Article about Collecting and Fraud in the Hobby

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

And a follow-up question(s) to my last post.

When submitting cards to a TPG for grading, do they specifically ask the submitter if they are aware of any cards being submitted having been altered and/or restored?

And to take it to the next step, do any auction houses or sellers ever ask people consigning graded cards to them to sell if to their knowledge any of the graded cards being consigned are incorrectly graded and have actually been altered and/or restored?

I'm going to guess the answer to both questions is likely NO!

I think the PSA submission form requires the seller to state the cards are not altered.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I think the PSA submission form requires the seller to state the cards are not altered.

Then that is great, and good to know. Have never submitted anything to PSA, and only once to SGC, to verify authenticity. And I don't recall SGC having a similar question regarding alterations, at least not at the time I made that one submission.

Still though, if a card doctor is smart, wouldn't they likely try then to make their submissions through an innocent third-party, like an AH or other seller they consigned a card to, to submit for grading and then sell for them? That was why I asked the second question in my last post. Ignorance can be bliss for some after all maybe?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Then that is great, and good to know. Have never submitted anything to PSA, and only once to SGC, to verify authenticity. And I don't recall SGC having a similar question regarding alterations, at least not at the time I made that one submission.

Still though, if a card doctor is smart, wouldn't they likely try then to make their submissions through an innocent third-party, like an AH or other seller they consigned a card to, to submit for grading and then sell for them? That was why I asked the second question in my last post. Ignorance can be bliss for some after all maybe?

Given the many millions many card doctors have earned, they seem smart enough. As I like to say, there is in my opinion an unholy alliance among card doctors, TPGs, and some AHs.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Given the many millions many card doctors have earned, they seem smart enough. As I like to say, there is in my opinion an unholy alliance among card doctors, TPGs, and some AHs.

Don't disagree in regard to that possibility at all. And exactly why I speculated a major goal of the FBI is to prove such collusion. But as some of my posed questions relate to all this, I wonder if there isn't a sort of unwritten "Don't ask - Don't tell" philosophy that permeates those in the hobby that are possibly involved. And since they all stand to make money from such business, they ask few or no questions to always maintain what for each of them then is a comfortable level of plausible deniability. And also why in my last post I proposed the possible idea of accepting alterations/restorations as an accepted part of the hobby after all. Prohibition didn't stop alcohol production and consumption, so they eventually re-legalized it, and put it under better monitoring and control. Maybe something along the same lines will help with alterations and restorations, whereby accepting them won't make the card doctors and others so prone to hide them. Who knows, what do we have to lose by trying something new at least?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Don't disagree in regard to that possibility at all. And exactly why I speculated a major goal of the FBI is to prove such collusion. But as some of my posed questions relate to all this, I wonder if there isn't a sort of unwritten "Don't ask - Don't tell" philosophy that permeates those in the hobby that are possibly involved. And since they all stand to make money from such business, they ask few or no questions to always maintain what for each of them then is a comfortable level of plausible deniability. And also why in my last post I proposed the possible idea of accepting alterations/restorations as an accepted part of the hobby after all. Prohibition didn't stop alcohol production and consumption, so they eventually re-legalized it, and put it under better monitoring and control. Maybe something along the same lines will help with alterations and restorations, whereby accepting them won't make the card doctors and others so prone to hide them. Who knows, what do we have to lose by trying something new at least?

An altered card is going to sell for a fraction of an unaltered card. We already know that from all the "Authentics" out there. Alteration is only lucrative if combined with deception.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

An altered card is going to sell for a fraction of an unaltered card. We already know that from all the "Authentics" out there. Alteration is only lucrative if combined with deception.

Restoration is technically alteration though, correct? So what if some paper conservator was able to rebuild a card's corners and turn it into what would now be considered a high grade version of that card? Why not just call it what it is, a restored card, but then also give it the grade it deserves based on the card's merits and presentation, along with giving credit to the conservator for the work they performed?

