Announcing "Collectors Forensics Register" - Revolutionizing the Hobby
 

Hello Net54 Members,

Collectors Forensics Register is a newly created service designed specifically for the graded card hobbyist. CFR combines science with technology and applies it to the graded, encapsulated sports card to capture its forensic "microscopic expression" for permanent and public record.

Our intention is to create numerous benefits within the hobby / industry as the natural byproduct from this service. Consider the following:

• Sellers with forensic registrations of their cards will have a decided advantage over sellers without registrations
• Buyers of forensically registered cards will have direct forensics of the card to view on the web prior to purchase
• Any aspect of the card (name, grading company, grading serial number, card manufacturer, etc.) can be "Googled" to see if a registration exists
• The forensic registrations (pictures & videos) can be accessed anywhere on any computer, iphone or other smart phone
• The registrations will deter those who may contemplate fraud, as it may be forensically uncovered, if registered by a subsequent owner
• Fraud will also be deterred, as all registrations will be sent to their respective grading companies as a friendly service
• Those selling cards on Internet auction services can simply post the link to the card’s web page for potential buyers to view
• Grading companies will begin to converge on industry standards, now that their product may land literally “under the microscope”
• The introduction of these forensic registrations will very likely create an implicit self-regulation of the hobby.

CFR wanted take this opportunity to announce itself on this bulletin board and avail itself to its members, as the Net54 community is a long established and respected one.

Important note: We are not a grading company, nor do we take a position on the quality or accuracy of the awarded grades of cards that are submitted for registration. However, our mission is to record a "point-in-time" forensic snapshot of all cards submitted for public availability on the Internet. Grading quality, accuracy and potential fraud will be exposed as a natural byproduct of the registration process as it serves the hobby's most educated judges -- the hobbyists themselves.

For more information, please feel free to visit our web site at:

www.CFReg.com. You may also contact us from our web site or e-mail us directly at info@cfreg.com

Thanks to all board members for your time and a special thanks to Leon for opening the door to CFR as we begin our journey !

Collectors Forensics Register Management Team

http://www.cfreg.com/board_ad.jpg

Really?

I'm waiting for CFR:New York.

This is exactly what the hobby needed. :rolleyes:

Because of the money involved with registry collectors, I certainly can understand why a service like this is being offered. But for all of the years we've joked about slabbing the slabs, guess that time has come... sorta of.

Thank you Jon, for your good memory. I caught a bit of grief over the concept of slabbing a slab, when I mentioned it years ago... I don't doubt they'll make a go of it. Difficult for me to believe it, though.

That was you, wasn't it Frank! :)

Forensics
 

I have a 1909 Obak Chick Gandil that has lived under a cloud of suspicion for an unsolved murder since 1953. It will be good to finally know one way or the other.

huh?
 

as jon says, 'sorta of'

best,
barry

Slabbing the slabs is nothing new- GAI graded this PSA slab years ago
http://photos.imageevent.com/griffin.../71garvey.jpeg

Wow - difficult to fomulate a response to this as I'm not fluent enough in bafflegab.

Here's a free tip to this new business - your market is not longtime knowledgable collectors, as one finds on Net54. It is the rich and clueless. It is someone who is not afraid to spend a ton on an item he knows nothing about, and therefore requires a third-party opinion along with some kind of further assurance on top of that (for some additional price not being spent on the actual collectibles).

Sorry to be a cynic, but I predict the revolution will be short and quelled without bloodshed.

Cheers,
Blair

I'm speechless. Speechless. I have no speech.
 

The OP is quite earnest and has obviously put a good deal of effort into creating a website etc. I have looked his site over and tried to make heads or tails of what exactly is to be gained by having one's cards forensically examined but I'm drawing a blank. All I can conclude is that this is a totally ludicrous business plan (but I am just a dumb land surveyor so what do I know?). I am afraid, around here anyway, that CFR will wind up on the Net54 scrapheap along with Adam, Peter and Marshall, the Cobb Bros. T206 Wagner and the Joe Jackson T202, Dorskind vs. Archive, Chicago bashing, carbon dating and chicken fighting and ad infinitum. You can't make this stuff up and that's why my dial is always tuned to FiveFour.

