How do you think it all shakes out

[steve B]

Originally Posted by PowderedH2O

I'm going to ask, because so many of you are lawyers or experts in law and I am not. Forget about ethics or morals, but what is illegal about altering cards, resubmitting them to PSA, and then selling them?

I say this because I worked in the car business for years and customers often washed, waxed, Armor-alled, and detailed their cars before trading them in. They would buff out scratches. Occasionally we found Bondo to cover a dent. Our appraiser would look over the car and make a decision. It was what it was. We couldn't go back a month later and call the person that traded in the car and claim some sort of deception. If it got past our appraiser then so be it.

If Gary gets a card and doctors it up and submits it to PSA, it is PSA's job to catch the doctoring. If he has a PSA 4 that becomes a PSA 7, it is what it is. That card is now a PSA 7, whether you like the way it got there or not. If PWCC takes this PSA 7 and sells it on ebay as a PSA 7 beautiful example of this card, are they lying? Is it not a PSA 7? It says so right on the slab.

To me, the only legal issues would be if they had an insider at PSA that was giving them some sort of an advantage, or if they intentionally undersold the first cards so that they could purchase them for resale. As far as the trimming, chemical bathing, or whatever... that seems to be a PSA issue of incompetence.

I think this practice is misleading, unethical, and deceptive. But, my question is this: Is the altering of cards, submitting them, and then selling the newly slabbed item actually illegal?

I worked in cars for a while too. While customers getting one over on the dealership wasn't common, it did happen.
The reason the dealership had no recourse in most cases was that a dealer was generally seen as an "expert" who should know better.
Also, most of the things you mention are considered entirely acceptable, and the cleaning, waxing and buffing as well as mechanical repairs would be done by the dealer anyway before resale. We did have one where the customer lied about the mileage when they filled out the title. We found out when we sold it and the registry kicked back the title transfer since the previous transfer had been at 80K and we showed 50K or so. Making the supposed actual mileage in the 150 range.

The opposite was also true. We had sold a couple reliants to a taxi company that added the roof lights then never made a payment. Dealership get them back and added a fake convertible roof on one and a weird reverse landau top on the other to hide the holes from the lights. One of the sales people sold one without disclosing that it had been a taxi. Private extended warranty caught it, legal action ensued briefly, and the place had to pay 3x damages.
Try selling an odd looking Reliant that you own for something like 18K ….

Short version, if I sell an altered card, I might be able to fall back on the "hey I had no idea" defense. (Probably less likely since I publickly state that I can probably tell, plus I'd just say "damn I missed that" and take the card back)
A large full time dealer and/or grading company can't hide behind cluelessness as they're the "experts" *

*I could be wrong about that, not being a lawyer