PSA Response from President Steve Sloan

[Johnny630]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

The names are known. What isn't known is what they submitted.

Who are they ? Where are those names listed ?
Also if the names are there why aren’t we able to see what they submitted ?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

Who are they ? Where are those names listed ?
Also if the names are there why aren’t we able to see what they submitted ?

A few have been identified on Blowout and mentioned here, but there are many more who are widely known.

How can you possibly know from a name what was submitted, that information is not published by TPGs.

[Johnny630]

I understand that ......I believe that information will be invaluable to LE....will be telling .....to me that’s the bottom line of this investigation along with full record of whom graded or looked at these cards by PSA....of course we will not know until if and when any litigation is adjudicated....

If you could pm those names I’d gratefully appreciate it.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by Johnny630

I understand that ......I believe that information will be invaluable to LE....will be telling .....to me that’s the bottom line of this investigation along with full record of whom graded or looked at these cards by PSA....of course we will not know until if and when any litigation is adjudicated....

If you could pm those names I’d gratefully appreciate it.

To me, the proverbial elephant in the room is this: Exactly (and I mean, EXACTLY) what is illegal? I am not saying that deception is not happening in these well documented cases, and I am not in any way defending deceptive practices, but from a legal perspective, what can and what cannot a person do to a card before re-selling it?

Obviously, turning a Magee into a Magie is fraud. But consider:

1. If I find an all original 1966 Ford Mustang in Aunt Nellie's barn, and then clean the pigeon poop off the hood, vacuum and use stain remover on the flooring, put air in the tires, can't I still sell it as 100% original? Note that I did not replace the tires, hoses, belts, gaskets, which would have made it no longer "all original." All I did was clean off dirt. So, what's different between that and cleaning dirt of an otherwise original card?

2. If I buff out a scratch on that old Mustang, how is that different than spooning out a wrinkle?

3. What is the legal rule, exactly, on cutting (or trimming) cards? If I have a 1962 Post Cereal card that was hand cut to begin with, and has wide borders, can I trim it down to the correct card size, giving it razor sharp edges and corners? If not, why?

4. Suppose I find an uncut panel of Post cards, or Bazooka, or 1975 Hostess. Can I get them laser-cut into 10s? They were meant to be cut by the collector in the first place.

5. In the Junk Wax era, when many people like me were buying Topps vending cases by the hundreds and getting them sorted down, a guy named Rick Starks came up with a brilliant idea. Doing business as Steven Juskywicz (something like that,) he bought tons of uncut sheets directly from Topps and had them laser cut himself. I mean, pallets upon pallets of sheets. What was brilliant about it is that he'd have a bunch of the same sheets on the cutting machine at the same time, so when they were cut, stacks of the same card could be lifted off the cutter and set into 800-count boxes.

In other words, no sorting necessary. I finally got smart and purchased my 1990 Topps inventory from him. I bought 800 complete sets and what I received were 792 800-count boxes, each box contained 800 of the same card. It only took me a few hours to sort them into teams (for the teams I could sell) and separate the keepers from the commons.

When you'd open one of those boxes and look at the edges, they were smooth as glass. Perfectly cut. Plus, the centering was way better than the cards Topps was cutting. I will bet6 that a large percentage of graded Topps cards from that era, especially 9s and 10s, were cards cut not by Topps, but by Steven Juskywicz, Inc.

So, if someone found a vintage sheet of cards today, could they get it professionally cut to produce some beautiful individual cards? If not, how would that be different from the above example. For that matter, what would the difference be between cutting a sheet of cards, and buying a vintage sheet of stamps and breaking up the sheet to sell the stamps individually?

Before people start jumping all over me, please understand, I am NOT defending or advocating deception. My point is: What, exactly and precisely, is illegal, and what is not?

We can't simply say that certain people and companies are "Guilty" without defining exactly what they are guilty of. What does the law say about doing stuff to your baseball cards?

[bxb]

Interesting post.

Get ready.

[Republicaninmass]

Spoonie G

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by Mark17

To me, the proverbial elephant in the room is this: Exactly (and I mean, EXACTLY) what is illegal? I am not saying that deception is not happening in these well documented cases, and I am not in any way defending deceptive practices, but from a legal perspective, what can and what cannot a person do to a card before re-selling it?

Obviously, turning a Magee into a Magie is fraud. But consider:

1. If I find an all original 1966 Ford Mustang in Aunt Nellie's barn, and then clean the pigeon poop off the hood, vacuum and use stain remover on the flooring, put air in the tires, can't I still sell it as 100% original? Note that I did not replace the tires, hoses, belts, gaskets, which would have made it no longer "all original." All I did was clean off dirt. So, what's different between that and cleaning dirt of an otherwise original card?

