Cards still being outed on Blowout -- PSA 9 Monte Irvin in the recent ML

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by raulus

That’s a good possibility, although I’m not convinced that’s a factor here.

I would submit 3 hypotheses:

1) maybe it’s not that easy to do, or at least the success rate is low.
2) the sheer number of cards and issues out there means that even with widespread doctoring, the doctors struggle to meaningfully raise the relative number of high grade cards.
3) it’s not really all that well known by the general population as a route to riches.

2 and 3. Not 1. Also as I posted before, constant outward shifting of the demand curve means increased supply won't reduce price.

[G1911]

As to the ease of trimming, it's super easy and I did it myself.

If you take a stack of cards, of basically any year and any set, there are natural size differences. I'm opening a box of 2022 Heritage High Number right now, lining up the cards from the last 3 packs on my desk, so that the bottom edge of the card is against the flat surface of the desk, I can discern with my poor and glaucoma ridden eyes that the cards are very slightly different heights. This provides the margin by which one may trim the card without leaving much evidence. Even to this day card production is not so good that the size tolerances are not perceptible to the human eye.

Using the modern tools and trimming methods, which I don't want to fully state but 'if you know you know' and they are not to hard to find. They require no expensive or unusual tooling or particular skill. I took some 1990 Score football and micro trimmed them last year. I chose these because they are worthless, I have them sitting around, and the border design lends itself to make a sizing difference more easily discernible to the human eye with the white striping pattern, so they are more difficult to shorten without it being noticed. After handling the cards a bit to produce slight corner wear at the top and bottom, I micro trimmed them. Didn't even need to practice or anything before I produced cards I knocked down to EX-MT and then cut to perfect corners and normal size, without any way to really see they were trimmed.

Edge coloring can help ID a vaguely recent trimming, among other things, but especially with modern cards, it's nigh impossible without before and after scans to have a high success rate at the identification.

[Peter_Spaeth]

By the way, from Blowout, several low pop 9s including a pop 2 were in the same PSA sub as the Irvin, but have not been put up for sale yet. Stay tuned. The best is yet to come.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

2 and 3. Not 1. Also as I posted before, constant outward shifting of the demand curve means increased supply won't reduce price.

Riffing on this theme a bit more, what’s to keep a relatively amoral group like organized crime from setting up their own card doctoring operation to supplement their other economic activities?

They certainly wouldn’t have any moral objections. They have an army of low-skilled labor at their disposal. And enough capital to buy the equipment and training to set up shop.

You could imagine an army of buyers trained to sift through auctions to find raw and low or mid grade pieces ripe for grade bumps with a little doctoring. All those cards end up funneled off to some warehouse where a sweatshop filled with card doctors labors day and night with their tools and a little training to improve those cards for superior grading. If they wanted to skip the learning curve, they could even hire one of these existing doctors to manage the operation. Or if they wanted to skip paying for it, they could squeeze him to give up his secrets.

The thought is a little terrifying, as thousands of cards per day could be doctored and pushed through grading, and out onto an unsuspecting hobby. Before you know it, the number of high grade copies for every issue and every player would swell to the point that supply might finally exceed demand. Might take a lot since demand is so deep. But when that point finally arrived, the prices would inevitably fall.

And if you’re worried that a domestic group would worry about detection by law enforcement, then there’s nothing to prevent international groups in Russia or North Korea or Sicily (or all of them together) from setting up such an operation.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Wut? Or perhaps, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Sarcasm perhaps?

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Wut? Or perhaps, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Sarcasm perhaps?

Maybe?

Setting aside the morals and just putting my economist hat on, it seems like the natural progression. If it’s really easy to do, requires little skill, training, or capital, with an army of drones to take up the work, and you can make tens of thousands of dollars on each card, then organized crime would seem like the perfect fit. Those groups are certainly interested in making a quick buck, and it’s hard to imagine their code of honor would frown on such an enterprise.

