PSA/SGC Waiting Lines At 2019 National

[Peter_Spaeth]

I am an attorney and to me it's quite simple (only responding to one of Bob's many points). If you do something to a card that if the TPG knew it would not assign the card a numerical grade, submit it with the intent of deceiving the TPG into assigning the altered card a numerical grade, and then sell it in the TPG holder without disclosing the deceptive alteration, that is textbook fraud. And if you do that repeatedly using the mails and/or wires, that's mail and/or wire fraud in violation of federal statutes. Never mind the red herring that there is no statute specifically discussing baseball cards. Never mind the red herring about lack of complete hobby consensus. Never mind the red herring about needing a conspiracy involving the TPG. Never mind the red herring about the Wagner being sheet cut. If you're interested this has been discussed ad nauseum in many other threads and other than giving this summary I am not debating it yet again, sorry but I just don't have the patience.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I am an attorney and to me it's quite simple (only responding to one of Bob's many points). If you do something to a card that if the TPG knew it would not assign the card a numerical grade, submit it with the intent of deceiving the TPG into assigning the altered card a numerical grade, and then sell it in the TPG holder without disclosing the deceptive alteration, that is textbook fraud. And if you do that repeatedly using the mails and/or wires, that's mail and/or wire fraud in violation of federal statutes. Never mind the red herring that there is no statute specifically discussing baseball cards. Never mind the red herring about lack of complete hobby consensus. Never mind the red herring about needing a conspiracy involving the TPG. Never mind the red herring about the Wagner being sheet cut. If you're interested this has been discussed ad nauseum in many other threads and other than giving this summary I am not debating it yet again, sorry but I just don't have the patience.

I get you and understand. Thanks.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Don't forget that if in the unlikely event this went as far as a trial, the prosecution will have access to lots more than Blowout scans, including emails, texts, purchase records, submission records, and more. Not to mention testimony. I don't think the fundamental facts are in serious doubt here or that there would be any problems of proof.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Don't forget that if in the unlikely event this went as far as a trial, the prosecution will have access to lots more than Blowout scans, including emails, texts, purchase records, submission records, and more. Not to mention testimony. I don't think the fundamental facts are in serious doubt here or that there would be any problems of proof.

I agree that the proof of what occurred is available

If there are no victims either because all paid back (or able to re-sell the card for more money to someone that knows what happened and doesnt care) or wont step forward then its still a non starter.

[barrysloate]

Let me discuss my thoughts on one of Bob's points. And thanks Bob for your thorough and detailed posts.

Third party grading came into being a few decades ago offering services that included authenticating baseball cards, determining if they were original or altered, and giving them an unbiased grade. Obviously, these were services that the baseball card industry badly needed.

Truth be told, they were no better at grading cards than the average veteran collector- there was no secret formula they devised to get it right- and what's been believed for many years and demonstrated in detail recently, they didn't really have the skills or equipment to detect card alterations. They were at least able to offer an unbiased opinion, as they were neither buying or selling the card, and they were able to heat seal the cards in slabs. So they had something to offer the public.

Given their mediocre results, they shouldn't have lasted very long. But just the opposite occurred: they attained a position of tremendous power in the industry, to the point that the baseball card hobby couldn't survive without them. And although the grading was sloppy and inconsistent, the number they put on that label became sacrosanct. So much so that if a baseball card was graded at the highest level, it would consistently set world's records at auction. Prices for these cards have been simply astronomical.

Now there are genuinely rare artifacts that are worth world's record prices. But a baseball card that has been misgraded or altered to appear better than it is should not be one of them. So how has this market survived in this manner?

That's the great question and we know that collectors don't all agree on why this phenomenon has occurred. One thing, however, that the grading services have been able to do incredibly well is make money for their customers and themselves. As has been often said, they literally mint money. And unfortunately we know that card doctor's and fraudsters have been among the beneficiaries of it all.

So maybe the great skill that TPG's have is not grading or authenticating, but making lots of people very wealthy. As such, I don't think we are going to see much change at all in the industry. Sure, a bunch of collectors may drop out or cut back their purchases, but as long as TPG's continue to mint money, nothing at all is going to change.

[Kenny Cole]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Let me discuss my thoughts on one of Bob's points. And thanks Bob for your thorough and detailed posts.

Third party grading came into being a few decades ago offering services that included authenticating baseball cards, determining if they were original or altered, and giving them an unbiased grade. Obviously, these were services that the baseball card industry badly needed.

Truth be told, they were no better at grading cards than the average veteran collector- there was no secret formula they devised to get it right- and what's been believed for many years and demonstrated in detail recently, they didn't really have the skills or equipment to detect card alterations. They were at least able to offer an unbiased opinion, as they were neither buying or selling the card, and they were able to heat seal the cards in slabs. So they had something to offer the public.