And maybe in regard to value, doesn't a card graded 7(MC) often (or at least potentially) sell for more than a straight 5 or 6 grade? You never know for certain what the market will do and how it will react until you actually try something new. Maybe YOU would not pay any more if an altered/restored card were marked as such, and then given a numeric grade, but then YOU are also not representative of and speaking for everyone else in the hobby. Who really knows? Look at all the threads just recently on here talking about low grade cards that appear and present well, and oftentimes go for more than you'd expect given their technical grades. I know I once picked up a gorgeous E95 Wagner that was graded "A" due to slight trimming. It looks deserving of a 6, maybe even a 7 grade, if not for the trimming. My alternative for budget purposes may have been to pick up a really crappy looking 1 or 1.5 grade, if I could have even come across one. Am very happy with my trimmed/altered card in this case, and would probably value it much higher than a crappy looking 1 or 1.5 for sure.

Or what about cards that were put in screw down holders and are slightly, but unintentionally, flattened by the pressure. They may not have been altered on purpose, but still get the technical hit from TPGs. Some of them can be downright beautiful, and you can't really discern there's any difference from a non-squashed card when looking at it. I'd likely be okay and happy to pay more for that card, altered by pressing it too hard in a screw down holder, than I would for a crappy looking, but unaltered, version of it in say a 1, 2, or maybe even 3 grade.

Just a few examples, and certainly not covering all potential options and variations that can occur or happen in the alteration/restoration of cards, but I'm guessing I would be far from alone in my thinking and valuations in at least some of these instances.

[Peter_Spaeth]

To each his own, but I don't want restored cards, don't care how skillfully restored. Originality is what matters, and cards are appropriately valued and differentiated according to how well they survived the rigors of time. This isn't art where each work is one of a kind.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

An altered card is going to sell for a fraction of an unaltered card. We already know that from all the "Authentics" out there. Alteration is only lucrative if combined with deception.

I think it would depend entirely on what that alteration is and what the eye appeal is. If you put a 52 Mantle in a PSA "Authentic Altered" slab with no other info, then sure, it sells for significantly less. But if PSA revised their grading standards to put that same Mantle in a PSA A8 holder with a note about screwdown damage being the reason and that it otherwise looks like a NM-MT 8, then I'd wager good money that it would sell for a significant premium over the current AA holder.

[Aquarian Sports Cards]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I think it would depend entirely on what that alteration is and what the eye appeal is. If you put a 52 Mantle in a PSA "Authentic Altered" slab with no other info, then sure, it sells for significantly less. But if PSA revised their grading standards to put that same Mantle in a PSA A8 holder with a note about screwdown damage being the reason and that it otherwise looks like a NM-MT 8, then I'd wager good money that it would sell for a significant premium over the current AA holder.

I would agree with this.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I think the PSA submission form requires the seller to state the cards are not altered.

That sort of negates a major point of grading and authentication doesn't it?
If I know I'm probably not sending it in, if I have no clue, that's what I'd pay an expert for.

[G1911]

That PWCC’s trimming and fraud ring did NOT exist is the conspiracy theory, the one that flies in the face of mountains of evidence. Finally we get to the actual point, pretending PWCC is innocent and the thousands of provably trimmed cards from his buddy Gary and others, many of which Brent himself bought before trimming, are a frame up.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

That PWCC’s trimming and fraud ring did NOT exist is the conspiracy theory, the one that flies in the face of mountains of evidence. Finally we get to the actual point, pretending PWCC is innocent and the thousands of provably trimmed cards from his buddy Gary and others, many of which Brent himself bought before trimming, are a frame up.

As I have posted countless times, Brent admitted, both in emails and conversations, to knowing what Gary does. They had a decades long partnership dating way back to when Brent was just a kid in Northern California with the ID huigenser and Gary was looking for someone to sell his cards on ebay. Just ignore Travis he is willfully clueless at this point and knows nothing about the history here. I am done arguing with someone who thinks the earth is flat.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

As I have posted countless times, Brent admitted, both in emails and conversations, to knowing what Gary does. They had a decades long partnership dating way back to when Brent was just a kid in Northern California with the ID huigenser and Gary was looking for someone to sell his cards on ebay. Just ignore Travis he is willfully clueless at this point and knows nothing about the history here. I am done arguing with someone who thinks the earth is flat.

