Proof that the market value for PSA and 'conserved' cards have dropped
 

Some say that the values for PSA cards with all those altered and 'conserved' cards mislabelled will stay the same.

But the obvious facts before our faces just dawned on me:

If you want market proof otherwise, all those cards revealed to be mislabelled on BO are being returned for refunds, which is proof that the card owners (and hobby) say they are worth less. I know of no one on any board or anywhere who claims those cards are worth the same and have don't gone down in market value.

Even PSA's official advice is that those cards should be returned for refund, because the cards are worth less than what collector paid. Joe O's PR line on one hand is "Just ignore it you whiners. The rest of you continue going on this wonderful ride with us." However, with the actual specific instances, PSA is saying "The values of these cards has gone down. "

Even on the PSA board, a common question is "If my cards are shown to be altered, what do I do to get my money back?"

So don't anyone give me this theory that all the mislabelled altered cards will remain the same in value and the hobby will 'absorb and forget' about it. Collectors, card owners, PWCC, the PSA board, all the chat boards and PSA itself have unanimously proclaimed in statement and pocketbook that these cards have already gone down in value, and that mislabelled altered and "conserved" cards are worth less than their previous market valuation and less than cards with the same but correct label grade.

With the clear and PSA's admitted inability to correctly label cards and identify altered cards and that a very large number of holdered cards are currently mislabelled, to try to calculate accurate values for PSA cards/grades you have to include the current market values of all these cards that have been returned for refunds. With the plethora of such mislabelled, if yet unknown as such, PSA cards on the market, these outed and devalued cards aren't outliers or to be dismissed from market value calculation but examples of the market value of PSA label grades.

Agree !!! Not taking anything away from the BO Board Detectives they have done a amazing job exposing this....
The issue to me is the tens of thousands of altered cards still residing in PSA Holders with number grades which haven't been exposed by blowout.
Never buy a holder buy a card :-)

Its way more than tens of thousands.

You are more likely to get a trimmed card by buying it graded by PSA vs buying it raw.

Assuming it's just total incompetence and not being complicit, how does Reza live with himself at this point? It must take a big dose of cognitive dissonance to get up and go to work.

Who said that outed cards have/will hold their value? I've read where some people believe that PSA cards, in general, will hold their value but nowhere did I read that outed cars would..... except for the T206 Wagner which is an anomaly in and of itself.

Nick and I were thinking the exact same thing Peter.....sad isn't it.

Considering they are representatives of the PSA's grading abilities and what currently resides in PSA holders, the outed cards and their values are representatives of the values of cards currently in PSA holders/labels.

If, for a completely arbitrary example, 50 percent of PSA cards are misgraded, you don't calculate the value of cards per label grade by removing the misgraded cards and calculating only the cards that are correctly graded, but calculating the value of all the cards. The margin of error in grading and authenticating isn't removed from financial calculations but an integral part of it.

As an admittedly very extreme example, you don't calculate the values of autographs with Coaches Corners COAs by calculating the values as if they were correctly authenticated or only by the ones they got correct. You calculate the values based on what they COAed and their worth. Thus, the misauthenticated PSA cards and the realization of the true market value are market examples of the values of cards in PSA holders and at that label grade.

If representative of the accuracy/reliability/true identities and grades of the cards currently in PSA holders (and I'll let others on this and other boards debate that point), a "$1000" PSA 9 card that turns out the be altered and is really worth $30 that is an example or data point where the PSA is worth $30. Many $1000 PSA9 cards out there and currently being bought and sold are actually worth $30, so you cannot say the average value of a PSA 9 is $1000. And as it's realized that more and more PSA9 cards out there are really worth $30, the known value of a PSA9 moves further and further down from the $1,000 and closer to the $30.

If PSA can get accurate at grading and alteration detection, then this will change. And maybe they will. But if they can't or don't or won't, the mistakes and BO outed cards are to be calculated into the market values of cards that are currently in PSA holders at a certain labeled grade.

