PSA Card Guarantee

[steve B]

Originally Posted by bnorth

It is really not that absurd. A fellow member done almost exactly that and they graded the card a 9.

Seriously can't make this up. He sent in a counterfeit card. He is a data guy that writes a lot of papers. He included a paper describing in great detail the differences between it and a "real/normal" version of the card. It isn't even on the same card stock and they graded it a 9.

Sounds very interesting. What card was it?

[steve B]

SGC isn't much better at picking up some kinds of fakes and alterations.
And also sticks with their mistakes if they're big enough.

There are tells for any manufacturing process. The ones for card factory cuts are known and clear. The biggest one actually survives a lot of wear, being present on cards that would only grade a 1, and even some that might be worse than that. I could teach my kids to spot this in a few minutes.
Some maybe most trimming can be spotted even if the card is in a slab.

And that's without even getting into things like how much gunk a card has absorbed from the air, on the edges or otherwise. Or if the internal angle of the cut from the cutter is the same (that last one is not always easy to spot, especially if the blade was sharp. )

Either grading companies aren't making the effort, which seems likely.
Or they don't know what effort to make
Or they know whose cards to not make the effort on.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by steve B

SGC isn't much better at picking up some kinds of fakes and alterations.
And also sticks with their mistakes if they're big enough.

There are tells for any manufacturing process. The ones for card factory cuts are known and clear. The biggest one actually survives a lot of wear, being present on cards that would only grade a 1, and even some that might be worse than that. I could teach my kids to spot this in a few minutes.
Some maybe most trimming can be spotted even if the card is in a slab.

And that's without even getting into things like how much gunk a card has absorbed from the air, on the edges or otherwise. Or if the internal angle of the cut from the cutter is the same (that last one is not always easy to spot, especially if the blade was sharp. )

Either grading companies aren't making the effort, which seems likely.
Or they don't know what effort to make
Or they know whose cards to not make the effort on.

I think 1 and 3 explain more than 2.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by steve B

Either grading companies aren't making the effort, which seems likely.
Or they don't know what effort to make
Or they know whose cards to not make the effort on.

This is a good list. As a man whose business is selling time and expertise where efficiency is everything, I might add the possibility that they are moving so fast that they don’t have the time to invest in each card to really investigate. At least when it comes to quality hack jobs.

I’ve read some theories that suggest that the amount of time spent with any single card is pretty minimal. Like a minute or two.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by raulus

This is a good list. As a man whose business is selling time and expertise where efficiency is everything, I might add the possibility that they are moving so fast that they don’t have the time to invest in each card to really investigate. At least when it comes to quality hack jobs.

I was thinking of that as part of Steve's #1 but for sure.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I was thinking of that as part of Steve's #1 but for sure.

Variation on a theme, I grant you.

[steve B]

The weird thing with that first point is that in a different hobby I had an expert examine two different items in person at an international show.
The opinions that had taken me some non trivial amount of time to reach were correct. But it took him probably under 2 min for one and under 30 seconds for the other. One I thought was not what it seemed in a bad way, the other I thought was good. (The good one has since received a certificate, that hobbies equivalent of tpg just without the grade)

The stuff was more involved than trimming of cardboard.