they know hundreds of examples too, since everybody in the hobby is well aware of the problems with graded cards.

So whether it is 1000, 5000, or 10,000 cards, I have no idea. But do I think the industry has a major problem to deal with? Absolutely. We're not talking about a few outlier examples, this is a major hobby black eye.

Of course, we also don't know how this will all play out, but we're going to find out.

[70ToppsFanatic]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Appreciate the kind words Peter but let me say a few things. First off, I have no idea how many altered cards are circulating in holders. We are all speculating, I think, about just how pervasive this problem may be.

Your own expert confirms what I said. This is all speculation based on what we’ve heard and nobody really knows for sure.

The only things we know for sure are:

1) unfortunately the number of doctored items in slabs is greater than zero
2) in all likelihood we will never be able to identify every tainted item
3) in all likelihood it will not be possible to prevent additional doctored items from making it into slabs because as the TPGs get better so do the scammers.

What we also know is that the creation and growth of TPGs has made the situation a lot better than it otherwise would have been, and that the TPGs seem to be committed to continuing to try and continually improve.

I’d like to see all of the innocent collectors affected in this latest “outbreak” spared from harm. I’d also like to see this latest outbreak contained so that it doesn’t spread and hurt other innocent collectors. The one thing I am confident of is that whipping up an angry mob to go after the one stakeholder that has the greatest potential to make things better for everyone, especially when there is no evidence that they were involved in nefarious actions or doing anything underhanded, seems like a bad idea to me.

The defense rests.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Barry is very careful and diplomatic, to his credit. I know what I know, David. I have 25 years of knowledge of what goes on in this industry. You can think what you want and spin as you please. Nothing personal, we just see it differently. And you acknowledge your bias pretty clearly, you want to see the harm minimized. I just want the truth. I am tired of this crap being spun and swept under the rug. We need real change. If PSA genuinely wants to lead the industry, this is a good opportunity to show some meaningful leadership.

[Goudey77]

My point of spamming this video is to to drive home the point that all TPG's should have a stance and be transparent on this topic. It is very clear that the CGC folks are comfortable talking restoration and have built a business model to address the various scenarios. It's the type of excellence we should expect from TPG's.
I understand that taking a stance and speaking about it puts your company under more scrutiny for "getting it right". Integrity and responsibility is what we consumers pay for.

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by 70ToppsFanatic

Your own expert confirms what I said. This is all speculation based on what we’ve heard and nobody really knows for sure.

The only things we know for sure are:

1) unfortunately the number of doctored items in slabs is greater than zero
2) in all likelihood we will never be able to identify every tainted item
3) in all likelihood it will not be possible to prevent additional doctored items from making it into slabs because as the TPGs get better so do the scammers.

What we also know is that the creation and growth of TPGs has made the situation a lot better than it otherwise would have been, and that the TPGs seem to be committed to continuing to try and continually improve.

I’d like to see all of the innocent collectors affected in this latest “outbreak” spared from harm. I’d also like to see this latest outbreak contained so that it doesn’t spread and hurt other innocent collectors. The one thing I am confident of is that whipping up an angry mob to go after the one stakeholder that has the greatest potential to make things better for everyone, especially when there is no evidence that they were involved in nefarious actions or doing anything underhanded, seems like a bad idea to me.

The defense rests.

Response:

1. I do not say PSA is doing anything underhanded from a criminal perspective. There have been allegations made, but until somebody offers proof, they are just allegations and PSA is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

2. Some of the alterations that have gotten through are so blatant that they are indicative of gross negligence/recklessness. The argument they represent only a small percentage of the cards PSA grade each year is irrelevant. Tell that to the person who plucked down a 4 figure sum to have a card graded, only to find his 5 or 6 figure purchase made in reliance on that evaluation missed the alteration. If a car was made with a manufacturing defect that only 1% of the cars on the road would manifest the problem, there would still be a recall.

3. Truth in advertising. Don't say your product is something you know it is not. A cursory visual inspection WILL NOT detect an expertly done alteration, which alterations you and everybody else should know are being done as we speak by card doctors incentivized by the staggering profits they are making.

4. Simple common sense. How the hell can a tobacco card over a century old have survived in mint or gem mint condition? Yes, I get it that there are the once in a decade finds of vintage uncirculated cards. But that is not what I am talking about.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Right, to be clear, I agree with Corey's first point and I continue to think PSA is not intentionally grading altered cards, taking money for favors, etc. I do, though, question the adequacy of their response to the latest revelations.

Interestingly, years ago, PCGS apparently had enough of certain people trying to get bad coins past them that they sued several coin dealers. to my knowledge PSA has not done the same.

[WhenItWasAHobby]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Barry Sloate has more experience than almost anyone here and has complete integrity. Read what he wrote about the extent and duration of this problem. Please Dave you are spinning in a contrafactual manner. I have been collecting since the outset of TPG and I absolutely agree with Barry this is a massive, pervasive problem. All the major industry participants know it too. I have had countless conversations confirming this over the years. Countless. With dealers, major auction houses, knowledgeable collectors, people who know the card doctors. There is nothing at all new about this, just a few items where some guys adept at searching were able to find before photos. It's a speck compared to what's out there.

