I read most posts, skimmed some, and boy howdy was this was an exhausting thread. Following the OP, we went sarcastic-pissed, then off on extreme legal tangents, and then (I think) actually got back around to talking about grading and alterations.

For what it's worth I will attempt to give my thoughts sans sarcasm, since I don't really have any personal experiences which sting. I've bought from PWCC before, but don't have any particular grudge against them for selling altered cards or dealing with shady consignors or anything like that.

For what it's worth I do think the "Conservation" (tongue-in-cheek) argument is interesting, but as many others have already pointed out - the hobby at large more or less set the bar there years ago, regardless of what PWCC does or does not decide to do for their limited marketplace.

Me personally, I've always been intrigued by the prejudice which seems to be accorded to cards assumed to be altered (trimming, obvious recoloration, etc.) vs. "honest wear" because - yes for some, at least a good deal of the time you can kind of tell - but if you weren't there to personally see how each card got it's wear, how do you really know definitively? You don't. That being said, cards upon which no dishonest work can be physically detected don't bother me. I think it should be left to TPG's and who you personally do or do not trust as to whether or not you believe their opinion on the state of alteration on the card or lack thereof is valid. All of the big TPG's make mistakes. Some think that at least one company among them is knowingly dishonest. All of it comes back around to are YOU happy with the particular example of the particular card, or does it mean more to you what PSA, SGC, BVG, (and then perhaps further qualifed by PWCC) have said or insinuated about the card or not? Because as we all know, what they grade or say is apt to be wildly different even if you submit the same card to each of them.

I've always maintained that it's absurd to think that some "professional" graders can have a valid opinion over and above some veteran hobbyists who have 30-50 or more years in looking at and evaluating vintage cards. At the end of the day what you can get comfortable with is all that matters. I don't particularly care one way or the other about graded cards - I think on the whole it is helpful to buy them that way online so as not to risk getting a creased card that is described as "Excellent" and things like that, but at the end of the day - ALL of this, even down to what PWCC wants to further cloud judgment with, purple stickers and altered vs. conserved, etc. etc. is really just opinion. There never will be a silver bullet for it, unless someone invents a time machine and we can go back and observe the whole, complete and unedited timeline provenance for every single existing baseball card in every collection today. Which of course ain't happening. I think what PWCC is propsing is pretty useless based on the fact that when it comes down to it - there is no way to be 100% certain about anything. Will it soothe collectors / investors already basically willing to look the other way into an easier false sense of security? Sure, and that's unfortunate for those of us who do care. But all of us here today reading this like / enjoy collecting vintage cards at least enough to be ~5% or more unsure about their true state of preservation. If we are being honest, how much leeway is really there - is it that - or more? Because as with just about everything, you can never really know 100% for sure. Taking the technical approach, as someone pointed out earlier - at some point gets so detailed as to be absurd and not consistent with the reasons people collect in the first place. I will be interested to see how much traction tactics like that can get...

Caveat to my post above - if you are talking about the Vintage Breaks guys or whatever and you have a pack that is graded and most people agree is authentic unopened - THEN that card going directly to PSA at a show is likely to have a much clearer provenance trail, isn't it? But is it FOR SURE? LOL. See what I've done here? I've created my own tangent.

Raises hand.

I gave up smoting years ago.

"Anyone really care what some freaking hayseed in Oregon thinks about cards?"

Ted, best line of the year.

A Lord on high at one of the TPGs admitted to me years ago that they are all aware that cards are being altered but that they cannot detect a good job of removing a foreign substance from a card. Light erasures, soakings, etc., it has been going on ever since TPGs started minting money for their customers based on the perceived grade of the card and it is not going to stop.

No one is going to be swayed by anything said here. The fans of PWCC and those who don't care what happened to get a card into a TPG holder have their beliefs and nothing rational will shake them.

DRCY writes: "If this all a method to hide from bidders and buyers the presence of conservation or restoration or other alterations, it's wrong"

I view it as more of an effort to shift concern away from criticism of the piss-poor job the TPGs have done on delivering on their promises of no alterations getting through their sieves. PWCC's entire business rests on two concepts: the TPG-encapsulated cards are what they are and as long as they have the right capsules around them the cards themselves are basically interchangeable commodities. Well, we know that the TPGs are missing all sorts of stuff: fake signatures, trimmed cards, cleaned cards, etc. So what can you do in the face of the evidence? Change the discussion or change the parameters of what you define as a wrongful alteration. The discussion itself ain't gonna change, so the OP is just a way of trying to sell us on the idea that even if the PSA or BGS slab has a card that has had one of these procedures, like a bath and cleaning, that's fine because it merely brought the card back towards its original state and the TPG then blessed it. So what if it went from a 4 to a 7 and the person who rode that train will make a fortune?

