Are you saying the cards in those finds were not legit?

Bullshit…. Absolute bullshit. If the card was trimmed within accepted specifications the trimmer did zip wrong. He isn’t obligated to disclose anything to anyone.

Just because most card collectors are purists doesn’t mean trimmers should be purists. Fact is high end collectors aren’t purists because they damn well know it’s going on and continue to foolishly pay absurd prices for the trimmed cards.

That said…. I am a purist and dislike trimmed cards…..but when I buy a card if it measures correctly I’m good as long as something isn’t obvious.

Sure about that?

35 years ago I ran into a huge dealer in central Ohio that had an Xacto table in his back room. He would go through boxes of oversized vintage cards and “clean” them up for sale. I about fell over when I saw his operation. Never bought another thing from him again…. He was trimming every single card that came through oversized.

He also ripped up every undersized card and threw it in the trash regardless of value.

It was a disgusting sight.

His stuff, his choice.

My choice was never buy or sell there ever again.

What you just described is a crime. In the scenario, the alterer is required to disclose he altered them.

I am sure it has been happening for years, and I am equally sure that most people at least of a certain generation -- apparently like yourself -- disapprove of it and would consider the cards altered even if properly sized.

Fraud 101 -- intentional nondisclosure/concealment of a material fact, in order to induce a sale at a higher price.

I have no idea whether they were legit or not, they have no appeal to me and just look odd in gem mint condition. The appeal of a pre-war card to me is the journey they have been on for over a century, give me a card that shows signs of use and no doctoring any day of the week.

I get that, but to me if a century old item has somehow managed to survive in untouched condition, that's miraculous and wholly apart from monetary considerations I would be thrilled to own it.

Like painting a house prior to listing for sale? Or having a badly faded car run through a detailer to fix the paint? Or having a Rolex movement serviced before sale? Resetting headspace in a firearm? Having a CD/DVD/BR resurfaced? Ironing bank notes with starch? Cleaning coins?

Every hobby has it’s maneuverers.

It comes down to caveat emptor…..

I do understand the appeal, it's just not for me. To me having a card that is in good condition after being in the general population for over a century has more appeal. I also like my Cracker Jacks with some caramel stains.

I don’t know what you’re arguing, but I do know very well from decades of practicing law what fraud is.

Then why waste time here talking…? There are a few hundred pages of evidence over on blowout of trimmed cards in holders. Some of those buyers can certainly use your legal expertise.

My “argument” is that a card trimmed to proper size isn’t fraud. It’s just a shitty thing to do.

My understanding is that the FBI investigation was not just for trimmed cards, but trimmed cards that somehow were slabbed and given something other than the Scarlet 'A'. If the trimmers were working in cahoots with the TPAs to have them turn the other way on the alterations, then that is another story and something that should be investigated and prosecuted.

Money, sonny. Lawyers don't work for free. Find me someone where I am licensed (CA) who wants to ante up my retainer and pay my fees and I will happily sue any miscreant. PWCC was very well advised. By repaying the complaining parties they headed off the potential charges. Many prosecutors will defer or pass on charges when the alleged miscreant makes restitution. It is a better outcome for the victims. I've been involved with a few cases like that on the civil end of it.


That's true, 100%. Fraud comes into play when that person knowingly sells that trimmed card without disclosing it.

Ahh, I get it. You're just taking jhe piss with us, right?

That describes many many many many dealers from back then to today. I live in a small rural area that has had very few dealers. I have personally seen or heard first hand stories about every single one of them "fixing" cards.

It just depends on if they are "friends" with the card fixer or not if you get offended. Seen it on here many times.

What is hilariously (and sadly) ironic is that PSA's business model and rapid growth was tied to the idea of eliminating fraud in the hobby by selling themselves as experts who would grade cards and detect alterations. (Beckett and SGC as well)

Now it seems that grading companies are the very source of legitimizing and encouraging fraud. A graded card is deemed pure. We're not supposed to question the card's authenticity, and, even if we do, we can't examine the card anymore because it's entombed in plastic.

Once a card is in that plastic case it becomes hard currency. If you can alter a card and get away with it, the reward vastly outweighs the risk - because there is no risk. So PSA has become nothing more than a money laundering outfit. You commit fraud, pay them a fee, and they wash it clean. Pretty damn clever.