2. If I buff out a scratch on that old Mustang, how is that different than spooning out a wrinkle?

3. What is the legal rule, exactly, on cutting (or trimming) cards? If I have a 1962 Post Cereal card that was hand cut to begin with, and has wide borders, can I trim it down to the correct card size, giving it razor sharp edges and corners? If not, why?

4. Suppose I find an uncut panel of Post cards, or Bazooka, or 1975 Hostess. Can I get them laser-cut into 10s? They were meant to be cut by the collector in the first place.

5. In the Junk Wax era, when many people like me were buying Topps vending cases by the hundreds and getting them sorted down, a guy named Rick Starks came up with a brilliant idea. Doing business as Steven Juskywicz (something like that,) he bought tons of uncut sheets directly from Topps and had them laser cut himself. I mean, pallets upon pallets of sheets. What was brilliant about it is that he'd have a bunch of the same sheets on the cutting machine at the same time, so when they were cut, stacks of the same card could be lifted off the cutter and set into 800-count boxes.

In other words, no sorting necessary. I finally got smart and purchased my 1990 Topps inventory from him. I bought 800 complete sets and what I received were 792 800-count boxes, each box contained 800 of the same card. It only took me a few hours to sort them into teams (for the teams I could sell) and separate the keepers from the commons.

When you'd open one of those boxes and look at the edges, they were smooth as glass. Perfectly cut. Plus, the centering was way better than the cards Topps was cutting. I will bet6 that a large percentage of graded Topps cards from that era, especially 9s and 10s, were cards cut not by Topps, but by Steven Juskywicz, Inc.

So, if someone found a vintage sheet of cards today, could they get it professionally cut to produce some beautiful individual cards? If not, how would that be different from the above example. For that matter, what would the difference be between cutting a sheet of cards, and buying a vintage sheet of stamps and breaking up the sheet to sell the stamps individually?

Before people start jumping all over me, please understand, I am NOT defending or advocating deception. My point is: What, exactly and precisely, is illegal, and what is not?

We can't simply say that certain people and companies are "Guilty" without defining exactly what they are guilty of. What does the law say about doing stuff to your baseball cards?

Probably easiest to respond to your points in your order. In doing so, I am not representing that I am stating the hobby's view (to the extent one can ascertain what that is) as opposed to only my view.

1. I do not think there is anything wrong with removing a foreign substance from a card provided in so doing you are returning the card to its same original physical state. If, say, to remove a glue stain a minute layer of the original card is removed with the glue, then that removal will have morphed into an alteration.

2. Two reasons: First, the crease can return, and for that reason the removal needs to be disclosed. Second, we are not selling old cars. We are selling cards that are represented to be unaltered by recognized grading standards. Should the day ever come that used cars before being sold need to be evaluated by national TPGs who specialize in car grading and the car grading standards mandate that scratch removal be disclosed, then at that point not disclosing it would be violative of that evaluation process.

3. No reason you cannot provided you disclose what you did. Again, we come down to the recognized grading standards. FWIW, I am a collector of final production-run uncut sheets that contain the vintage card(s)/set I want to own because I believe pristine cards/sets in such sheets are more valuable than the factory-cut versions. But then again I make that statement as a collector who collects for his subjective pleasure only. If I should one day decide to cut the sheets and then submit the cards for grading, I would need to disclose what I did. In another thread I made the observation that in my ideal world all the flip would reveal is whether the card is genuine and what has been done to it. There would be no numerical grades. So for a card cut from a sheet (or recut if cut improperly the first time), a person who couldn't care less provided the card is real and of proper size would presumably value it along the lines you are suggesting.

4. It depends on how such cards are graded. Not being a collector of them, I do not know if any such card can ever receive a numerical grade. Provided they can, then once again the key point here is disclosure.

5. This one is bit trickier as one could argue the dealer who cut them did so at the behest of Topps and that Topps for some of the sheets subcontracted them out to be cut. From that perspective, one could reasonably opine that the cards, provided they were cut substantially at time of issue, be treated as cut by an authorized agent of the manufacturer and therefore be deemed to have been cut by Topps. Question - when the dealer cut them, did the borders exhibit the same physical characteristics as when Topps cut them? Assuming they did then to me there is nothing wrong with what was done. That is my view though. Others might feel disclosure is still mandated.

