Has Blowout Cards Abandoned Finding Fraud?

[marzoumanian]

Unmasking altered sports cards is extremely difficult work. Just ask the fine people at Blowout Cards. Back in April 2019 they blew the whistle on the trimming of a raw 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle card.
I’m not going to rehash the whole story. But this particular card had been trimmed and ended up being graded a 4.5 by PSA. More diligent work revealed that Long Island-based Gary Moser was behind these alternations. He would purchase graded cards, often from PWCC, crack them out, alter them, and then resubmit them to PSA for grading. The subsequent new grade was almost always higher than the original one, increasing their value when they were put up for auction by PWCC. Moser even had the gumption to place shill bids on these newly-altered graded cards.
All of this was exposed more than three years ago. But for some time now we haven’t heard anything about new altered cards from a source like Blowout Cards. Does this mean that those who were altering are now scared and have decided to lay low? I would not bet on it.
“I think the Blowout guys got discouraged because it doesn’t appear law enforcement is going to do anything,” states a Net54 Forum participant. “In my opinion there’s zero chance the doctoring stopped or even slowed down.”
Why hasn’t law enforcement been able to stop bad apples from altering sports cards? First, they need hard, irrefutable proof and plenty of it. Thanks to the work of Blowout Cards you would think they would have it by now. Second, the pandemic of 2020-21 slowed any and all criminal investigations of any sort. But probably the biggest reason arrests haven’t occurred in this niche is simply because law enforcement has bigger fish to fry. I’m sure that those that doctor cards are emboldened by law enforcement’s attitude and feel they can keep on doing what they do best. I hope I’m wrong but I doubt it.
Let’s look at the big picture and be thankful there are people on sports card forums that are willing to do the tedious and mind-numbing work to discover fraud.
Of course, shining a light on fraud isn’t limited to sports cards. Last August I read a fascinating article in The New York Times about how Nick Wilding, a historian at Georgia State University, uncovered evidence revealing that a Galileo manuscript related to his discovery of moons around Jupiter was a fake. Granted, this was a 20th-century forgery. But the fraud discovery process is what I want to highlight.
For decades the manuscript was a prized possession of the University of Michigan Library. Wilding was examining it online when he noticed some of the letter forms and word choices were strange. In addition, the top and bottom parts of the manuscript were supposedly written months apart yet the ink was exactly the same brown color.
Wilding researched the document’s origins and learned there was no record of it in Italian archives. Instead, it appeared at auction in 1934, was purchased by a Detroit businessman, and bequeathed to the university in 1938, after the businessman died.
Cutting to the chase, it turns out that Tobia Nicotra, a well-known 20th-century counterfeiter in Milan, had faked the document. Why? He was reportedly supporting seven mistresses, according to the article. When his Milan apartment was raided by the police in 1934, they found a virtual forgery factory with endpapers ripped from old books.
This document sat in the U of M Library for decades. Any vintage sports card collector who has been buying cards for at least a decade has to wonder if he holds altered cards, whether they’re raw or graded. Do I have such cards? Gee, I sure hope I don’t. But there’s a good chance I do. The only way I’ll probably find out is when I go to auction one of my baseball card sets and get an email or phone call telling me that one or more of the cards in the set has been altered. Talk about embarrassing. What would you do if this were to happen to you?
All I can hope is that baseball card forum members with the skill and time to discover fraudsters keep plugging away. We need them.

[Peter_Spaeth]

One of the Blowout guys still posts sometimes. But IMO, not much in the hobby has changed, or will change unless there are repercussions. What I call the unholy alliance still continues IMO.

