[jchcollins]

See the PWCC "Conservation" thread that they started over on the Prewar forum. It's all the same - the ends justify the means, and the sad fact is that for most people - once a card resides in a numbered slab, the desire to question how it may have actually gotten there rapidly fades. Some of the other points in this thread are very well valid also - we may be better at detecting the work now this day in age where internet scans of before and after raw alteration and apparent fradulent slabbing jobs seep out of the woodwork - but don't think for a second that doesn't mean it wasn't also happening back in the 1990's. The fact that the vast majority of the hobby today simply glosses over the fact that the very first PSA slab job on the Gretzky Wagner was a total sham - is telling in terms of how as a whole people still just want to leave their heads stuck in the sand.

For me personally, all of the suspicion has reached such a fever pitch that I am really loathe to trust the TPG's anymore, even on mid-grade cards. So I just try not to think about it and buy cards at reasonable prices that are aesthetically pleasing to me. It's certainly why I don't want to spend multiples more on a "high-end" graded card when for my own purposes - a nice PSA 4-6 range example will do just fine. Yes, it's less likely that someone would take the time to alter stuff to mess with a PSA 4.5 of the type cards that I'm able to afford - a couple hundred bucks here and there a the most - but if they are able to do it for lesser grades of the marquee cards, and do it all the time seemingly now convincingly - what type of cards are next?