Given their mediocre results, they shouldn't have lasted very long. But just the opposite occurred: they attained a position of tremendous power in the industry, to the point that the baseball card hobby couldn't survive without them. And although the grading was sloppy and inconsistent, the number they put on that label became sacrosanct. So much so that if a baseball card was graded at the highest level, it would consistently set world's records at auction. Prices for these cards have been simply astronomical.

Now there are genuinely rare artifacts that are worth world's record prices. But a baseball card that has been misgraded or altered to appear better than it is should not be one of them. So how has this market survived in this manner?

That's the great question and we know that collectors don't all agree on why this phenomenon has occurred. One thing, however, that the grading services have been able to do incredibly well is make money for their customers and themselves. As has been often said, they literally mint money. And unfortunately we know that card doctor's and fraudsters have been among the beneficiaries of it all.

So maybe the great skill that TPG's have is not grading or authenticating, but making lots of people very wealthy. As such, I don't think we are going to see much change at all in the industry. Sure, a bunch of collectors may drop out or cut back their purchases, but as long as TPG's continue to mint money, nothing at all is going to change.

One word: Registry. As I have said before, it is the perfect scam IMO.

[barrysloate]

Originally Posted by Kenny Cole

One word: Registry. As I have said before, it is the perfect scam IMO.

You're correct Kenny. The registry has been enormously successful, and because so many cards in the registry are altered, I agree it's not what it appears to be.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

So maybe the great skill that TPG's have is not grading or authenticating, but making lots of people very wealthy. As such, I don't think we are going to see much change at all in the industry. Sure, a bunch of collectors may drop out or cut back their purchases, but as long as TPG's continue to mint money, nothing at all is going to change.

Barry, on that I think you are right on the money. Because of how the TPGs have ingrained themselves in the hobby and with all the money involved, I can't see how we could get them out at this point. There is too much money tied up in the Registry, as Kenny had said and alluded to in his post. It is more than just the Registry though, as that is pretty much tied to a single TPG and the premium prices they seem to command over those for cards graded by the other TPG services. Still these other TPG services are also grading cards and obviously have altered/doctored cards in their holders as well.

Still the Registry is a major driving force behind the sometimes ridiculous price jumps we've been seeing. And that was one of the reasons I was bringing up the question as to the standards and uniformity in grading. Since the Registry behind the significant price jumps is tied to only one specific TPG, where most of these altered /doctored cards seem to be going, the fact that that TPG cannot effectively detect and tell certain types of alterations and changes to cards is basically them saying they don't see any alterations/doctoring. If that TPG finally admits they've been duped and starts to adjust and remove a few cards on their Registry, aren't they kind of setting themselves up for even bigger problems as people start demanding they remove any and all questionable cards on their Registry? You know darn well that someone with a lesser graded set on the Registry will start cross referencing these questionable cards and if they find someone with a higher rated Regsitry set than there's with any of these questionable cards as part of it, they'll be screaming bloody murder to have those questionable cards removed from that other person's Registry set. I don't know if anyone on the Registry has started doing that yet, or even thought about it, but you can bet that as this issue gets out there with more and more publicity that it is eventually going to come up from someone. And then how does this TPG respond?

If they admit to the errors and start removing cards from the Registry, how do they decide which ones do or don't get removed? Who will actually decide then which cards are definitively altered/doctored? That could lead to a huge change/problem with the Registry itself and end up making the entire Registry worthless to many current users. That in turn effects people in the market, and prices, and on and on. I can easily see why the TPG would rather say nothing and hope this blows over. The implications and negative impact it could have on their Registry, and by extension their actual business, could be irreparable to them. Not to mention a huge blow to the hobby as well and negatively impact the value of so many people's collections.

[swarmee]

I sent messages to about 8 of the guys today working on the 1948 Leaf Football set to let them know their cards are altered. PSA makes it so easy now to determine which registry owns what because of their Cert lookup now being tied into the SMR and Registry. So PSA's website improvements over the past year are making it easier for the detectives and helpers to find the owners, even if PSA won't do it properly via email/phone calls/full decertification.

I still think them doing a full-scale recall on cards by Moser, Burge, and any other card doctor PWCC has worked with is a requirement. Obviously, we're not going to catch all the auctionhouses due to lack of paper trail, but the PWCC auctions on eBay all have a paper trail that's easy to validate. It would go even better if the raw card sellers would put their cards sold to Gary and his ilk on some FTP site for the detectives to analyze. Remember, Gary has bought COMPLETE RAW SETS of some of these cards. And plenty of purchases of raw cards from our favorite consignment houses on eBay.

[Directly]

Correct me-- but wasn't the t206 Wagner card originally advertised and sold as being oversized, then trimmed and submitted for grading ?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Directly

Correct me-- but wasn't the t206 Wagner card originally advertised and sold as being oversized, then trimmed and submitted for grading ?

It was sheet cut from a three card panel -- reportedly in the 1950s -- then trimmed by Mastro. So it was never worthy of a grade.