Quote:
Originally Posted by drcy
I firmly believe that, in the future and perhaps near future, all cards from now and retroactively will be able to be identified-- and the hobby and collectors will be able to deal with that.
The idea that altered cards will remain undetected (except for those who don't want them examined) is false.
Though, duly note that there have been instances where cards have been restored, represented and graded as such. With the means to identify all altered cards, this may be a wave of the future.
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I strongly agree with this. If/when this happens, whatever upheavals the hobby has endured to date IMO will pale in comparison to the upheaval lurking when it is shown that the great majority of high grade vintage cards have been altered.
IMO those of us who traveled the show circuit in the 60's, 70's and early '80's know this to be the case, as well as those who possess the simple common sense to know that cards over a century old distributed in tobacco and candy packages and handled could not possibly have survived in nrmt-mt or better condition in anything close to the numbers that exist today.
What I will be curious to see is the legal consequence to PSA when a lot of registry people discover that the value of their holdings have been significantly reduced. I would not be surprised to see significant civil litigation against PSA predicated on their business model being an absurdity - the notion that a visual examination lasting a very short time conducted in many instances by inexperienced graders can possibly detect sophisticated card doctoring. Assuming the representations PSA were making as to the capabilities of the services it was selling are not found to have been fraudulently made, we might see a test legal case of when stupidity has reached such a level that as a matter of law it is deemed to be impossible not to have been fraudulently made.