Conclusion: If there is one "elephant in the room" that emerges from this discussion it is the absurdity of taking the subjective grading standards TPG companies employ and treating them with the same reverence as if they were an 11th commandment God gave Moses. BUT, because the hobby does IMO when submitting a card for grading one has a duty to disclose work done which if not picked up by the TPG would result in the card receiving a grade inconsistent with these standards.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by benjulmag

Probably easiest to respond to your points in your order. In doing so, I am not representing that I am stating the hobby's view (to the extent one can ascertain what that is) as opposed to only my view.

1. I do not think there is anything wrong with removing a foreign substance from a card provided in so doing you are returning the card to its same original physical state. If, say, to remove a glue stain a minute layer of the original card is removed with the glue, then that removal will have morphed into an alteration.

2. Two reasons: First, the crease can return, and for that reason the removal needs to be disclosed. Second, we are not selling old cars. We are selling cards that are represented to be unaltered by recognized grading standards. Should the day ever come that used cars before being sold need to be evaluated by national TPGs who specialize in car grading and the car grading standards mandate that scratch removal be disclosed, then at that point not disclosing it would be violative of that evaluation process.

3. No reason you cannot provided you disclose what you did. Again, we come down to the recognized grading standards. FWIW, I am a collector of final production-run uncut sheets that contain the vintage card(s)/set I want to own because I believe pristine cards in such sheets are more valuable than the factory-cut versions. But then again I make that statement as a collector who collects for his subjective pleasure only. If I should one day decide to cut the sheets and then submit the cards for grading, I would need to disclose what I did. In another thread I made the observation that in my ideal world all the flip would reveal is whether the card is genuine and what has been done to it. There would be no numerical grades. So for a card cut from a sheet (or recut if cut improperly the first time), a person who couldn't care less provided the card is real and of proper size would presumably value it along the lines you are suggesting.

4. It depends on how such cards are graded. Not being a collector of them, I do not know if any such card can ever receive a numerical grade. Provided they can, then once again the key point here is disclosure.

5. This one is bit trickier as one could argue the dealer who cut them did so at the behest of Topps and that Topps for some of the sheets subcontracted them out to be cut. From that perspective, one could reasonably opine that the cards be regarded as cut substantially at time of issue by an authorized agent of the manufacturer and therefore be deemed to have been cut by Topps. Question - when the dealer cut them, did the borders exhibit the same physical characteristics as when Topps cut them? Assuming they did then to me there is nothing wrong with what was done. That is my view though. Others might feel disclosure is still mandated.

Conclusion: If there is one "elephant in the room" that emerges from this discussion it is the absurdity of taking the subjective grading standards TPG companies employ and retreating them with the same reverence as if they were an 11th commandment God gave Moses.

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. I pretty much agree with you all the way down the list. Here are my thoughts to your comments:

1. Removing a foreign substance that causes paper loss... I am not sure how that is substantially different than handling my cards and creating a bit of paper loss from normal wear. It seems that your standard is that you can't do something that alters the card from its original state. Well, my cards had sharp corners in their original state, and now the corners show some fraying and rounding. Must I state to the TPG or buyer that I handled the cards a little, to account for their current non-mint condition?

2. "Unaltered by recognized grading standards." Are those standards universally accepted and codified in law somewhere? I'm being rhetorical - I think this is what is lacking in terms of being able to prosecute.

3. The problem with being able to do things to cards as long as you disclose what you did only goes one generation. Do I disclose what I did to the TPG and let them then grade the card (and now it is "officially" a 7 or 8 or whatever, after they take into consideration what I did) or do I disclose what I did to the buyer? Once the card has left my hands, there is no certainty the story of what I did will be recounted every subsequent time that card changes owners.

4. I don't think disclosure would be needed with cards that every collector knows were issued on the sides of boxes (cereal, jello, bubble gum pieces, cupcakes, etc.) What would the disclosure reveal? I cut these really cleanly? That would be self-evident.

5. I agree with the first part of what you said - Stephen Juskiewicz Inc. bought authentic cards from Topps and cut them with their blessing - but not with their equipment. As I mentioned in my post, looking at an 800 count box, the edges of the cards looked like glass, which is not how the edges of the cards in a Topps vending box look. They also paid much better attention to centering. In short, they did a superior job than Topps, which is why I suspect their cards were prime candidates for the top grades.

Your conclusion was good and I agree. But with all this gray area, I really wonder what the card doctors could be charged with, from a purely legal, prosecute-able standpoint. Not to get into a head-butting contest about who's elephant is bigger, but I think the biggest elephant in the room is that there might not be much of a legal leg for any prosecutor to stand on, even with all the evidence.