I'm not a doctor (of cards), or a lawyer, but my question is who is the person that broke the law? If you have a card in your personal collection that you purchased in a TPG holder and you sell it, but it is later discovered that the card was trimmed, did you commit a crime by simply selling an unknowingly altered card? If it's the unknowing owner of the card that sold it, I fear most collectors that own purchased high graded TPG cards and ever sell them could be criminally prosecuted for committing a crime they didn't even realize was happening. If it was the trimmer who originally trimmed the card, how do you prove who that was, unless they were dumb enough to video themselves trimming the card, I don't see how it could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that any certain person trimmed a certain card.

I don't foresee anyone ever actually getting prosecuted for these crimes, because it appears that the person who could be convicted in most cases is in reality an innocent person, whereas the true guilty party that has committed a crime, is committing a crime that is virtually impossible to prove. If you extend the guilt to all people that were in the chain of ownership of the card, then you are going to have an awful long list of people and not very many left in the hobby that couldn't be named at some point in a court case.

In my opinion the true crime that was committed was done by the TPG company that gave the card a numerical grade. These companies were providing a service for a fee to detect these altered cards and have truly failed the entire hobby with the service they have provided. I look at one card in particular that I am personally experienced with, the 1968 O-Pee-Chee Billy Williams card. These were all factory mis-cut cards from the factory, not a couple sheets of them, but every single one of them due to their positioning on the sheet and the sheet cutting technology that was used at the time. PSA has however given a numerical graded to a handful of these cards over the years. I have personally seen and looked at a few of these PSA graded cards, and every last one of them is factory mis-cut short, along with every one of the hundreds of raw one's that I have looked at over the last decade. This is a case of PSA failing to do the job they were paid to do.

I'm not sure that the trimming of cards is more rampant in the hobby today than it ever was, the difference today from 1980 is today we have trusted? companies making huge profits off of collectors for doing a sub-par job of detecting these altered cards.

Agree with your first two points Spot on Point Sir Up. I do not in any way shape or form see that any crime was committed by the grading companies, zero, they’re just giving an Opinion.

All those things should also be disclosed. A car with original paint is worth more. Rolex with fully original parts worth more. New physical media in untouched unopened condition is always worth considerably more your examples all suck. I love the jack asses above arguing with Adam and Peter about the law. These two are both lawyers and know the law. Arguing with them about it is hysterical.

Good summation. My only question is whether David Hall envisioned this from day one, or it just evolved that way because it became obvious the business could not succeed without compromising with the card doctors, and ensuring a large supply of artificially high graded cards.

When someone buys the best graded cards they can find... they need to realize that the TPGers are fallible and foolable, and that the senseless (my opinion) high value those graded cards demand creates an environment that feeds, fuels and encourages the slicing, trimming, waxing out there.

What I watched seems obviously wrong.

And when I soak an old T card I feel no remorse, a huge majority of those have been soaked before I was born.

And a corollary to that, there aren't enough natural cards to fill that demand for higher and higher grades, and the only way to fill it is for the TPGs to make certain compromises and let some altered cards through.

Sorry, but I fail to see how this could rise to a crime.

A person has a card, alters the card, and then sells the card (take grading out of it). How is this a crime? Unethical, yes, but a crime?

And please don't bring up Maestro. He was not convicted of altering a card (that is a myth).

While I hate this subject as much as other collectors, throwing around the word crime for something that it is not is frustrating.

How many times do I have to explain this going all the way back to 2019? I give up. Think whatever you want, ignorance is bliss as they say. And yes, while not the main focus of the case, if you actually read the Mastro indictment (to which he pled guilty) part of it is selling the Wagner without disclosure that it was altered. Not myth, fact.

So I am reading the indictment:

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/ch...r-collectibles

So I am seeing that part, but what I am not seeing is him being convicted of that.

"In a plea agreement, Mastro admitted to driving up prices through shill bidding between 2002 and 2009. He and his associates would bid up auctions to drive prices higher."

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndil/pr...l-bidding-scam

Read the discussion of the Wagner.

Here, I'll make it easy for you.

The T206-series Wagner card is considered one of the world’s most expensive trading cards. Mastro admitted in the plea agreement that he cut the card’s side borders, and then concealed this information when he sold the card in 1987. Mastro again failed to disclose his alteration even after participating in subsequent auctions of the card in 1991 and 2000. The sale in 2000 produced a purchase price of more than $1 million, according to the plea agreement. Mastro also failed to disclose that he cut the Wagner card again in 1992, even though he was aware that the card had been submitted to become the first baseball card assigned a grade based on the condition of the card.

He admitted to that, no doubt. But was he charged with that as a crime? I am not seeing that. Not trying to be difficult, I don't see it.

"The former owner and CEO of a sports memorabilia auction house was sentenced Thursday to 20 months in federal prison for using phony bids to fraudulently inflate the price of his company’s listings at auction."