Agreed. It's been going on for quite a long time by a significant number of dealers. It's a very lucrative business turning $5 raw cards in to $200 graded cards for the Set Registry. Here's one example that should have rocked the collecting world when it was revealed but it just seemed to just fade into obscurity perhaps by being overshadowed by the issue of rampant shill bidding.


http://www.net54baseball.com/showpos...19&postcount=1

[Fuddjcal]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Barry Sloate has more experience than almost anyone here and has complete integrity. Read what he wrote about the extent and duration of this problem. Please Dave you are spinning in a contrafactual manner. I have been collecting since the outset of TPG and I absolutely agree with Barry this is a massive, pervasive problem. All the major industry participants know it too. I have had countless conversations confirming this over the years. Countless. With dealers, major auction houses, knowledgeable collectors, people who know the card doctors. There is nothing at all new about this, just a few items where some guys adept at searching were able to find before photos. It's a speck compared to what's out there.

YES, a speck. And yes, you listen to people who know more than you do and that you respect, like Barry and Peter. It's a road map for success in anything you do...like determining how long this fraud has been allowed to go on, for instance.

[Fuddjcal]

Originally Posted by 70ToppsFanatic

That’s a pretty incendiary statement to make given the information we have so far.

Just how widespread is what we have going on right now?


Last I checked there are around 375 or so cards that have been “outed” on BO, plus a list of additional suspects that currently could take the total over 1000 if all of them were to be similarly outed. Note that we have no information that any of the outed cards has been reviewed by the TPG and the finding of the review confirms the findings of the message board sleuths.

While I don’t doubt that there is some validity in what has been raised I think generalizations such as this are premature, not yet backed up by publicly available “hard” evidence and are therefore irresponsible as they can cause further unease/damage that may ultimately not be justified.

Dave with all due respect, If you don't think there are 10's of thousands cards from this one clown alone your really not using your noodle. This IS and Has been rampant and widespread for 15 years or better. That's a lot of cards my handsome friend. A BOAT LOAD. This one Brent Mastro has been doing this as part of his business plan. You must not have been paying attention.

[70ToppsFanatic]

Originally Posted by Fuddjcal

Dave with all due respect, If you don't think there are 10's of thousands cards from this one clown alone your really not using your noodle. This IS and Has been rampant and widespread for 15 years or better. That's a lot of cards my handsome friend. A BOAT LOAD. This one Brent Mastro has been doing this as part of his business plan. You must not have been paying attention.

What I think isnt the point. The point is that the only thing that really matters is what can be proved, since that is the primary basis upon which people can be compelled to take action to try and improve the situation. It is also the only basis upon which bad actors can have serious adverse consequences put upon them that will, hopefully, serve as an example that discourages similar behavior by anyone else in the future.

As for Brent, it was more than 3 years ago that I got the last piece of the puzzle I needed to determine that PWCC was not being run on the up and up. Both direct from him and indirectly from others who foolishly chose to “brag” about what their roles were with respect to PWCC and people foolish enough to put it all down in writing.

I do not doubt that there are tainted slabbed cards out there for a moment, but I don’t think trying to incite a riot is going to improve the situation any faster nor improve the outcomes of trying address it.

This is going to take some time and resources and given no evidence of misconduct or malfeasance on the part of PSA so far we would not be doing ourselves any favors by becoming adversarial or militant right now based on the little we know to be actual fact. They have more than just the collector constituency to answer to and need to work through understanding what additional info they need, what possible actions can be taken and how to deal with conflicting obligations they may have to various stakeholder groups that they are accountable to. They should be given a chance to do this without the distraction of an angry mob taking away from their efforts.

[egbeachley]

Originally Posted by 70ToppsFanatic

What I think isnt the point. The point is that the only thing that really matters is what can be proved, since that is the primary basis upon which people can be compelled to take action to try and improve the situation. It is also the only basis upon which bad actors can have serious adverse consequences put upon them that will, hopefully, serve as an example that discourages similar behavior by anyone else in the future.

This is where you are wrong. It’s more than just what can be proved because the BODA are focused on just those cards easily found with front/back scans from a few websites. They admit that for wvery card they document with scans they pass on a few that have alterations but can’t get a good scan. These passed cards are also on the same Moser submissions. And there are undoubtedly some on the Moser submissions that were purchased from shows and have no early scans available. Your “proof” of 400 cards will probably end up at 5,000 cards and can eventually be linked to 50,000 others. Remember, they just started documenting by looking at 1 seller and haven’t even looked at Auction Houses for the original purchase.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by 70ToppsFanatic

What I think isnt the point. The point is that the only thing that really matters is what can be proved, since that is the primary basis upon which people can be compelled to take action to try and improve the situation. It is also the only basis upon which bad actors can have serious adverse consequences put upon them that will, hopefully, serve as an example that discourages similar behavior by anyone else in the future.

As for Brent, it was more than 3 years ago that I got the last piece of the puzzle I needed to determine that PWCC was not being run on the up and up. Both direct from him and indirectly from others who foolishly chose to “brag” about what their roles were with respect to PWCC and people foolish enough to put it all down in writing.