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Sometimes less is better than more. Hey, it's just baseball cards.

I think before we try to digest this new hobby watchdog we give the Collector's Trade Association of America the time it needs to deliver that "appropriate and powerful response" to that "small group" of pesky naysayers in our hobby. If I recall correctly, Marshall is three months into his one year "committed term" as "executive director." I don't know about you guys but I've seen a whirlwind of activity thus far; I can't wait to see what the next nine months holds for the CTA.

Don't you just love it when someone's first, and possibly only post in a forum is to advertise?

May I respectfully request that Leon hit them up for banner ad, or give them the boot for spamming?

Given the Net54 response to this announcement, it will almost surely be their last post here. I'm sure they will have people use the service, but this board is not their target audience.

The jig is up...it was a terrible jig.

"The Limousine" episode.:)

already talked about it
 

When the OP, Lloyd, and I spoke yesterday he told me what he planned and I looked at the site. I told him just like with most hobby business situations that he could post once about it on the board, and then after that there were advertising opportunities. I told him about WIWAG and about GAI (the first video I saw) and their debacles. I told him about the coin counterpart CAC and what it did. I went onto say we have a fairly well heeled audience, in some respects, but that even someone on a $50 budget gets the same respect as those with higher budgets. He hadn't heard about GAI problems or WIWAG or CAC. I was sort of saying to myself "myself- huh, if I were doing that venture I might have done a bit more research." At any rate I wished him best and here we have the "Industry REVOLUTION".....well, sort of. My opinion is that this service sort of tells us what we already know. But hey, maybe I don't know what I need to....or something like that.

One of my all time favs Barry! You don't look like a Murphy.

Leon, Fair enough. Thanks for the explanantion.

Some of that stuff will be interesting for modern cards. Especially the ones that were overproduced. It will be interesting to see if any of the odd differences get recognition, or if some get declared as fake. Some of the little differences are actually somewhat challenging to find.

91 topps for instance has 3 different back inks, one does not react to the blacklight, another lights up brightly, and the third looks like a very dark red. The last one is actually a lot tougher than the others. The fronts also have 2 diferent clear coats.....

I've thought that a premium grading service that gave a detailed explanation of the grade could work, but it would be tough going in a market that's a bit saturated.

Steve B

And you don't look like an O'Brien.;)

I wish them all the best in their venture. However, I fail to see how this is a necessity in the hobby.

What a great franchise, assuming all the llama ranches were taken

Whew. Tough crowd. He might just buy a banner ad next time :)

I thought...
 

...that the clocks fell back an hour in most of the country this past weekend, but evidently I was wrong, they seem to have jumped forward to April Fool's Day.

I have a llama ranch, which I inherited from my grandfather, but I'm not sure if my llamas are genuine. Do they come with Uzit backs?:confused::rolleyes:

Well this has been a tough crowd, and this is probably not the response you were expecting. But I have to say I don't understand what this service provides. I understand you don't grade cards, but according to your promo your company's goal is to deter fraud. But how? If I submit a card that was doctored, are you saying you will spot that alteration every time using forensic techniques? And how does that differ from the already established grading companies- don't they authenticate as well as grade cards? Are you saying you will catch the mistakes they missed? I'm sure you have put a great deal of thought into this service but you lost me at "Hello Net54 Members."

My buddy, Al Paca, runs a llama ranch.

I know Al...he's a real lamb in sheep's clothing.

Thanks for the inquiry, Barry. Let me address your post in two parts. First, the answer is no, we are not trying to identify mistakes made by the grading companies or potential fraud while recording the forensic video. Once the cards are graded and encapsulated, we consider them a single product, each containing multiple components (slab, card, informational flip and inserts in some productions), each one of these components containing its own specific forensic properties. Those properties include weld points, trapped air, fibers, dings, scratches, ink splashes, smears, etc.

While recording the forensic video, these microscopic properties are put into the forensic record. I believe that everyone will agree that the premise of the encapsulated card is that it should never be the subject of physical change. Therefore, when performing the forensic registration of the graded card, the only thing that we care about are the forensic properties of the entire production.