And yet it doesn’t happen, or hasn’t yet.

Perhaps for one of the reasons that I speculated above. Perhaps for others.

I’m certainly inclined to guess that a big reason is that it’s not as easy as it might seem to us. Travis has suggested as much, and I have no reason to doubt he’s wrong.

[Peter_Spaeth]

You know best. i must be wrong about the extent of it, you've convinced me. I'll just have to discard everything I've learned and heard from all my sources for decades now, damn. Not. PS you seem to be trying to convince yourself that most of your high grade cards are OK. If you feel safe, great.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

You know best. i must be wrong about the extent of it, you've convinced me. Not. PS you seem to be trying to convince yourself, good luck with that.

I’m really not sure what I believe. Just trying to make a little sense of it through the economic lens. Haven’t quite been able to square the circle just yet. And maybe we never will.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by raulus

I’m really not sure what I believe. Just trying to make a little sense of it through the economic lens. Haven’t quite been able to square the circle just yet. And maybe we never will.

Do what suits you, I know what I know, facts are facts. Even if it were hard, and most of it isn't, think how many cards even a single person could alter if that was his sole occupation for, say, three decades. You do the math, then multiply it by all the card doctors out there, and then add in all the ones doing routine stuff. It adds up.

[Beercan collector]

I’m to the point where I think I’d enjoy viewing a complete PSA 6 1953 set With all the touched corners , rough cuts and fuzzy borders than looking a chopped up PSA 8-9 set

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Beercan collector

I’m to the point where I think I’d enjoy viewing a complete PSA 6 1953 set With all the touched corners , rough cuts and fuzzy borders than looking a chopped up PSA 8-9 set

I don't collect sets, but this is basically where I landed as well some time ago.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

2 and 3. Not 1. Also as I posted before, constant outward shifting of the demand curve means increased supply won't reduce price.

I disagree about point #1. At least for some of these cards. The bottom left corner on that Monte Irvin has been completely rebuilt. Paper stock and top layer/paint. This is not some amateur job. This is the work of an expert. You could probably count on one hand the number of people in the hobby who are capable of performing an alteration like this.

If we're talking about trimming, then sure. A lot of people have paper cutters. But even at that, I don't think you can just grab a random vintage card, take a slice off of it, and get a 9 nowadays. If that were the case, these pop reports would indeed be blowing up. But that isn't happening.

Perhaps it is worth pointing out that during his interview with that podcast, Mathis talked about buying up several PSA 9s of a card that he wanted a 10 for with one of his registry sets and sending them all to a card doctor in hopes that just one of them could be turned into a 10. They weren't just grabbing random cards, like 5s or 6s, and cutting them up and getting 10s. They were looking for near-perfect cards and trying to make very minor improvements. This tells me that nobody within even his well connected circle of highly skilled card doctors was capable of performing an alteration like the one we see on this Monte Irvin card.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snowman

I disagree about point #1. At least for some of these cards. The bottom left corner on that Monte Irvin has been completely rebuilt. Paper stock and top layer/paint. This is not some amateur job. This is the work of an expert. You could probably count on one hand the number of people in the hobby who are capable of performing an alteration like this.

If we're talking about trimming, then sure. A lot of people have paper cutters. But even at that, I don't think you can just grab a random vintage card, take a slice off of it, and get a 9 nowadays. If that were the case, these pop reports would indeed be blowing up. But that isn't happening.

Perhaps it is worth pointing out that during his interview with that podcast, Mathis talked about buying up several PSA 9s of a card that he wanted a 10 for with one of his registry sets and sending them all to a card doctor in hopes that just one of them could be turned into a 10. They weren't just grabbing random cards, like 5s or 6s, and cutting them up and getting 10s. They were looking for near-perfect cards and trying to make very minor improvements. This tells me that nobody within even his well connected circle of highly skilled card doctors was capable of performing an alteration like the one we see on this Monte Irvin card.

Fair enough. Some of the work is highly skilled.