[ALBB]

Yea, Blowout did a tremendous job with " outing " altered cards...all showing 100% proof of what was done..and by whom

[swarmee]

The BODA guys are still at work but lost a trove of historical photographs when Worthpoint decided to clear millions of old eBay scans from their site, presumably to save hard drive space.
If you check the many threads, they are still outing cards, but no longer at the same rate. PWCC getting thrown off of eBay also led to less heat being directed at them, since they're kind of in hiding.
There definitely was an FBI investigation started, and there have been other arrests in the memorabilia space in the last couple of years. It's possible something is still happening, but much closer-lipped than earlier. However, it's possible they also shelved it. Now that the market has cooled, it's quite possible that people who were scammed now bring it to authorities with more regularity, because they are now losing money because of their investments in trimmed/altered cards. When the modern card market was doubling and tripling monthly during 2020-21, it seemed like even the altered cards were worth more than they were bought for.

[1952boyntoncollector]

right i said on many posts nothing will happen and people argued online there was investigation and be patient etc...i kept saying over and over....well been 3 or so years....i bet i can find those posts.....

[ALBB]

I have brought up the question of -

What do many of these high end collectors do...who purchased cards now deemed trimmed/ altered....they have been ripped off for a lot of money..

.Does that collector do the " ethical " thing ,and when he's ready to sell...makes it known ?....or the " unethical" thing..and break the card out of the holder...and try to sell it one day " pretending" he knows nothing about a trim or alter ?.... That decision could cost him thousands of dollars in loses

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

right i said on many posts nothing will happen and people argued online there was investigation and be patient etc...i kept saying over and over....well been 3 or so years....i bet i can find those posts.....

Even a broken clock is right every so often.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by marzoumanian

Unmasking altered sports cards is extremely difficult work. Just ask the fine people at Blowout Cards. Back in April 2019 they blew the whistle on the trimming of a raw 1952 Topps #311 Mickey Mantle card.
I’m not going to rehash the whole story. But this particular card had been trimmed and ended up being graded a 4.5 by PSA. More diligent work revealed that Long Island-based Gary Moser was behind these alternations.

A few years back, I posted on the Blowhard forums. I was primarily only interested in the 'Grading' subforum, as I found the majority of the site to be mostly intolerable. Anyhow, it landed me on a lot of these altered card threads and I read through every page and post at the time (literally thousands of pages worth of posts on the topic with thousands of cards that were called out as being altered).

I was blown away by what I read. Not so much blown away by the fact that there are a lot of altered cards out there (duh), but rather I was surprised by just how easy it was for someone to post a card, make an obviously false claim about that card, and have seemingly EVERYONE believe that claim and perpetuate it into perpetuity. The 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle that you called out above is the most prominent example. This card was absolutely not trimmed. 100% not trimmed. Yet somehow, nearly everyone there believed that it was simply out of ignorance (no offense intended, I just mean that word literally). You can measure the borders digitally and count the pixels (which I did). But you don't even need to do that. Hell, just look at it and look at identifying marks. They are all the same distance from the edge of the card in both the before and the after pics. So why do people believe that it was trimmed? It's because the edges look somewhat rough/dinged up in the before pic and they look nearly flawless in the after pic. But that doesn't mean the card was trimmed. This is where everyone on Blowhard got it wrong. The card was soaked in water and dried flat. It's clear as day. If you've ever soaked a vintage card, you'd know this instantly just by looking at the before and after pics. I pointed this out in that thread and just got absolutely sh*t on by nearly everyone there. Then they started following me around bullying me in every thread, accusing me of trimming cards, shilling for PSA and PWCC and whatever other nonsense they could come up with. That place is an absolute cesspool.

That's not to say that there weren't other cards that were uncovered as trimmed, because there definitely were a ton of cards that were, but there were also a lot of cards being posted that simply weren't altered at all. They really muddied the water.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Even a broken clock is right every so often.

right ..its correct at least once a day, and i make one a day opinions..

[rjackson44]

This will never end

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by rjackson44

This will never end

The fraud or the people wasting their time complaining about it?

[Leon]

Originally Posted by bnorth

The fraud or the people wasting their time complaining about it?