We are dispassionate toward which grading company, quality or accuracy. However, once the forensic record is made public, it is subject to close scrutiny by potential buyers, interested parties or even trading companies. Herein lies the implicit fraud deterrent and quality control. If you a perpetrator of fraud, the downstream effect of the forensic registration is your potential implication or least making you think twice about engaging in fraud again.

If you are a grading company, the least desired effect from a public relations standpoint, is to have your graded product identified as a counterfeit or altered card. Such a finding may be exposed once it is registered and entered into public record. It will also call into question potentially inaccurately awarded grades, hence we expect that the grading bar will be raised considerably, since the forensics are now publicly available.

Secondly, the service is intended to do for hobbyists, what Carfax has done for auto buyers / sellers -- put everything about the product "above board". When looking at two used cars side-by-side, all things being equal, the one with the exposed history gets the sale. Both buyer and seller benefit. It will be a great enabler for card dealers and auction sellers.

Thanks for your inquiry, we hope that this helped.

Thanks for getting back, and good luck with the business. That helped a bit.

I dunno, personally I don't see much use for this service. If I didn't trust the grading company, I wouldn't have them grade my cards in the first place. This seems like overkill, just my two cents.

Exactly -- SGC currently provides me with all the peace of mind that I need regarding my collectible cardboard.

If you buy a lemon of a car that could be the difference between life and death. For that reason, a service like Carfax is a nice bonus. However, for sports cards, I will continue to ask for big scans and submit to SGC.

This whole enterprise strikes me as hilarious joke that would make a great SNL parody or a late-night infomerical that comes on after the Ronco guy with a new state-of-the-art blender. You can almost cue the dialogue now:

"...the downstream effect of the forensic registration is your potential implication or least making you think twice about engaging in fraud again."

Then the whole crowd of audience members chanting "OOOOOH, AAHHH" while clutching their GAI 7.5 90 Topps Frank Thomas RCs.

If you act now, we'll throw in 2 free fiber analyses.

I think the comparison to the Carfax is simply amusing. In one case, I have to get to work in something I hope is safe and viable and is part of every day life and I hope what I use to create a decision upon purchasing the item shows that I won't be taken. In this case, it's merely further assurance of a purchase of a baseball card and...to be honest with you, my head hurts from reading this and I really don't understand a need for it. Good luck however.

I'm not your target audience to begin with. I have fifty or so graded cards (and growing) and I think SGC does a wonderful job.

Bob

I don't know. It seems whoever started this thought it out pretty well, came up with a decent plan, spent quite a bit of money and actually pushed out a pretty decent looking website.

That said, I hate the jump on the bandwagon, but what next? You will basically pay to have your cards/memorabilia graded twice. I also have a hard time believing it's going to prevent fraud, as the fraudsters, along with most other people, are not going to be sending their cards in for a CarFax report to be written up on it.

What it might do is accelerate arguments about some higher grade, more important cards in the hobby, if this does ever catch on.

I can just see it now. Somebody starts a thread to tell us PSA/Beckett/SGC sucks, because under ultra-intense UV negative light magnified at 50 times, you can most obviously see a crease starting to form inside the top left corner of this T206 Ty Cobb PSA 7. This is obviously a PSA 6 and a multiple thousand dollar mistake. What can I do to be reimbursed by PSA/Beckett/SGC?

:D

It's very difficult to discern how this service will provide any layer of additional protection or security not already provided by the TPG companies. If I am reading the company's mission statement correctly, and it's possible I'm not as it pretty vague, the service provided is basically a microscopic video of the card and its properties inside the holder. Also recorded is the flip/grade/company etc. The company takes no position on the authenticity of the card or whether it appears the holder has been tampered with.

So what's to stop "Fraudster A" from cracking a PSA 8 holder, replacing it with an inferior copy of the same card, resealing it inside the PSA 8 holder and then sending it off to this service to be registered forensically? The company says it doesn't evaluate the cards for tampering - just what the fibers, etc. look like in a holder.