Are you reading some press account? The plea agreement sets forth what he was charged with and pled guilty to. It's right there. He was charged with it (see also indictment) and pled guilty to it. Do you think he admitted it just for the hell of it?

It may have been part of the plea deal to admit that piece, I don't know.

The charge is mail fraud, which he plead to. I believe that ties to the shill bidding, not the card altering.

You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about at this point, honestly. None. You should stop. The mail fraud charges include the Wagner, I assure you. They're in the indictment and they're in the plea agreement. You might be on more solid footing arguing the earth is flat.

No doubt… a lawyer is infallible.:D

Regardless, I can be convinced that trimming is truly illegal.

Possible to point me in the direction of a trimmer be convicted specifically of card trimming?

Not looking for convoluted TPG, shilling scams.

An actual straightforward case of a guy trimmed a card, didn’t disclose, then sold it for profit….?

And you imagine that trimmed card isn't being sent in for a grade?

That's cute.

I think you've touched on why this is such a difficult and nuanced topic with your last sentence, and why many would argue that it isn't as cut and dry as some would like or believe it to be. It may be true that a card's edges are either factory cut or they aren't, but that fact isn't helpful. In the real world, this is generally both unknown and unknowable. It cannot be assumed that a card's edges are factory cut.

This also touches on why PSA does not, and surely cannot, if they wish to remain in business, honor a grade guarantee for cards that do not bare actual observable evidence of trimming regardless of whether or not someone on Blowout believes they've found before and after scans of the card in question.

In the real world, we have to deal with observable evidence and make determinations about the likelihood of a card's edges being factory cut or not. Ultimately, this is what determines a card's market value; whether or not it bares evidence of trimming, not whether or not it has in fact been trimmed. This is true in both directions. You can open a brand new pack of cards and receive one with a botched edge from factory that the TPGs will not grade because the card bares evidence of having been "trimmed" despite the fact that it came that way from the factory. It is not unfair or disingenuous to point out that all cards have been trimmed by a blade.

Unfortunately, what determines a card's actual market value is not whether or not it has a factory edge, but rather whether or not its edges appear "correct". This is why some factory cut cards get rejected and why many trimmed cards do not. A card's edge looks "trimmed" or "wrong" when it looks botched, either by an amateur trimmer or by a factory mishap. The idea that all factory edges look a particular way and that all trimmed edges look a different way is simply not true, and one that is born out of ignorance. It is also not true that factory cut cards measure 2.5" x 3.5" and that trimmed cards are by definition smaller than that. Again, ignorance and faulty assumptions beget that belief.

When one of these professional trimmers trims a card, and that card still measures within spec, the resulting card does not have a loss of value on the open market because it does not bare any actual evidence of trimming (i.e., the edges look correct), and the actualized market values are based entirely on what can be observed, not on that which is unknowable. This is also why PSA rejects grade guarantees for a lot of these cards that get called out on Blowout and sent back in for review. They simply bare no physical evidence of trimming. The edges look correct and the card measures correctly as well. Any buyer of one of these cards could crack it out and resubmit it and receive a numeric grade again from any TPG at any time. They are not actually out any money. It's difficult to make a case for fraud when the buyer's bottom line has not actually been adversely affected.

Wait. The earth isn’t flat?!?! My feelings are that it is flat and thus it is; there is no objective discernible reality outside of my narrative.


I understand not caring personally if a card is trimmed. I understand doing business with crooks. I understand being unable to follow what the laws are and being too stupid to recognize a claim is false. But I will never understand why some people simp so hard and so often for a company that doesn’t have them on payroll.

So Travis, if I can make a perfect duplicate of a Rolex that no expert can detect, and sell it as the real thing, and the buyer could sell it without detection for full Rolex value, no fraud?

A trimmer could sell a card to someone and inform them that the card has been trimmed. The buyer could then send the card in for grading with a sticky note attached that reads, "I was told this card was trimmed when I bought it" and it wouldn't make one bit of difference. The grader is going to completely disregard the sticky note and will ultimately make their determination based on the observable evidence of the card itself.

If you can make a perfect duplicate of a Rolex that even Rolex themselves cannot detect, then you sir, just made a Rolex.

But again, you're analogy is flawed. You're talking about counterfeiting an item, not restoring one. In this case, a better analogy would be if you had a Rolex with a scratched face and you buffed out the flaw and sold it without telling the buyer that you buffed out a scratch. Perhaps the buyer wouldn't be excited to learn that, but he still has a Rolex and it's still worth every penny that he paid for it. That's not fraud.