In fact, it's right now a nonsensical exercise on its face to try to calculate the condition value of cards in PSA holders because no one knows what are the condition grades of the cards. One certainly can't go by the number on the labels. One might as well try to calculate the condition values of cards in black boxes. However, it is a logically objective, financial and mathematical fact that the average value of the cards themselves are worth less than the values of the grades on the labels. That we know with certainty.

Great points, David...

But considering how difficult it is to “out” these cards, and the amount of time/research involved... we won’t know the true scope (or the real effect on pricing) for a very long time. God only knows how many more altered cards are yet to be uncovered, and how many are currently mired in collections.

If a given collector has no intention of selling, it could be decades before the altered card hits the market and becomes visible again. Perhaps by then, the PSA Slab will be rendered meaningless (or even seen as a detriment).

Correct.

The problem for the label investor is that the card comes with it :D

Also, keep in mind it's not just PSA ? Others {GRADING companies } have these over graded cards out there in the market , also ! PSA , might be taking the the hit for now, but they are NOT alone ? Thanks to all , that have keep up on this problem .:eek:

You are losing me here. I think the market "trusts" PSA to assign a reasonable grade to each card presented to it. (The kind of corruption that is routinely alleged by posters is very hard to sustain in a public company). It is true that we don't know whether the card was doctored and if so how; but, we are reasonably confident that the card now presents at the cited grade level. Your overall point is a good one -- the Blowout saga has surely been a negative for the value of high-grade cards.

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If a card is altered, any number grade, except debatably 1, is incorrect, and the card is less valuable than an unaltered card in that number grade.

Humorously, PSA's own website states "Cards that have been trimmed have very little value." (link if you want to read for yourself, or copy for posterity) However, as was suggested in other thread, that line may be quietly removed at some point in the near future.

I would expect that the value of most high dollar slabbed cards, altered or not, would take a hit for this. Every buyer now has to factor in the risk that every card at that end they buy might turn out to be altered. I would be curious after a couple of years of auction data post scandal becomes available to see how much that “We don’t trust PSA like we used to” discount is going to be.

Agree. I have not seen anyone say the outed cards would retain their same value.


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Well, I've notified about 30 owners of altered cards from the PSA set registry and only about 5 have responded saying they're going to have them returned. So those people, if they leave the cards in their set, are saying they had no problem paying PSA 8-10 prices for an Altered card.

Ok, so how does this play out? What happens to the cards that PSA/PWCC buys back? Are they 'destroyed' as the (fake) autographed items were in Operations Bullpen? Given to Little Leaguers for practice? Are they removed from the holders and returned to the hobby as raw? or returned in a new holder with an 'A/A' designation - 'Altered/Authentic'?

If they are removed from the hobby (destroyed), then I assume it will have a significant impact on the supply of high grade examples of many cards. And we know what a reduced supply would do for the value of the remaining cards.

If they are returned in new holder with some type of 'altered' designation, it will have the same effect on the supply of remaining 'good' high grade examples, but bring in a new class of cards that we have little/no experience with as for valuation. Cards that look great on first examination, but upon a closer look, have been altered. And I am 100% positive that if that happens, a non-trivial number of those cards will be freed from their 'tomb' and re-enter the hobby as raw cards. Here we go again.

The only way I see out of this is for the PSA/PWCC to somehow 'mark' the cards themselves as 'altered' so that the designation is permanent. Sort of like when Topps bought up a bunch of older cards and impaled them with a foil logo for redistribution. Hey, they've already been altered once, what is one more alteration?

Or does this whole fiasco sour the registry guys who are the underpinning of the exponential price structure of high grade cards and it ends up flattening that curve?

Lots of questions here still to be answered before we will know how this plays out.

You’re eloquently stating the obvious.

I am going to be amazed if PSA doesn't already know how it is going to prevent previously-graded cards from ever being regraded without disclosure. Their business model cannot survive repeated outings ala Blowout IMO. They may continue to struggle to discern all doctoring, but once they grade a card, they must retain the ability to identify it if it comes in raw again.

