Article about Collecting and Fraud in the Hobby

[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............

[G1911]

I want to know how eBay, acting against their own best interest in kicking out their biggest moneymaker in cards, was wrong when they very publicly accused Brent of shilling and kicked him to the curb. I'm sure there is also a conspiracy afoot here to dupe the card collecting public into believing the mountains of evidence.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by G1911

I want to know how eBay, acting against their own best interest in kicking out their biggest moneymaker in cards, was wrong when they very publicly accused Brent of shilling and kicked him to the curb. I'm sure there is also a conspiracy afoot here to dupe the card collecting public into believing the mountains of evidence.

They very much did not accuse Brent of shilling. Read their statement again. eBay couldn't give two shits about shill bidding. There are numerous reasons why eBay might have pulled this move. But going after PWCC for "shill bidding" could not possibly have been one of them.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

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............

I don't think Brent attempted to overthrow the government though, so he might be safe?