As long as there is fraud, I think it should be talked about and brought into the open, as much as possible.



and, as shown before, the plate specimens for Lipset's Encyclopedia...these aren't fraudulent.
.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Leon

As long as there is fraud, I think it should be talked about and brought into the open, as much as possible.



and, as shown before, the plate specimens for Lipset's Encyclopedia...these aren't fraudulent.
.

I used to think like that but I have been attacked way too many times for calling out someones friend or business partner. It just isn't worth the hassle to me anymore. Even on here I have seen one member sell another member an altered card and then tell the buyer too bad. Because the seller was a popular member there was nothing but crickets when the buyer openly complained about it. I get it that that is how it works in the real world so I have done my best to quit complaining about it.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I used to think like that but I have been attacked way too many times for calling out someones friend or business partner. It just isn't worth the hassle to me anymore. Even on here I have seen one member sell another member an altered card and then tell the buyer too bad. Because the seller was a popular member there was nothing but crickets when the buyer openly complained about it. I get it that that is how it works in the real world so I have done my best to quit complaining about it.

I would love the names and evidence. Fraud should be treated as fraud. Way too many people seem to find it acceptable when it’s their pals doing it.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

I would love the names and evidence. Fraud should be treated as fraud. Way too many people seem to find it acceptable when it’s their pals doing it.

If I recall correctly it was a T3 Cobb that Dan McKee sold to Jesse Arnot. It was all vetted here, but if memory serves Dan did not comment publicly. After Dan declined to accept a return, and to be complete about it this was a long time after the original transaction, Jesse reached a resolution with PSA.

[Yoda]

Trimmers, alterers, shillers forgers and counterfeiters are our hobby's dark web. Embarrassed as I am to tell the tale, i got skunked via Ebay about 7 years ago. I bought a raw Wolverine News Cobb, examining everything i could from the optics provided. It looked about vg shape. I knew, of course, how rare the WN set is and why would it pop up on Ebay instead of AH, but I pulled the trigger.

My plan was to get it graded at the National (LOTG Al might remember, as I passed the card to many learned heads at his table), using SGC. I submitted the card and held my breath. When I went to pick up the card, their head grader came and gave me the bad news that the card was bogus. He said it had taken them a while, the paper stock was right, the aging in line, to determine it was no good. Why? The pixels weren't right. Tail between legs, I slumped away wondering what the f#%k is a pixel.

I fear humility is eroding within the hobby, so I pull that faux Cobby out from time to time to remind myself of my own failings.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Yoda

Trimmers, alterers, shillers forgers and counterfeiters are our hobby's dark web. Embarrassed as I am to tell the tale, i got skunked via Ebay about 7 years ago. I bought a raw Wolverine News Cobb, examining everything i could from the optics provided. It looked about vg shape. I knew, of course, how rare the WN set is and why would it pop up on Ebay instead of AH, but I pulled the trigger.

My plan was to get it graded at the National (LOTG Al might remember, as I passed the card to many learned heads at his table), using SGC. I submitted the card and held my breath. When I went to pick up the card, their head grader came and gave me the bad news that the card was bogus. He said it had taken them a while, the paper stock was right, the aging in line, to determine it was no good. Why? The pixels weren't right. Tail between legs, I slumped away wondering what the f#%k is a pixel.

I fear humility is eroding within the hobby, so I pull that faux Cobby out from time to time to remind myself of my own failings.

I am sure we all have similar stories. I have collected print errors for over 3 decades. It hurt bad when I figured out several of my expensive rare error cards are just faded worthless junk.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

If I recall correctly it was a T3 Cobb that Dan McKee sold to Jesse Arnot. It was all vetted here, but if memory serves Dan did not comment publicly. After Dan declined to accept a return, and to be complete about it this was a long time after the original transaction, Jesse reached a resolution with PSA.

Thank you.

[Peter_Spaeth]

One BODA member is posting as recently as this morning still.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...90614&page=315

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

One BODA member is posting as recently as this morning still.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showth...90614&page=315

Reminds me of the black knight from Monty Python

https://youtu.be/ZmInkxbvlCs