I do not doubt that there are tainted slabbed cards out there for a moment, but I don’t think trying to incite a riot is going to improve the situation any faster nor improve the outcomes of trying address it.

This is going to take some time and resources and given no evidence of misconduct or malfeasance on the part of PSA so far we would not be doing ourselves any favors by becoming adversarial or militant right now based on the little we know to be actual fact. They have more than just the collector constituency to answer to and need to work through understanding what additional info they need, what possible actions can be taken and how to deal with conflicting obligations they may have to various stakeholder groups that they are accountable to. They should be given a chance to do this without the distraction of an angry mob taking away from their efforts.

Dave, with respect, in my opinion your measured, cautious, prudent, careful, thoughtful, etc. approach has never worked in the past. Even when the problem was on a small scale like WIWAG. Many of us have no reason to believe anything is going to change here without a very forceful show of outrage by the ultimate constituency, we the collectors (and honest dealers). Nobody wants to or is trying to incite a riot. People are demanding accountability and change, and the foxes guarding the henhouse are not likely to deliver it. Their incentive appears to be to guard against pressure on the accounting reserve, not to do what is in collectors' best interests. There is very good reason the mob is angry in this case, all our collections likely are infested with altered cards, and all we've heard is if you can figure it out for yourselves call your seller. No riot -- change.

PS it doesn't take a genius to extrapolate from what's been found on BO in a short period of time with a very limited focus to 25 years of grading.

[egbeachley]

and I should add that you can’t take the altered population and divide by 30 million Cards graded. That includes resubmits, cards valued under $100, YuGiOh, badly damaged, ungradeable, etc. The true population for comparison is probably closer to 2-5 million.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

and I should add that you can’t take the altered population and divide by 30 million Cards graded. That includes resubmits, cards valued under $100, YuGiOh, badly damaged, ungradeable, etc. The true population for comparison is probably closer to 2-5 million.

Eric it doesn't even matter, it's still an astonishingly high number in all likelihood.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by egbeachley

and I should add that you can’t take the altered population and divide by 30 million Cards graded. That includes resubmits, cards valued under $100, YuGiOh, badly damaged, ungradeable, etc. The true population for comparison is probably closer to 2-5 million.

You don't think YuGiOh cards are being altered? I bet some magic cards are. Turning a beta into an alpha would be really easy.

[Mr. Zipper]

Originally Posted by dplath

I’m sure it happens but I don’t know of anything as widespread as what we’ve got going on right now.

This type of scandal is nothing new in the hobby world.

In 2005, there was a major comic book scandal where CGC slabbed high value comic books were found to be "micro" trimmed. Hundreds of four and five figure comics... and the trimming often bumped the grade enough to raise the value thousands of dollars. Like this scandal, before and after photos exposed everything. The books in question sourced from a high profile comic book dealer named Jason Ewert.

CGC addressed it quickly and published lists of books that passed through Jason Ewert and had a process to re-examine suspect books.

Unfortunately, it appears some of the old threads were lost when CGC upgraded their message boards a few years ago, but here are some links. Note that many images have since broken, but the narrative tells the story:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/top...g-books-redux/

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/top...trimmed-books/

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/top...irco-trimming/

[Mr. Zipper]

PS: Jason Ewert was banned by CGC and essentially run from the comic book hobby, never to be heard from again.

[vintagetoppsguy]

Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper

This type of scandal is nothing new in the hobby world.

In 2005, there was a major comic book scandal where CGC slabbed high value comic books were found to be "micro" trimmed. Hundreds of four and five figure comics... and the trimming often bumped the grade enough to raise the value thousands of dollars. Like this scandal, before and after photos exposed everything. The books in question sourced from a high profile comic book dealer named Jason Ewert.

CGC addressed it quickly and published lists of books that passed through Jason Ewert and had a process to re-examine suspect books.

Unfortunately, it appears some of the old threads were lost when CGC upgraded their message boards a few years ago, but here are some links. Note that many images have since broken, but the narrative tells the story:

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/top...g-books-redux/

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/top...trimmed-books/

https://www.cgccomics.com/boards/top...irco-trimming/

So what happened to Jsaon Ewert?

Edited: Thanks! You reposted before I could type my question

But no criminal charges for 4 and 5 figure fraud?

[Mr. Zipper]

Originally Posted by vintagetoppsguy

So what happened to Jsaon Ewert?

Edited: Thanks! You reposted before I could type my question

But no criminal charges for 4 and 5 figure fraud?

Nope.

Interestingly, the same conversation happened 10 years ago regarding him, i.e., "what's the crime?"... "is it a crime to trim a comic book?" etc.

Has Jason Ewert ever served any time?

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper

CGC addressed it quickly and published lists of books that passed through Jason Ewert and had a process to re-examine suspect books.

What a novel concept to restore trust to the marketplace...

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

What a novel concept to restore trust to the marketplace...

The concern here is to protect the guarantee, not to restore trust, so far anyhow. Plus PSA has better kool aid and spinners suggesting this is just a little spill.