I'm not saying that these things did not happened. What I question is the extent to which we actually know what many think we know. Much of what is believed to be true from BODA and crew has been built on top of unproven assumptions (some of which are demonstrably faulty). I'm not talking about the cards or alterations themselves. Most of the cards they posted were clear examples of cards that have indeed been trimmed. I'm talking about the logic they use in tying the various parties involved to each other and to those sales.

I have posted this elsewhere before, but eBay's masked user ID algorithm randomizes your masked ID. BODA's method of tying sales to particular users is flawed. Saying they know a card was purchased by Moser because the buyer ID is listed as 'm***1' is a GIANT assumption. I web scraped all of PWCC's and Probstein's eBay feedback profiles and created a database of all the different user IDs that show up there (if anyone wants the data, send me a PM, I'd be happy to share it). There are countless disparate 'm***1' masked eBay IDs buying cards on eBay. In addition, the username 'garymoser123' would have 132 different permutations that eBay uses at random for their purchases (12 Permute 2 = 132). I believe at one point in time, they did use permutations of the characters in usernames for this (however, as noted below, at some point in time, at least 3+ years ago, they switched to using completely random characters for everyone). Moser purchases a card and it shows as 'm***1' today, but it's 'g***e' tomorrow and '2***y' the next day. If you don't believe me, just go to eBay and log out, then look up your own eBay purchases and see what masked IDs eBay lists you as. You'll have a different masked buyer ID for each purchase. I demonstrated this fact in another thread here regarding a shill bidding operation that I uncovered a while back (here's the link to that thread if you care to read about it: https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?p=2132185). The relevant portion of those posts is that the shill bidding account I found had the numerous masked eBay IDs that all pointed to the same user account ('rywag5421') when you clicked on them (note that the revealed characters in the masked ID aren't even always present in the ID itself - in other words, they are completely random characters):
y***y (357)
6***r (357)
8***0 (357)
r***g (357)
1***4 (357)
5***1 (357)
3***w (357)
1***g (357)
a***6 (357)
5***9 (357)
4***w (357)
0***4 (357)
1***1 (357)
4***a (357)
4***y (357)
0***1 (357)
r***y (357)
y***9 (357)
1***0 (357)
5***8 (357)
8***w (357)
5***2 (357)
3***a (357)
g***4 (357)
g***2 (357)
9***1 (357)
1***y (357)

If we knew the feedback scores along with those masked IDs, that could be helpful, but most of the purchases BODA digs up were from years ago and are taken from VCP, which stores the buyers' masked eBay IDs from the corresponding sales on their website. BODA finds a trimmed card, looks up the masked IDs, then starts connecting the dots. Then they post their "findings" and it just builds and builds. Mountains of evidence built on top of completely random eBay user IDs. If you don't see how this is problematic, then I can't help you. Perhaps at one point in time eBay's masking algorithm used to be less random, using only characters from the actual user ID instead of truly random characters, but even if that were true (which it most definitely has not been true since at least the time that this case was broken wide open by BODA) then we still would have far too many disparate users with the same masked IDs to be able to narrow them down without the feedback scores, which VCP does not track.

Here's what we know: thousands of trimmed cards have been sold/laundered through PWCC over the years. We know that Brent accepted consignments from Gary for a long time until he severed that relationship due to blowback (or I accept that to be true rather). But everything you think you know about which cards were bought by whom, prior to them being trimmed, is all built on the demonstrably false assumption that eBay buyer ID 'x***y' = eBayUserXYZ. And all of these accusations about Brent having bought some specific card and then Moser having trimmed it on his behalf and then resold it through PWCC are built on top of these faulty assumptions of tying random eBay IDs together in some network graph that doesn't actually exist. It reminds me of how schizophrenia often gets portrayed in movies by showing these massive network graphs with photos and news clippings all strung together with push pins and strings on walls.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that EVERYTHING they've uncovered is completely random nonsense. Some of it is not. There are other ways to tie some of this stuff together, and they've definitely uncovered stuff that is worth looking into further. But MUCH of what BODA and everyone who follows those threads believe to be true is in fact built upon truly random masked eBay IDs. This is one of the main reasons that I dismiss the majority of accusations about certain individuals that stem from those threads, and why I don't take people at their word when they tell me what they think I *should* know from what BODA has "uncovered".