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Interesting John (crazy to me). The question I'd have is: Are they just sitting by watching this play out, hoping, or thinking it will fade away and value will not suffer or do they simply not feel the need to make a decision immediately? My guess is they would be keeping a sharp eye on how this plays out as they can return the cards at any time (I assume) if they see market values moving in the wrong direction. It would be interesting to see how they feel if this moves forward in a meaningful way (litigation or other issues for PSA and others).

If they truly have zero intention of returning cards, I guess they care about registry rank more than the card? Appearance over substance?

George, I may be missing the point of your post, but I'd counter that while we can be reasonably confident that the card "presents" at the cited grade, it presents due to alteration and deception and thus is no where near the assigned grade. With or without corruption the market trust erodes.

i'd really like to know what's happening to the altered cards pwcc/psa is buying back as well.

THIS SHOULDNT BE A BIG SECRET...especially if they want we consumers to have any confidence that anything positive is happening.

A high grade altered card bonfire seems unlikely. Perhaps a moderate sentence of incarceration in the vault before hitting the auction block again will occur.

If the market gradually heads south in terms of return, the cards may get a reduced sentence for good behavior.;)

That was my point. Some collectors have said that many cards in holders are altered in general (many currently unkown) will not change pricing in general, the hobby will be the same and the hobby will just "grow" to accept that many cards are altered and price the same based on labels. However, for each card in a holder that has been shown to altered, all parties involved (including collectors on chatboards) have agreed that the cards are worth less, which goes against the first argument. It strongly suggests that the hobby will not grow to "just accept as if nothing has changed" altered cards in holders.

I thought someone said that they're being passed on to the FBI. If that's the case, it would be up to the FBI what to do with the cards. It was law enforcement that destroyed the autographs and stamped the early Pete Rose counterfeits.

if this is the case I'd bet some end up going home with the agents!!!

Never buy the card PERIOD

If the cards are being sent to the FBI, then there is very little likleyhood they will enter the hobby again, or if they do, they will be permanently marked somehow. The FBI does not care about the cards except the fact that they were used to commit fraud.

And that will reduce supply and leave holes in registry sets.

Naturally. Everyone knows chicks dig the set registry leaders.

Yes Chuck !!

IMO...Post War is for the most part is at Massive Bubble Levels

It's all fun and games...baseball cards LOLOL
 

Until someone gets hurt.:D:D:D Too bad, so sad. I know, it's only ONE card. What's 15K between collectors for a 64'. There you go, now it's centered!

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showpo...postcount=1231

Let's all collect what we like and support the fraud!!!!I like Koufax! Come on guys lets go buy buy buy and submit to PSA and watch it POP!!!!!!

Chuck what you just shown is a Perfect Example of How Awful PSA is at deterring wether a Card is trimmed or Not.

Million dollar question to me....Are they, PSA this awful at their Job or is there possibly something bad is going on behind closed doors ?

If PSA deletes the serial number/card from the database, that makes the decision for them.

Plus, there's a question of if these cards should be turned over the FBI, and, if that's the case, why would a sane person choose to withhold it from the FBI and advertise to the world on a webpage that they own it. A question is, if when a card is outed does it then become evidence in this FBI case. In some sense, it's an "illegal good." I don't know how you can just sell the card in the holder, and certainly you can't do it without overtly stating that it is an altered cards related to a current FBI fraud case.

What a selling point: "You may be purchasing what may be evidence in an ongoing FBI case and may already be on their watchlist. Many of the cards have been and will be turned over to or otherwise confiscated by FBI for potential criminal court proceedings and sentencing. Buy this card and you might get a subpoena from the FBI and the serial number removed from the PSA database."

It would seem that a sane person would want to return these cards refund and get them out of one's registry collection asap. And what sane person is going to buy it? For a variety of reasons, including you don't know when PWCC is going to run out of money for refunds. And in addition to the fact that the card, in earlier form one year earlier, sold for 100X less than the asking price and most hobbyists, and PSA's own website guidelines, would say the value has now been degraded from that.

