Would this kind of grading company interest you?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why do you only seem to care about this one list? Why are you not worried about purging all the cards from all the known bad actors from the PSA Cert system? Does someone need to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before you'll believe that PSA is ridiculously awful at their job of identifying alterations and "isolated bad actors" that PSA has allowed to submit tainted (and possibly even non-tainted) cards for the past 20 years under their own names?
I get it; you're part of the group who has something to lose if PSA goes under or takes a gut-punch to the abdomen. I've got thousands of PSA graded cards, but I'd rather see with this dealt with from the top in a manner that restores trust to the marketplace.
The hand-wringing and then forgetting is such a common pattern response to this issue that you can see the old guard believing that nothing will ever change, as long as we all get rich watching fraud happen. If that's true, we're all the perpetrators of fraud. Well, I'm not standing on the sidelines. I'm making a stand.

But to keep trivializing the depth of this fraud is hysterical to me. We're not buying it.

I think starting tomorrow the list -- as limited a subset of all this as it is -- will start growing quite a bit. At this point, nobody paying attention is buying the minimize and contain spin.

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why do you only seem to care about this one list? Why are you not worried about purging all the cards from all the known bad actors from the PSA Cert system? Does someone need to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before you'll believe that PSA is ridiculously awful at their job of identifying alterations and "isolated bad actors" that PSA has allowed to submit tainted (and possibly even non-tainted) cards for the past 20 years under their own names?
I get it; you're part of the group who has something to lose if PSA goes under or takes a gut-punch to the abdomen. I've got thousands of PSA graded cards, but I'd rather see with this dealt with from the top in a manner that restores trust to the marketplace.
The hand-wringing and then forgetting is such a common pattern response to this issue that you can see the old guard believing that nothing will ever change, as long as we all get rich watching fraud happen. If that's true, we're all the perpetrators of fraud. Well, I'm not standing on the sidelines. I'm making a stand.

But to keep trivializing the depth of this fraud is hysterical to me. We're not buying it.

What do you suggest within a reasonable scope that Purple Label can do
in respect to the current issues we are facing?

I have not officially queried the public with this exact question but it is
coming soon.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

im right there with you john...but what does purging of all the altered cards mean? Destroy them? Try to permanently label them...give them a scarlet letter? I'd be good with either scenario...but it aint gonna happen!!!!!

Imagine if they were destroyed???? The pops would be dramatically affected in some cases!

I mean purging the cert numbers (both the new and the discovered old ones in the before pictures that aren't really "evidence"). That will get the vast majority into PSA's hands for their guarantee to be reholdered as Authentic - Altered. I don't need the hole punch scenario. I just want to see the tainted cards dealt with by PSA. Obviously, they should keep many of them as training tools to learn how to actually detect alterations.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

What do you suggest within a reasonable scope that Purple Label can do in respect to the current issues we are facing?

Why does your company need to do anything? I don't see it is a viable business model anyways.

You, personally, should demand accountability from PSA and boycott them, and not purchase graded cards. That's what I'm doing. #sinceyouasked

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why does your company need to do anything? I don't see it is a viable business model anyways.

You, personally, should demand accountability from PSA and boycott them, and not purchase graded cards. That's what I'm doing. #sinceyouasked

It's interesting to me that (and apologies if I have missed anyone) other than Al C. and Scott R., we haven't heard much if anything from the AHs and dealers who are members of this Board. As they are bulwarks of the industry it would be helpful to get their insight and perspective and guidance, but apparently they choose silence.

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why does your company need to do anything? I don't see it is a viable business model anyways.

You, personally, should demand accountability from PSA and boycott them, and not purchase graded cards. That's what I'm doing. #sinceyouasked

Ok. Have fun on your crusade!

[swarmee]

Well, at least you're making a stand... ;-) As the old song goes, "You've got to stand for something... or you'll fall for anything. You've got to be your own man, not a puppet on a string."

Why even ask what you should do, when it's fairly obvious you're part of the "Graded Card Swamp"?

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Well, at least you're making a stand... ;-) As the old song goes, "You've got to stand for something... or you'll fall for anything. You've got to be your own man, not a puppet on a string."

Why even ask what you should do, when it's fairly obvious you're part of the "Graded Card Swamp"?

Gotta rep the Swamp. Might get some tee shirts made for the national.
John, if you grow some gills by then, I'll let you wear one.

[topcat61]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

I would wager that a AI/machine learning tool set could do a much better job of authenticating and grading cards than a human ever could. At a minimum, it would be more consistent than the current 'which grader got this submission?' system that we seem to have.
There are free apps for your iphone that can measure items, are you telling me that a system specifically designed to measure cards, in all three dimensions, would not be better than a human?
Look what computers are doing in solving crimes, tracing genealogy, facial recognition, image processing, etc. Cameras in the Dallas Cowboys stadium scan the crowd and identify areas where trouble may be brewing in the crowd by analyzing the dynamics of the people. Just today I read about Stanford researchers who used Google street view images (50 million of them) to predict local demographics and election voting patterns. The machines were able to process the images in approximately two weeks, where a human expert would have taken over 15 years. And that was just to classify the images, not to use that data to predict anything.
Now these machines are only as good as the software and sensors on them, but their ability to quickly process images and extract useful data from them is far beyond what a human can do. And they do it much quicker and more consistently.
Are they perfect? No. Is this an easy task? No. But it is one where machine vision along with AI/machine learning would make a tremendous leap in the card grading/authentication clap-trap that we have now.

I use machines already when inspecting my cards -a black light, gram scale, digital microscope and most importantly, my brain. All these things help, but the one thing a machine cannot do is use critical thinking, logic and experience to know what to look for.

[Leon]

+1...though I don't use anything but a loupe, black light and experience. And I still make mistakes.

Originally Posted by topcat61

I use machines already when inspecting my cards -a black light, gram scale, digital microscope and most importantly, my brain. All these things help, but the one thing a machine cannot do is use critical thinking, logic and experience to know what to look for.

[CobbSpikedMe]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

Millions upon millions of graded cards out there and a few thousand are turning
up bad? As far as ratios go, that sounds irrefutably reliable for a paid service.

But the millions upon millions of graded cards out there are not altered to begin with. So the actual ratio of accuracy should be calculated on the number of Altered cards that were submitted related to the number that were caught. The millions upon millions of unaltered cards shouldn't be included in the calculation. This would bring the percentage way down from 99% accuracy to a much lower number, maybe 25%. Just a guess. That's pathetic reliability for a paid service.