This is why I say I will wait for the results of the actual investigation from the actual detectives. The FBI can get their hands on the real underlying data behind all of these transactions, not just some random masked user IDs. Then they can begin to sort out who actually did what. But without this data, all we have are conspiracy theories. Sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true. But I need better evidence than "this card was bought by 'b***h' which means Brent Huigens bought it and we know he had Gary Moser trim it because this other card was bought by 'g***m' and as you can see, it was trimmed, and that's Gary Moser's masked eBay ID, and those two serial numbers are only 53 digits apart, so we know Brent bought cards for Gary to trim!" Note, this isn't a strawman depiction of the arguments made in those threads. This is quite literally how many of the arguments/connections are presented by BODA. Such arguments are complete and utter nonsense without the actual user IDs behind those completely random masked IDs.

[Lorewalker]

Originally Posted by steve B

That sort of negates a major point of grading and authentication doesn't it?
If I know I'm probably not sending it in, if I have no clue, that's what I'd pay an expert for.

Authentication is part of it...however with the proliferation of altered cards it seems like it is all a TPG is supposed to address however they other part of the process is assigning the grade.

Originally Posted by G1911

That PWCC’s trimming and fraud ring did NOT exist is the conspiracy theory, the one that flies in the face of mountains of evidence. Finally we get to the actual point, pretending PWCC is innocent and the thousands of provably trimmed cards from his buddy Gary and others, many of which Brent himself bought before trimming, are a frame up.

Travis has made it known that some of his positions are not popular. I respect that. Obviously he benefits from the relationship with PWCC, which is his choice and I am certainly not condemning him for it, but it is going out there when you call 3 years of uncovering thousands of obviously altered cards by a few guys by means of hunting and pecking. What Brent has been accused of could not be further from a conspiracy.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by steve B

That sort of negates a major point of grading and authentication doesn't it?
If I know I'm probably not sending it in, if I have no clue, that's what I'd pay an expert for.

That type of question probably has little to do in terms of actual grading, and is more likely there as a type of CYA protection for the TPG asking it. Think about it, if the FBI decides to investigate a TPG for the possibility of their acting in collusion with others to potentially defraud the public, they (the TPG) can simply point the FBI, or whomever may be investigating, to that question and the submitter's response. While certainly not 100% conclusive, it does document that the supposed party the TPG may have been thought to possibly be colluding with was specifically asked, and affirmatively denied, knowingly giving altered or doctored items to that TPG to grade. It helps to substantiate a TPG's position that they are not knowingly working with anyone to intentionally defraud the public.

[G1911]

There is a fair point hidden in this simping for Brent. Probability is not absolute truth. It's possible that some of the thousands are actually innocuous coincidence. That all of them are, well, it's hard being a ride or die PWCC shill these days. May we all have such strong supporters as Brent has in you.

'It's not a crime or wrong, and even if it was, he didn't do it'. I suppose the 'innocent and it's not even wrong anyways' has probably been true at some point in time for someone. Usually it's an indicator of falsehood. We know that you will not "wait for the results of the actual investigation from the actual detectives", as you were just arguing that there's nothing wrong about what he's been accused of anyways. Why do you have to defend trimming, alteration, and fraud if he's innocent?

Something is not a conspiracy theory because there isn't an indictment. Just calling anything counter to ones story a conspiracy theory is lying. We all know where the mountains of evidence clearly point. We all know that, while a small number of these cards may have matched the accounts via eBay's masking randomly doing so, the odds are astronomically low that thousands of trimmed cards just all happened to magically match up. It's also completely ignoring all of the other evidence, as you well know. You know the tons of serial numbered cards all had the same serials, provably the exact same card.