Can’t agree with you more David. It would be fascinating to sit in a room with the collectors John mentioned and listen to their logic for not returning these cards.

On second thought probably more frustrating than anything else

Part of this lunacy resides with the collector who paid $15K for a relatively common card.... just because it has sharp corners. I hate to say it, but it's hard to feel sorry for some of these free-spending fools. Someone actually paid exactly 106 times the card's original worth... for a worthless altered card!

That said... this particular Koufax card is so obviously trimmed, that it should be the "poster child" for PSA's ineptitude. Seriously, PSA couldn't even measure it?

Even more disturbing is the fact that 80 - 90% of these documented "astounding value gains" apply to preferred customer PWCC. I would really love to know the true relationship PWCC had with PSA. Hopefully the FBI can figure it out.

And this specific cards was sold by them in 2015 !! WOW
I hope Blowout Detective Agents Continue their Digging/Discovering and Exposing.

Great Job

John...

This is very disturbing. Can you please clarify your statement?

Of the 30 Registry people you contacted, did only 5 respond back, period? Or did 5 people respond back that they were returning the altered cards, and 25 responded back that they did not care about the alterations?

There is a big difference. If the other 25 people responded back that they were keeping the cards, that's a big problem for the hobby. Those tainted cards will remain in circulation, and God only knows where they'll end up 20 years from now.

But if it was just silence (or a non-response) from the other 25, perhaps they are still mulling it over and deciding what to do. Some may eventually seek recourse after stewing for a while. Eager to hear what the specific responses were, and what percentage was silent vs. dead set on keeping their altered cards.

I find it hard to believe that they are that awful at their job. You don't grow a company as large as PSA with a bunch of bumbling idiots working for you.

PSA’s take....these are just opinions if you don’t like it oh well we are number #1 we know you suckers need us and will keep coming back.

So sad......

How do you know that all of the outed cards are being returned for a refund? IMO, most of them are probably not.

Now it looks like a lot of posters are failing to see what Mr. Cycleback is arguing here. He is stating that we can't exclude altered cards in PSA holders when trying to determine the value of PSA graded cards. He uses a PSA 9 as an example below:

I think this is a very interesting way of looking at it. You would have to come up with a mathematical formula and apply it to each PSA graded card in order to come up with a true value. However, creating an accurate formula is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Let's look at the 1957 Topps Frank Robinson rookie in PSA 8 grade, for example. Some of these have obviously been altered. Now the question is this: how many? Half of them? Less than half? Twenty percent? My point is, we would first need to come up with a number which we can use in our formula in trying to determine the true value of the Robinson PSA 8 card and coming up with that number is just not possible.

Another thing that would make it difficult to create a formula is that the number of restored cards varies depending on the grade. IMO, the higher the grade, the more likely the card has been altered. Now I am not saying that you can't find a PSA 3 Frank Robinson rookie that has been altered. Sure, there are some out there, but I believe the percentage is less than a PSA 8. Again, how do we come up with a number here?

The others were radio silence; some may have passed away or don't have current emails linked to their PSA accounts. But I'm not sure who would respond with "Thanks for your information about altered cards in my sets. I think I'll just let them be."

I am a huge proponent of PSA removing all the known altered cert numbers so people are forced into returning them, but obviously, PSA doesn't think this is in their best interests at this time.

Thanks for clarifying, John...

That's a bit of a relief, I suppose. Cannot imagine that all 25 of those people would actually be content with the situation.

Yes. If PSA removed the serial numbers, that would be an excellent event.

The other big event would be if eBay banned PWCC.

Though it's also an excellent event if Registry people are returning those cards. That's a statement. The Registry is sacred cow of PSAdom.