I disagree. You've made a very good fake.

It looks like Evan Mathis is back for round 2. This time with a mountain of uncut sheets...

https://www.instagram.com/p/CryXzL0g1_d/?hl=en

What do you suppose is his motivation for posting these videos?

Oh my.

Aside from getting a lot of attention and putting an aggressive twist in some knickers?

Will there be a Major Whistleblower ?

fraud
 

I find it amusing that an interesting discussion/ difference of opinion/argument...

the further it goes..sooner or later somebody gets just a little bit insulting/ a tad nasty/ etc...

I guess its just guys being passionate about collecting/ the hobby/ whatever..

Yea, but he must know it won’t be positive attention; he is basically ensuring he becomes an industry/hobby pariah (or more of one). And whose knickers are worth twisting at the expense of one’s own reputation, and why? Something bigger is going on here/there is more than meets the eye.

You're assuming your conclusion by saying it's still worth every penny. Suppose in fact a watch with a repaired flaw isn't quite as valuable as one that is original and unflawed. What then?

It may have been on Blowout not here, but people are saying PSA cut him off and maybe that's behind it?

Card Time
 

Might be part of it. Like most things in life though, it's probably multifactorial. Although he did say he's been banned from PSA for a few years now, so I suspect there's been some other more recent that was the straw that broke the camel's back here.

In the context of these, it's hard to assess what he is thinking these days. Perhaps he will tell us though.

https://godseer.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5tEBz1LFVg&t=1844s

This is one of the most breathtakingly ignorant statements I've read on Net54 in the 10+ years I've been here.

I had one of those Psssst guys try and sell me a "Rolex" on the streets of Amsterdam many years ago. I believe he wanted 50 Guilder at the time. It looked to be far from a perfect duplicate. Pretty sure there was fraud involved.

Breathtaking….:eek…..:D….:rolleyes:

Show me 1 criminal case where someone has been convicted of card trimming…..:rolleyes:

Read this very thread re Bill Mastro.

Here is a general definition of criminal fraud (each state probably has its own variation).

Altering a card is not a crime. Submitting an altered card to a TPG is not a crime. But the submission is an attempt to have the TPG (unknowingly) conceal the alteration. Then, the alterer sells the card in the TPG flip, misrepresenting (via implication or directly in the sales pitch/language) that the card is authentic/unaltered bc it sits in the flip, and they do this with the intent of making financial gain. That is fraud and fraud is a crime. Facts

Ok…Please show me where Mr Mastro was convicted of card trimming. Was there a plea bargain? Trial? It was explicitly for trimming a card that he trimmed and sold for profit?

If you read the thread you would see there was a plea bargain. I'm not doing your reading for you. Pathetic. First one guy in the face of all the evidence says he still doesn't believe it, now another guy refuses to even read. This is absurd, I am not wasting any more effort here.

Not that any of us needed that….but ok…..

Let’s come at this from another angle.

Guy pulls a 52’ Mantle out of a pack in 1952…. Hates Mantle so it sits in a box until he dies in 1992. It passes to his son that loved Mantle. He sees it’s oversized and uses his own expertise gained in another field to trim it to the equivalent of a PSA 10 and it’s still slightly oversized. The son dies in 2022 and his son gets the card and sends it to PSA completely unaware of what his father did to his grandfathers Mantle. It comes back a PSA 10.

Since no one knows…. Is it still a PSA 10?

If a tree falls in the woods does it make a sound?

What if the seller openly admits the graded card is altered? Would it then be a crime since it was disclosed?

I collect weird stuff and have bought and sold more than one counterfeit card in a PSA slab. When selling(one to a fellow member) I disclosed I believed the card to be counterfeit. I have also done this with a altered card in a SGC slab with a number grade. I disclosed the alteration and that sale was also to a fellow member.

Link?

It’s a psa 10 bc it sits in a psa 10 flip. But it’s still altered

Your fact pattern is not fraud for 3 reasons: (1) the grandson has not tried to realize financial gain (he has not tried to sell it, (2) submitting it to psa alone is not fraud, and (3) he did not know it had been altered

If the grandson new it was altered, submitted it to psa and got a numerical grade and then sold it for financial gain, knowing it was altered, and not disclosing it, then it’s fraud.

You are arguing with several people who have gone to law school and either actively practice law or have practiced law. This is like you telling a radiologist how to read an X-ray. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, but the fact pattern I have laid out meets all of the elements of fraud and fraud is a crime.

And with that, I wish you the best.

