A Troubling Hobby Developement

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Posted By: John_B_California

I know this topic has come up many times before, but I have to play devil's advocate when it comes to the amount of trimmed, altered or otherwise "bad" pre WWII PSA graded cards.

I'm looking at the PSA population numbers right now for T206.

There's been 62,000 cards graded to date. There's only 252 PSA 9's. There's been 13 10's. That's less than 1/2 of 1% of all cards submitted. If altered and trimmed cards are so prevalent, why are they so rare?

For the T205 set, there's been 14,273 cards submitted for grading. There's 175 8's, 4 9's, and no 10's.

For T204 Ramly, there's virtually nothing in high grade.

If I knew nothing about cards, those numbers look pretty normal in terms of distribution. I can imagine 14,000 extremely delicate T205's in circulation; the bulk will be low grades, and they'll get rarer and rarer as the grades up. It's just the law of averages. The numbers are skewed because of breakouts and re-submissions. Even if the real number is 8,000 or 10,000, I still don't see it.

I agree there's a very strong incentive for some people to alter cards given the strength of the market. And obviously the pop numbers are imperfect. But I wonder, if it's so easy to alter these cards, why aren't there more of them?

The Set Registry has created huge demand for low pop commons. In the '33 Goudey set, low pop commons can reach $10,000-$15,000. The pop numbers have barely moved for some of the rarest cards as prices have exploded. Again, why aren't more 7's being created into 8's?

It's inevitable that some graded cards are altered. But over 50%? That's a strong allegation. I don't see it in the numbers at all. Alot of very desirable pre WWI cards have not been graded in high grades. A mint T205 Cobb would be a holy grail, but it doesn't exist. Alot of HOF'ers in T206 have never gotten a Mint 9. Some cards have always been rare (T206 Green Cobb).

There's tremendous demand for PSA 8 T206's. People would die for a straight NM-MT set. But some cards don't even exist in an 8. Some show only 1 or 2 copies in NM 7.

Statistically, what numbers jump out as an anomaly?

John