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by Mark17

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. I pretty much agree with you all the way down the list. Here are my thoughts to your comments:

1. Removing a foreign substance that causes paper loss... I am not sure how that is substantially different than handling my cards and creating a bit of paper loss from normal wear. It seems that your standard is that you can't do something that alters the card from its original state. Well, my cards had sharp corners in their original state, and now the corners show some fraying and rounding. Must I state to the TPG or buyer that I handled the cards a little, to account for their current non-mint condition?

2. "Unaltered by recognized grading standards." Are those standards universally accepted and codified in law somewhere? I'm being rhetorical - I think this is what is lacking in terms of being able to prosecute.

3. The problem with being able to do things to cards as long as you disclose what you did only goes one generation. Do I disclose what I did to the TPG and let them then grade the card (and now it is "officially" a 7 or 8 or whatever, after they take into consideration what I did) or do I disclose what I did to the buyer? Once the card has left my hands, there is no certainty the story of what I did will be recounted every subsequent time that card changes owners.

4. I don't think disclosure would be needed with cards that every collector knows were issued on the sides of boxes (cereal, jello, bubble gum pieces, cupcakes, etc.) What would the disclosure reveal? I cut these really cleanly? That would be self-evident.

5. I agree with the first part of what you said - Stephen Juskiewicz Inc. bought authentic cards from Topps and cut them with their blessing - but not with their equipment. As I mentioned in my post, looking at an 800 count box, the edges of the cards looked like glass, which is not how the edges of the cards in a Topps vending box look. They also paid much better attention to centering. In short, they did a superior job than Topps, which is why I suspect their cards were prime candidates for the top grades.

Your conclusion was good and I agree. But with all this gray area, I really wonder what the card doctors could be charged with, from a purely legal, prosecute-able standpoint. Not to get into a head-butting contest about who's elephant is bigger, but I think the biggest elephant in the room is that there might not be much of a legal leg for any prosecutor to stand on, even with all the evidence.

Again, in your order.

1. Worn corners are apparent and need no disclosure.

2. A successful fraud prosecution has nothing to do with whether the grading standards are codified in law.

3. If you are submitting it to a TPG, you disclose it to them. If the card is raw and you are selling it privately, you disclose that what a rational buyer would reasonably regard as material that otherwise the buyer would not reasonably be expected to know and from the circumstances reasonably would not expect to have been done to the card.

4. No argument.

5. Again with this issue, a murky area to some, but to me, I would be okay with it. The fact that this dealer did a better job cutting them, because he was an authorized subcontractor of Topps, would be analogous to different, say, tobacco factories cutting Piedmont brand t206s having better cutting processes. Despite that, those tobacco cards would all be properly regarded as factory cut.

Conclusion: The card doctors could properly be charged with fraud. Whether law enforcement wants to devote the resources to pursue this, that is another matter.

[RollieFingers]

Originally Posted by Mark17

To me, the proverbial elephant in the room is this: Exactly (and I mean, EXACTLY) what is illegal? I am not saying that deception is not happening in these well documented cases, and I am not in any way defending deceptive practices, but from a legal perspective, what can and what cannot a person do to a card before re-selling it?

Obviously, turning a Magee into a Magie is fraud. But consider:

1. If I find an all original 1966 Ford Mustang in Aunt Nellie's barn, and then clean the pigeon poop off the hood, vacuum and use stain remover on the flooring, put air in the tires, can't I still sell it as 100% original? Note that I did not replace the tires, hoses, belts, gaskets, which would have made it no longer "all original." All I did was clean off dirt. So, what's different between that and cleaning dirt of an otherwise original card?

2. If I buff out a scratch on that old Mustang, how is that different than spooning out a wrinkle?

3. What is the legal rule, exactly, on cutting (or trimming) cards? If I have a 1962 Post Cereal card that was hand cut to begin with, and has wide borders, can I trim it down to the correct card size, giving it razor sharp edges and corners? If not, why?

4. Suppose I find an uncut panel of Post cards, or Bazooka, or 1975 Hostess. Can I get them laser-cut into 10s? They were meant to be cut by the collector in the first place.

5. In the Junk Wax era, when many people like me were buying Topps vending cases by the hundreds and getting them sorted down, a guy named Rick Starks came up with a brilliant idea. Doing business as Steven Juskywicz (something like that,) he bought tons of uncut sheets directly from Topps and had them laser cut himself. I mean, pallets upon pallets of sheets. What was brilliant about it is that he'd have a bunch of the same sheets on the cutting machine at the same time, so when they were cut, stacks of the same card could be lifted off the cutter and set into 800-count boxes.

