PWCC Statement on Recent Card Trimming Concerns

[Snapolit1]

I had a high end card last year that I wanted to cross over to PSA. It was a SGC 30. PSA put it in a holder and marked it PSA 4.5.

Have I committed mail fraud if I don't disclose to to my buyer that the other leading card grading company offered me their professional opinion that the card is of a significantly lower quality than PSA?

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I had a high end card last year that I wanted to cross over to PSA. It was a SGC 30. PSA put it in a holder and marked it PSA 4.5.

Have I committed mail fraud if I don't disclose to to my buyer that the other leading card grading company offered me their professional opinion that the card is of a significantly lower quality than PSA?

A. There is no mention of intentional alteration in your scenario

B. Thus, it is not an "apples to apples" comparison. All it accomplishes is to further demonstrate PSA's ineptitude.

[Griffins]

Originally Posted by perezfan

A. There is no mention of intentional alteration in your scenario

B. Thus, it is not an "apples to apples" comparison. All it accomplishes is to further demonstrate PSA's ineptitude.

Or it could show PSA has a different basis for grading. Centering the 2 companies are very different, and I had a bunch of T200's that I crossed and the 2 companies obviously had very different criteria.

To a certain extent I don't expect one companies 6 to be anothers. I do expect one companies 6 to be a 6 every time they grade a similar card.

[Steve D]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I had a high end card last year that I wanted to cross over to PSA. It was a SGC 30. PSA put it in a holder and marked it PSA 4.5.

Have I committed mail fraud if I don't disclose to to my buyer that the other leading card grading company offered me their professional opinion that the card is of a significantly lower quality than PSA?

Originally Posted by perezfan

A. There is no mention of intentional alteration in your scenario

B. Thus, it is not an "apples to apples" comparison. All it accomplishes is to further demonstrate PSA's ineptitude.

C. The SGC grader was having a bad day, was in a bad mood, and/or, thought he saw something that wasn't there, and graded the card lower than it deserved.

Steve

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by Steve D

C. The SGC grader was having a bad day, was in a bad mood, and/or, thought he saw something that wasn't there, and graded the card lower than it deserved.

Steve

Well if that’s even plausible, then grading is even more senseless than originally thought.

[Steve D]

Originally Posted by perezfan

Well if that’s even plausible, then grading is even more senseless than originally thought.

It is more than plausible.

Several years ago, I bought a raw 1910-era HOFer tobacco card from a very well known and respected member of these boards, and auction house owner. The seller is extremely knowledgeable about tobacco cards. I sent it in to PSA. They said it was "trimmed", and returned it to me unslabbed.

I contacted the seller, and he assured me the card was completely original and un-tampered with. I believed him. I checked the card myself, and found absolutely no signs of tampering.

A couple years later, I resubmitted the card to PSA, and they graded it a "4". I still have it.

Both Net54 and the CU message boards are full of posts from people who have submitted cards, only for them to come back to them either ungraded, or with low grades. The common term used is that the cards were looked at by the G.O.D., or "Grader of Death".

That is just considering cards that were graded multiple times by the same company. There are even more instances regarding cards originally graded by one company, and then sent to one of the other TPGs, where they received differing grades. That can simply be caused by differing standards between the two TPGs, but could also be related to an overly harsh first-look.

Steve

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I had a high end card last year that I wanted to cross over to PSA. It was a SGC 30. PSA put it in a holder and marked it PSA 4.5.

Have I committed mail fraud if I don't disclose to to my buyer that the other leading card grading company offered me their professional opinion that the card is of a significantly lower quality than PSA?

We've discussed before whether there is an obligation to disclose grading history. I wouldn't know how to find it. I think generally not unless you are asked and lie, if no alteration involved in the bump, but as I recall there were some good points made on the other side.

[Bram99]

The focus of the scandal for many on this board and the BO board seems to be the card doctors (Moser in particular) and the auction houses (PWCC in particular) that possibly knowingly sold doctored cards.

Of course this is bad behavior and possibly illegal, definitely immoral, and they and their businesses will likely suffer in undetermined ways because of their actions.

But not enough of the focus is on PSA or the third-party graders in general.

We didn't really learn anything new about the tendency of people like the card doctors and their sales fronts in this scandal. Those things have been present in one way or another for years and in fact are part of the reason for the TPG's in the first place - to give the buyer/collector/investor comfort that the card is real, unaltered, and it fits closely to the objective traits of the subjective grade that they provide.

I think a new learning would be (or at least a more solid understanding of how pervasive the condition) how inept or carelessly or willfully negligent the TPG's really are at assigning a grade and detecting alterations including trimming, recoloring, adding back corners, removing stains, removing creases, etc.

So while the particular doctors in this case may be stopped for now, and while one auction house may take a hit, the big impact of the scandals uncovered over the past few months is that our collective faith in third party graders who grade using current methods has been probably irreparably damaged.

The damage to our faith in their expertise will likely cost many who own graded cards some measure of market value of those cards.

The open question is what will come to rectify the problem of TPG's' ineptitude? Because the need is still there.

Because there is a need for uniform opinions of condition rather than the old days of "well high book value X and this card looks pretty good", and because there are many more card doctors hiding in the shadows, the need for a good third-party opinion remains. The question is - who and what will come in to fill that need now that the current TPG's have proved extremely fallable? That should be the trajectory this discussion takes while the market and legal authorities deal with those who have been exposed.

[Peter_Spaeth]

People keep saying there is no focus on PSA but there has been plenty of discussion of PSA. There is more on PWCC for now because of the nature of what's been uncovered, and all the statements they have made, and their direct relationship to certain people. But I don't see anyone avoiding PSA as a topic. Quite to the contrary. Read all the threads, it's very much there.

[benjulmag]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I had a high end card last year that I wanted to cross over to PSA. It was a SGC 30. PSA put it in a holder and marked it PSA 4.5.

Have I committed mail fraud if I don't disclose to to my buyer that the other leading card grading company offered me their professional opinion that the card is of a significantly lower quality than PSA?

Assuming you were the person who submitted the card for the crossover, and then subsequently sold it, no. If though you sold/loaned the card to someone else and it was that person who had it crossed over, upon your subsequent sale of the card you probably would have a duty to make the disclosure if (1) the person who crossed it over was a known card doctor or (2) the card looked different to you after it was crossed over.