Drcy (and you, I think) is addressing the case where a card is determined to be doctored in an unacceptable way. I'm trying to address the other graded cards that haven't been determined to be "altered", and probably never will. Taking doctoring in it's broadest sense to mean helping the card present as well as possible, we have to assume every graded card was doctored (at least soaked and cleaned). What we don't know is whether the doctoring is inside or outside the vaguely defined boundaries that affect it's legitimacy, and ultimately it's value. That uncertainty will weigh on values, but won't make the cards (near) worthless. The key driver of prices is (perceived) scarcity.

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In these discussions, I often use the words worth less, but not worthless.

And, yes, there are uncertainties, unknowns, gray areas and matters of opinion and different viewpoints in this topic, including when trying to devise a market valuation system (which I am not doing-- in the current environment I don't think it can be done).

Here and elsewhere in my life, I often point out that things, systems and calculations are inaccurate, and leave it at that.

I've long railed against the PSA Registry because, for many reasons, it presents a false certainty, a false representation of reality and the statistical calculation methodology is incorrect. It's long offended my sense of logic and common sense . . . As an online game or fun showcase of collections webpage, that is fine. However, so much of the hobby and pricing and grading methods (and ethics) are influenced by the registry.

With the current scandal, people are realizing that the Registry numbers and calculation totals can't be more accurate and precise than the margin of error in grading and especially alteration detection. No doubt, to some people and due to the prevalence of as yet unknown number of mislabelled altered cards, the Registry numbers mean nothing now. All they know is that the numbers can't be correct. In this very thread, someone pointed out cards in the Registry with wrong numbers (number graded cards that have been shown to be altered).

Great angle to proceed with, David. I like the way you are thinking.

I'd like to propose an alternative. First, let me say I have no skin in the registry, nor do I have six figures to buy the best of the best. Just an alternate theory:

What if, by exposing the altered cards, it actually increases the value of the remaining cards?

Now, this theory assumes the remaining graded cards are indeed unaltered and legitimate.

Let's assume there are 15 PSA 9's of a certain card, and using your values they are "worth" $1000. Now 7 of them are deemed altered, and they are removed. They are now "worth" $30, but further, by definition they are not PSA 9's. Therefore the value of a PSA 9 remains the same, and all altered cards continue to be worth $30.

Finally, there are now only 8 PSA 9's of this particular card. Does that now mean the PSA 9's are actually worth more, because there is less supply of them?

This for instance -

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1955-Topps-...gAAOSwlOVdgowK

I would estimate value right around $33K - Seems to be no lack of higher than that "investors"

My first immediate thought.....was this card residing in a 6 holder 2 years ago ?

I hate to be this way but that’s my first impression of all PSA high grade cards

It depends on whether or not the entire thing falls apart, because registry contestants no longer believe in high grade slabs OR give up on the collecting concept.

If people continually get scammed as they are, do they pull out of their collections and start selling off in quantity? Or do they continue to fill the gaps in their sets with the only remaining high grade cards on the market? It's kind of like this:
https://media.cheggcdn.com/media%2F3...FphpsW8wBO.png

Take the 1948 Leaf (baseball, football, boxing) sets, which have been found to be completely inaccurate. If one person who had 10 altered high value cards out of the complete set of 100, are they going to feel enough animosity to PSA to sell their 90 "good" cards or are they going to buy back the 10 cards they now need? How do they (or the market) trust their own "good" cards? What if it's 15 altered or 20 altered out of 100? Each collector will have their own breaking point.

I have seen a bunch of collectors post something to the effect of: "Man, I hope these cards all lose their value because I'll be right there with my cash to buy them on the downswing!" But is that just talk? Are they willing to buy into a recession downswing?

Me too!!! And further when this high grade rookie “boom” began a few years ago...in no world that i live in is a card from the 50’s-60’s “worth” this kind of cabbage!!!

In Two.....Words Market Manipulation or Bull to The S Pick either two words

Granted 55 Topps of all the Big Cards the Clemente, in my personal experience, is the most difficult one to find nice, it’s harder then the others....

Still in my mind a Sold Centered Clemente 55 Topps 8 should be in the $20k range tops ......not $30,000 plus that’s Kabookie Theater....