We all know exactly why Brent had to drop Moser after the evidence became insurmountable. If it wasn't Moser consigning his trimmings, and all of those thousands of cards weren't their fraud ring (the odds of which are beyond minuscule), Brent, of course, wouldn't have had to drop his old buddy Moser. We all know Moser (with a long hobby history of fraud and alteration) was absolutely routing his altered cards through his old buddy, many of which just coincidentally happen to match up with Brent's second eBay account. But I'm sure all of those matches are just the eBay masking coincidentally making them match. Thousands of times, over and over and over again.

One could just say they don't give a crap if he ripped off a bunch of people, business is good and so they will keep doing business with that person. Conspiracy theories aren't needed.

[Peter_Spaeth]

To me this is like arguing Seattle isn't a rainy city because some of the days counted as rainy were actually just cloudy.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

To me this is like arguing Seattle isn't a rainy city because some of the days counted as rainy were actually just cloudy.

Even worse, it's like arguing Seattle isn't a rainy city because some of the days counted as rainy were actually just cloudy, and that it's a conspiracy theory to consider it raining as the water hits your face.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

To me this is like arguing Seattle isn't a rainy city because some of the days counted as rainy were actually just cloudy.

If it helps to convince you, we refuse to use umbrellas up here in the pacific northwest, because we refuse to concede that it rains enough to require them.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by G1911

There is a fair point hidden in this simping for Brent. Probability is not absolute truth. It's possible that some of the thousands are actually innocuous coincidence. That all of them are, well, it's hard being a ride or die PWCC shill these days. May we all have such strong supporters as Brent has in you.

'It's not a crime or wrong, and even if it was, he didn't do it'. I suppose the 'innocent and it's not even wrong anyways' has probably been true at some point in time for someone. Usually it's an indicator of falsehood. We know that you will not "wait for the results of the actual investigation from the actual detectives", as you were just arguing that there's nothing wrong about what he's been accused of anyways. Why do you have to defend trimming, alteration, and fraud if he's innocent?

Something is not a conspiracy theory because there isn't an indictment. Just calling anything counter to ones story a conspiracy theory is lying. We all know where the mountains of evidence clearly point. We all know that, while a small number of these cards may have matched the accounts via eBay's masking randomly doing so, the odds are astronomically low that thousands of trimmed cards just all happened to magically match up. It's also completely ignoring all of the other evidence, as you well know. You know the tons of serial numbered cards all had the same serials, provably the exact same card.

We all know exactly why Brent had to drop Moser after the evidence became insurmountable. If it wasn't Moser consigning his trimmings, and all of those thousands of cards weren't their fraud ring (the odds of which are beyond minuscule), Brent, of course, wouldn't have had to drop his old buddy Moser. We all know Moser (with a long hobby history of fraud and alteration) was absolutely routing his altered cards through his old buddy, many of which just coincidentally happen to match up with Brent's second eBay account. But I'm sure all of those matches are just the eBay masking coincidentally making them match. Thousands of times, over and over and over again.

One could just say they don't give a crap if he ripped off a bunch of people, business is good and so they will keep doing business with that person. Conspiracy theories aren't needed.

I don't think you're quite grasping the scale of the errors being made by BODA that I'm accusing them of making. It's not as if most of the cards bought by a 'b***h' masked user ID are probably Brent's with a few random purchases here or there being possibly misattributed. What I have proven is that EVERY SINGLE MASKED EBAY USER ID IS COMPLETELY RANDOM ON EVERY SINGLE LISTING. In other words, you cannot attribute ANYTHING to ANYONE on ANY purchase simply by having the masked buyer ID of a sale. Do you understand this? Do you understand the implications of this?

