Card Improvment: Ethical? Yes or NO?

[T206Collector]

When you purchase a high grade pre-war card, part of your expectation should be that that card may have been "improved" at some point in its 100 year life. If you are purchasing these with an expectation that they have only stayed the same or gotten worse over the years, then you are just being unrealistic.

Whether it is ethical is sort of besides the point. It is unethical to do illegal downloads, but MP3 technology and "free music" changed the game. People will always collect baseball cards, but the expectation of the history of their cards may change. And that may have a dramatic effect on the market.

As I have said on here a zillion times -- if you are buying PSA 8 T206 cards, then you have a really good chance of owning an improved-upon card. If you care about that then you're spending your money in the wrong place.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by T206Collector

cards may change. And that may have a dramatic effect on the market.

As I have said on here a zillion times -- if you are buying PSA 8 T206 cards, then you have a really good chance of owning an improved-upon card. If you care about that then you're spending your money in the wrong place.

I agree, but I am not sure that excuses the grading companies for misrepresenting that the cards are original, or the card doctors/dealers for perpretrating fraud.

[T206Collector]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I agree, but I am not sure that excuses the grading companies for misrepresenting that the cards are original, or the card doctors/dealers for perpretrating fraud.

You're holding the grading companies to a standard that is impossible to keep or police. I excuse the grading companies from detecting the undetectable.

As far as going after card doctors/dealers who perpetuate fraud -- be my guest. Line them up and shoot them. But don't think that addresses or solves your problem. The damage is already done -- the fraud already committed. There is reasonable doubt in every pre-war card. We ought to be coming to terms with these facts.

PSA 10s aren't as rare as we thought they were, but they're still relatively rare. There's only so much you can doctor a card. We just need to be building certain expectations into our card collections.

Threads like this show that there are still a lot of surprised and disappointed people in our hobby. As long as that's true then card values will be artificially inflated by these unreasonable expectations.

We need to move as a collective to reasonable expectations. And we've had these changes in our hobby before. The advent of grading changed the definition of mint. Is this really any different?

[Peter_Spaeth]

The long hoped-for bullet was entering his brain ... He had won the victory over himself. He loved the Great Guys.

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by T206Collector

Threads like this show that there are still a lot of surprised and disappointed people in our hobby. As long as that's true then card values will be artificially inflated by these unreasonable expectations.

I don't think that really true...as long as there is a competition going on in registry sets I don't think those guys care. Jim Crandell is quite aware of what is going on with this aspect of the hobby, but it hasn't stopped him from paying a premium for Mint grades....I am also quite certain that the "whales" that participate in the registry are also aware that cards are being improved.