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. |
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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.
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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. |
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"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." |
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The charge is mail fraud, which he plead to. I believe that ties to the shill bidding, not the card altering. |
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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….? |
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That's cute. |
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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. |
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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?
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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.
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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. |
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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 |
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Will there be a Major Whistleblower ?
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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.. |
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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 |
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Show me 1 criminal case where someone has been convicted of card trimming…..:rolleyes: |
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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 |
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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? |
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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. |
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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). |
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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. |
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….since everyone seems to be butthurt I’ll just move along…..:D |
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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? |
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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.
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Admittedly, I too think (know) I am right most (all) of the time. |
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