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Posted By: Gilbert Maines

Card alteration is not all individual sellers with spoons, card baths and pressing devices. Some of this is done as a business. With salaried professional craftsmen, invoices and letterheads. Check out some of the photographic and other paper restorations being conducted daily by organizations such as the Chicago Conservation Center.

Not at all a back alley operation next door to the fake passports, driver licences, etc. business.

It is not my intent to take down the grading companies here. But if the challenge is currently greater than it was in the past, then there are increased costs associated with producing a product of the caliber which collectors want to buy. Certainly the end user must absorb the costs associated with a continually expanding state-of-the-art in fraud production.

The grading companies simply need to gear up to meet the challenge, once given assurance that the collector will cover the tab. But will the collector do that? Or do we want a continuance of fantasy grading?

This just keeps going on. Do we currently have fantasy grading? For how long have the grades shown in holdered cards been questionable?

I got to stop here. This can not be our status, correct?