Ben, it is not fraud if the seller discloses it - there is no misrepresentation or omission/concealment (attempt to deceive).

Read THIS thread above. It's right there. Come on, you cannot be that helplesss.

No crime in that case, there is no concealment. It's the concealment of a material fact (the alteration) that makes it a potential crime.

How often does that happen though LOL. Rob L occasionally would opine he thought a card had been trimmed. In one of Al C's auctions where he only found out at the last minute a card he was listing had been outed as altered, he disclosed it. Maybe there are more examples, but the overwhelming majority of the time, nobody is disclosing. Gee, I wonder why.

1 and 2 are to me the same point, but I agree with your analysis. No sale and no intent, accepting the hypothetical at face value.

Yes I am. Mr Mastro was convicted, best I can tell, of shilling….but you already know that.

….since everyone seems to be butthurt I’ll just move along…..:D

Peter, you may find this hard to believe, but there are actually people in this world that disagree with your opinion.

The headline of the case was the admission of trimming but the mail fraud is entirely tied to the shill bidding. And for those that disagree, fine. But my question for you is this… if there was no shill bidding and just the trimming, does this case result in a plea deal?

It's not an opinion, it's right there in the documents.

Read the indictment and the plea bargain. It's not an either or.

It's not my opinion, it's right there in the documents. It's in the charges against him and in his plea agreement. He was charged with it (among other things) and he pleaded to it (among other things). And the earth is flat, because that's what I believe, notwithstanding the evidence.

With respect to all parties, this is a classic!

Admittedly, I too think (know) I am right most (all) of the time.

I see we’ve fully cleared the stage where the pro-fraud wing of the hobby alleges it didn’t happen and are deep into the stage where they insist that concealing material information of alteration in a sale is not fraud nor ethically wrong, contrary to the law, common sense, and principle. I can never determine if IQ’s or moral compasses are lower.

Based on the last few posts I would say IQ.

When the Wagner is in both the indictment and the plea bargain, go ahead and give me your legal analysis of how the mail fraud is "entirely tied" to the shill bidding.

Oh by the way, not that you would know this, but the language of that portion of the plea agreement is drafted to track the elements of mail fraud.

I see what you did there.

This is a forum with the most knowledgeable pre and post war members, so you will get a little push back on the gray area semantic bullshit. Nobody here likes altered cards, they're not honest and if I've learned anything here is that honesty, integrity, and transparency still mean something.

When you sold that card that you believe to be altered in the numeric slab, did you sell it for the price of an Authentic Altered slab, or did you sell it for what the market says it's worth?

I listed it in the auction section so it sold for the highest bid. There was no believing it was altered it was 100% altered.

I believe that is (what I have just named) an Escher Dilemma.

Attachment 569778

How do you determine whether a fact is material or not though? And material to what? Material to the value of the item in question? I think this is where the two camps diverge. We have one camp (generally the long-time purist-leaning collectors) who say that an alteration that cannot be detected devalues a card, despite there being no evidence of it on the card itself, and then we have the other camp (generally the younger and more carefree collectors) who say that there is no devaluation of the card because "what difference does it make if something has been altered when that alteration is undetectable?"

We are all free to decide which camp we belong to, but only one of these two camps is right with respect to whether or not a card has lost value. Either the card has indeed been devalued, or it hasn't. And what ultimately determines the value of a card is the open market. And the market bases its values on what can be observed. PSA doesn't care what story you attach to a card. Sticky notes reading "my grandpa said he pulled this card straight from the pack and kept it in a book untouched and unaltered for 67 years" and "the guy I bought this from said it was trimmed" both hold no weight at all in their determination of the card, and the market has clearly decided that it relies on PSA/SGCs decisions to determine value.

If the card hasn't actually lost any value on the open market, then whatever has been done to the card couldn't possibly be a material fact with respect to its valuation when sold.

I think you have zero chance of getting a jury to convict someone based on your arguments.

Try this... Go explain the trimming scandal to your non-collector friends. Tell them about how some hobbyists will buy cards that are oversized, then trim them down to the correct size in a way that is undetectable, then submit them for grading, then resell them on the open market and ask those non-hobby friends if they think that's a crime. They will all laugh at you. I asked about 20 people a few years back when this first came up because I was trying to get people to bet against me on the outcome of the FBI investigation. I wanted to see how a potential jury of non collectors might view the situation. Every single one of them said it wasn't a crime, and several even said things like, "sounds smart to me" or just laughed at the situation or rolled their eyes at what they saw as old men yelling at clouds. Zero people saw it as fraud.

If I had a nickel for every time you've said that I could buy my own Wagner :D