So this company then records/registers the properties of a fraudulent PSA 8 card with let's say an EX card inside. Everything appears to be on the up-and-up, according to the registry. Doesn't this compound the problem by adding a false layer of security?

Can someone explain how this helps anyone?

Excuse my negativity, but this is a horrible business model. As I understand the product, all it does is effectively verify that a slabbed card has not been tampered with. This is only an issue with high dollar cards where it may be worth it for some low life to break open a slab and replace the original card with a lower grade copy, or a forgery. However, this service could be more cheaply provided by the grading companies by offering to scan the cards(when they grade them), for some minimal fee, into a permanent data base. Since there is no extra shipping involved, and they are working on the card already, the grading companies can always beat this service on price. Even the llamas are laughing at this one.

It seems redundant to me, also what happens if someone drops a card and the case is cracked or gets all scratched up, plastic is not a fingerprint. The website does look dope but I just don't see anyone paying for this service but wish you the best of luck.

Generally when we have a thread about a product or service, or some hobby event that elicits opinions from the board, we find ourselves split for and against. I don't recall any discussion- not even one about the grading services- that has been so universally panned by everyone. If I were about to launch this business I would have some serious concerns at this moment.

There very well might be an audience for this, perhaps as cited earlier newbies who have a lot of money to spend but have heard too many horror stories about fraud. But I think nearly everyone on this board collects because they have fun doing so. For whatever benefits are offered here, this concept certainly sucks all the fun out of collecting.

I think the site was probably done in a couple hours. It's not a very professional looking site in my opinion.

I don't agree with that sentiment. I think the site looks clean and user friendly. I also think they have approached this idea with a good deal of professionalism. However, I wonder if they focus tested this concept in some way?

Thanks for your post, Barry... stated very eloquently. You summed everything up very nicely. When looking at this service in the context of the fun and / or the love of hobby, we can certainly understand why this would be the initial reaction of hobby purists and we respect that.

It will take a little time for the service to express its benefits to the hobby at large, vis-a-vis fraud deterrence and grading standard improvement. Our team understood this fact in formulating the plan. But it will happen in the natural course of its growth and acceptance.

We thank you for your time and we wish all of you the best of luck (and fun) in the hobby. If you have any questions, please feel free to send us a message or an e-mail any time.

I think this is overkill. Grading cards is already expensive enough, and I don't think there's enough value add here to justify the costs (unless the card is extremely valuable). There won't be enough of a market for it. I think they should either try to become a TPG or partner w/ a TPG like JSA, so that these extra services are offered when the cards are first submitted.

Not sure what the benefits of UV Blacklight capture are for modern cards (like they have in the ad). I thought that was just for vintage card to determine how old the paper stock is.

I imagine that the genesis of the business was something like this:

Marshall: This year we are going to grab the bull by the BALLS and stop all the negative publicity about card collecting in its track.
Greg Marmalard: What do you intend to do sir? the third party graders are already on probation.
Marshall: They are?
Greg: Yes, sir.
Marshall: Oh. Then as of this moment, they're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!
Greg: Double Secret Probation, Sir?
Marshall: There is a little-known codicil in the Collector's Trade Association of America constitution which gives the executive director unlimited power to preserve order in time of card collecting emergency. Find me a way to forensically check up on the third party graders. Put Niedermeyer on it. He's a sneaky little ****, just like you, right? [Greg nods] The time has come for someone to put their foot down. And that foot is me.

I don't see much of a need for this service either, but at least the guy had a business idea and he ran with it. Right now this country needs more small business people with initiative. If there is a need, he will do well. If not, then he can try something else. I guess he thinks that there is a need and is trying to fill it. It is not exactly the same, but I am reminded of this from The Onion.

http://tinyurl.com/2fm9ltb

Pricing also is way out of whack. For me to send bulk cards to PSA, which tells me whether it's authentic, assigns a grade and encapsulates the card, it costs $4.25 per card.

For me to get a glorified home video of a previously encapsulated card from someone with a camera from Best Buy, it costs a minimum of $9 per card.