In other words, no sorting necessary. I finally got smart and purchased my 1990 Topps inventory from him. I bought 800 complete sets and what I received were 792 800-count boxes, each box contained 800 of the same card. It only took me a few hours to sort them into teams (for the teams I could sell) and separate the keepers from the commons.

When you'd open one of those boxes and look at the edges, they were smooth as glass. Perfectly cut. Plus, the centering was way better than the cards Topps was cutting. I will bet6 that a large percentage of graded Topps cards from that era, especially 9s and 10s, were cards cut not by Topps, but by Steven Juskywicz, Inc.

So, if someone found a vintage sheet of cards today, could they get it professionally cut to produce some beautiful individual cards? If not, how would that be different from the above example. For that matter, what would the difference be between cutting a sheet of cards, and buying a vintage sheet of stamps and breaking up the sheet to sell the stamps individually?

Before people start jumping all over me, please understand, I am NOT defending or advocating deception. My point is: What, exactly and precisely, is illegal, and what is not?

We can't simply say that certain people and companies are "Guilty" without defining exactly what they are guilty of. What does the law say about doing stuff to your baseball cards?

I don't think you realize how close to red pill/truth/logic ,you are lol.
And to add.. I read a guy the other day, that in comic book collection world..cutting or what ever they do to comics. Is a cepted as long as told it was done.
We are forced to earn fake paper money to live. And then told there's only so many ways we are allowed to.
Can't blame people for trying to make extra scratch and beat the system.
Someone invented card grading for that very reason

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by Mark17

To me, the proverbial elephant in the room is this: Exactly (and I mean, EXACTLY) what is illegal? I am not saying that deception is not happening in these well documented cases, and I am not in any way defending deceptive practices, but from a legal perspective, what can and what cannot a person do to a card before re-selling it?

Obviously, turning a Magee into a Magie is fraud. But consider:

1. If I find an all original 1966 Ford Mustang in Aunt Nellie's barn, and then clean the pigeon poop off the hood, vacuum and use stain remover on the flooring, put air in the tires, can't I still sell it as 100% original? Note that I did not replace the tires, hoses, belts, gaskets, which would have made it no longer "all original." All I did was clean off dirt. So, what's different between that and cleaning dirt of an otherwise original card?

2. If I buff out a scratch on that old Mustang, how is that different than spooning out a wrinkle?

3. What is the legal rule, exactly, on cutting (or trimming) cards? If I have a 1962 Post Cereal card that was hand cut to begin with, and has wide borders, can I trim it down to the correct card size, giving it razor sharp edges and corners? If not, why?

4. Suppose I find an uncut panel of Post cards, or Bazooka, or 1975 Hostess. Can I get them laser-cut into 10s? They were meant to be cut by the collector in the first place.

5. In the Junk Wax era, when many people like me were buying Topps vending cases by the hundreds and getting them sorted down, a guy named Rick Starks came up with a brilliant idea. Doing business as Steven Juskywicz (something like that,) he bought tons of uncut sheets directly from Topps and had them laser cut himself. I mean, pallets upon pallets of sheets. What was brilliant about it is that he'd have a bunch of the same sheets on the cutting machine at the same time, so when they were cut, stacks of the same card could be lifted off the cutter and set into 800-count boxes.

In other words, no sorting necessary. I finally got smart and purchased my 1990 Topps inventory from him. I bought 800 complete sets and what I received were 792 800-count boxes, each box contained 800 of the same card. It only took me a few hours to sort them into teams (for the teams I could sell) and separate the keepers from the commons.

When you'd open one of those boxes and look at the edges, they were smooth as glass. Perfectly cut. Plus, the centering was way better than the cards Topps was cutting. I will bet6 that a large percentage of graded Topps cards from that era, especially 9s and 10s, were cards cut not by Topps, but by Steven Juskywicz, Inc.

So, if someone found a vintage sheet of cards today, could they get it professionally cut to produce some beautiful individual cards? If not, how would that be different from the above example. For that matter, what would the difference be between cutting a sheet of cards, and buying a vintage sheet of stamps and breaking up the sheet to sell the stamps individually?

Before people start jumping all over me, please understand, I am NOT defending or advocating deception. My point is: What, exactly and precisely, is illegal, and what is not?

We can't simply say that certain people and companies are "Guilty" without defining exactly what they are guilty of. What does the law say about doing stuff to your baseball cards?

Just when you think you've seen it all.......