Let's back engineer what's happened here... BODA looks up Brent's known account on eBay. They find a card purchased by that account and can accurately trace it to a sale because of feedback that Brent left for that transaction. On the other party's feedback page, BODA finds Brent's exact feedback post and sees that it is attributed to masked eBay user ID 'b***h' (or whatever it is). BODA then says, "AHA! Now I know Brent's secret masked eBay user ID!!!" and then they start hunting. They scour sold listings and VCP for all purchases made by 'b***h' and then they look for matches for those cards to see if they can find any that have been trimmed. The problem is that only 1 in a million of those listings they scour are actually Brent's. These are COMPLETELY RANDOM eBay IDs. 'b***h' will be attributed to you just as often as it is to me, to Peter, and to Brent. These codes are literally assigned at random.

I'm not saying Brent has never trimmed cards or that he is not involved in some sort of way whatsoever. I'm saying you cannot arrive at these conclusions using masked eBay IDs. That matters.

Here's a conspiracy theory for you that I think is at least equally as likely, if not more so, as Brent being some sort of trimming operation ring leader. I think it's quite likely that the vast majority of all high-end vintage cards graded by PSA in the early days (serial numbers beginning with 0s or 1s) have been trimmed and furthermore that the graders at PSA knew about it. I'm talking *almost all of them*. I think that it's quite possible that nearly all of PSA's business in the early years came from card trimmers. They were the early super adopters, and they sent floods of cards their way. There are countless stories posted across the internet of PSA graders meeting with card trimmers at shows in the early days and discussing how to improve their alterations so that they looked as accurate as possible. I haven't seen proof of these conversations, but I do believe they most likely did occur in some form or another. I don't think PSA was ever above board until scandals started landing on their doorsteps and they found themselves under a spotlight. Out of the many thousands of cards I've seen that had serial numbers starting with a 0 or 1 and a grade of EX or better, I don't think I can ever recall a single one of them being either accurately graded or unaltered. It really is that bad. The early days of PSA were an absolute joke. How many years did they allow Moser (and other known trimmers) to continue to submit cards to them? I think that there are so many altered cards in all of these slabs that you could probably find an altered card almost half the time simply by playing 'pin the tail on the donkey' with high-end or high-grade vintage slabs. I think that you could take ANY random masked eBay user ID and find a trail of altered cards associated with that random ID. That's how widespread I think this problem is. I openly acknowledge that I have no proof of this and that it is in fact a conspiracy theory. But based on my observations, I think this is very plausible. I think everyone on this board, including myself, with high-end or high-grade vintage cards likely has a plethora of altered cards in their collections. Maybe Brent was involved in this too in the early days? I don't know. But I honestly think it's all such a mess that almost none of this shit matters anyhow. This entire hobby is absolutely FLOODED with altered cards. Literally millions of them. That's what I think.

[Lorewalker]

I cannot speak to the process of randomized scrambled user ids on eBay. When I have looked at my own as a buyer it always appears the same scrambled letters in VCP but does have different scrambled letters when viewing purchases in feedback but in all of those instances the scrambled letters are the same.

So even if the Moser id is was inaccurately attributed to the before images the cards compared clearly showed cards which were altered and sold by PWCC.

If this were a nothing burger as Travis believes why is the FBI still digging into PWCC's business? Are we to believe that this is merely a witch hunt? And if so, was it not suggested that PWCC has written a bunch of checks to buy back altered cards?

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Lorewalker

I cannot speak to the process of randomized scrambled user ids on eBay. When I have looked at my own as a buyer it always appears the same scrambled letters in VCP but does have different scrambled letters when viewing purchases in feedback but in all of those instances the scrambled letters are the same.

So even if the Moser id is was inaccurately attributed to the before images the cards compared clearly showed cards which were altered and sold by PWCC.

If this were a nothing burger as Travis believes why is the FBI still digging into PWCC's business? Are we to believe that this is merely a witch hunt? And if so, was it not suggested that PWCC has written a bunch of checks to buy back altered cards?

ultimately the only thing they will get Brent on is he over inflated the value of his Vault to get bank loans, paid all the loans back and no banks complaining but then charged civilly for overstating the value of his Vault............