Quote:
Originally Posted by jhs5120
Fair, if the circumstances are perfect I would spend the money as well. However, 99.9% of my hobby purchases are done without handling the item beforehand.
I guess a better question: do you believe more fraudulent Mantles and Wagners are sold in PSA slabs, or out of them? Because is there is significantly more fraud when PSA isn't involved in a transaction, what leads people to believe that the absence of third party graders would lead to a less fraudulent hobby environment?
|
A fair question.
Obviously more fake Mantles and Wagners are sold out of slabs. But most of them are so bad I can't understand why anyone buys them. Unless you're a very lazy scammer looking to pass one off at a flea market why buy this
http://www.ebay.com/itm/1909-T206-Ho...p2047675.l2557
when you could buy this
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-25-RE...gAAOSwajVUP2lR
The second question is a tougher one, with no clear answer as I see it. Third party grading and the competitiveness of the registry has certainly raised prices for cards in higher grades. And those higher prices eventually raise prices for those of us that have to settle for whatever grade we can afford. If an 8 is too much, someone might go a bit over the average for a 7.
That's both good and bad. When I was hanging out at a shop 1977-83 ish, the values weren't anywhere near as high. And I saw a number of decent but not great collections walk away from the dealer because there wasn't enough value to compete with sentimental value. Say Grandpa had 100 T206s almost all commons, almost all VG. 1977 commons were 1.50 each and most HOFers $10 So the whole lot might bring an offer of $50-75. That's not usually enough to convince someone to sell gramps cards. Today, even if they're all commons say $40 each, so the offer might be 2-3000, maybe higher depending on how little margin a dealer wants to work with. And that's probably enough to convince someone to sell.
Without grading, I doubt the prices would be where they are. Lets say they'd be about half, less for the really nice cards, the 8-10s.
And without the money there won't be as much fraud.
The Dover reprints were around in 78, and either 78 or 79 was the only time I saw them being offered at a show as anything but reprints. Between 78 and 82 other than that small batch I saw less than 10 fake cards. Probably less than 5, as only a few come to mind. One was a fantasy piece made from a cropped photo of an old judge added to old cardstock with some newspaper ads and waxed. There was a 51 Mantle that was spectacular, but had been shopped around to a few dealers by mail that everyone believed to be fake but couldn't say why. When they showed it to me I looked at it for a long time before saying "That's a really good fake but I don't know why" The third is a card I bought at the first show I went to. An American Caramel Joe Wood series of 120. Looking at it now, it's obvious it's fake. What's always amazed me is the effort it took at the time. Printing a card without digital imaging and printers was just like printing anything else, and to do all that work for $2 seemed pretty crazy.
Of course there were trimmed cards, and especially on 71 Topps, recolored cards. But very few outright fakes.
Once the Rose rookie became expensive that all changed. I still wish I'd bought the fake one dealer had, one from the supply the faker had or from a dealer who'd bought a stack of them. (At the time, not as crazy as it sounds, you could order lots of 100 of nearly any card from Fritsh . I got a bit of trade value for unpacking an order of Yaz cards and putting them away 100 of each from 1970-about 76) Anyway, it was framed along with a copy of a court letter allowing its sale as long as it was stamped "counterfeit"
Within a few years there were enough fakes they filled a book.
Steve B