It's bulls**t of the highest order tossed out there to keep the gravy train rolling.

So should I feel bad about wiping wax stains off of my 1970s Topps cards with my shirt-tail?

And should I disclose the deed? It may not warrant a numerical bump by a TPG, but it could eliminate the dreaded (ST) qualifier.

BTW, thank you BLong for putting some of the pieces together and shedding more light on all of this. Much like the college admissions scandal, I'm a bit disheartened, but not surprised.

Shirt-tail wax removal isn’t woke. I’ve always thought panty-hose wax removal was the preferred technique. Then again I fully realize that everyone with shirt tails does not wear panty-hose. To make matters worse the Untuckit shirts eliminate the shirt tail alternative. The future should see a bump in panty-hose sales for this reason.

and in recent news:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BxQhjthHUpr/

Funny how they get the same reaction everywhere.

right! apparently noone cares!

Conserve - protect (something, especially an environmentally or culturally important place or thing) from harm or destruction.

Restore - repair or renovate (a building, work of art, vehicle, etc.) so as to return it to its original condition.

Alter - change or cause to change in character or composition, typically in a comparatively small but significant way.

Oddly after a lot of digging I found there already ARE definitions for these words. It took seconds of mind-bending labor, but I found them.

No, they got ripped, look at the comments on the link you posted.

well that's good...but doesn't seem to be affecting bidding on their auctions!

Of course not. The Mantle doubtless will go for a world record.

CLCT broke out to a new 52 week too.

https://www.stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=clct


This isn't going to slow either down anytime soon.

I just had to laugh at the guys on Blowout talking about shorting it, I mean come on how naïve.

They better be careful. This is a low float stock that has no liquidity.

If someone smells blood they could destroy some shorts in this stock.

More likely just a few giddy millenials drunk on their own perception of their influence, who are just yapping.

Haha

Yep.

Virtue signaling shorting.

The make believe kind.

58K for the Mantle asset.

Someone hoping PSA buys it back? Or will it be relisted

Mantle
 

Or is it even paid for as a “true” sale..?

Who cares? Brent put a sticker on it. The card is “exceptional” for its grade. Of course it had to be altered to get there but who cares considering how hard he’s working to improve the hobby.

"(With more alterations) it could be a 5 or 5.5"


Hey Jeff, how many times have you spoken with Peter Nash? Just curious, I'm keeping tabs on many times people talk to each other for a list character witnesses during the trial.

This will be bigger than "steroids in baseball" government investigation. The smokescreen while the housing market (fraud) was taking place.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

Sales tax on that asset could add quite a bit to the price. Oh wait...

Evading taxes — more good for the hobby. Won’t raise a red flag at all and surely there will be no audits.

I read and write pretty good but I don’t understand either of these sentences. Something to do with urine and pants?

Just look up the differential diagnosis of hematuria associated with renal failure, Adam.;)

CLCT is a very illiquid stock. It only trades on average just over 55,000 shares a day. The current short position is only 38,570 shares as of the last update so roughly two thirds of the daily average volume. That said there are days where this stock has only traded 13,000 shares.

This is a very small short position but if someone tried to put on a much larger short position and then a fund decided to put heavy buying pressure on the stock they could make it sky rocket and create a very serious short squeeze.

If you look at the stock right now the bid and ask are only showing 200 shares on each so the largest market order you can use and get the inside bid or ask is 200 shares. Nothing. To put that in perspective if you wanted to buy GE you could use a market order and get 45,000 shares.

Low float stocks that are heavily shorted are prime targets to try and manipulate higher with constant buying pressure. When a stock is sold short it represents pent up demand because the only way to exit the position is through a buy order. If someone is pressing it higher the shorts begin to lose and at some point just like in MMA they tap out and have no choice but to buy further exacerbating the scenario. Short squeezes can be violent.

Moral of the story a terrible stock to short because you can't get in or out easily. Even if one doesn't like a company they need to look at the short interest and trading volume to get a feel if it is a good short candidate and CLCT isn't.

You would have better insight than I, but it doesn't seem like a great stock to go long either.

Hard to say. Roughly two thirds of the company is their coin division and that has been soft. If you read the recent report it seems to be picking up some. Their card and autograph division is what is carrying the company.

It looks to me like it is running back up to the the top of the gap of $21.63 from February 7th last year. If it gets above that it could have legs.

The stock got hammered in the fourth quarter last year on general market weakness and heavy tax loss selling but I am not a fan personally of buying a stock that has doubled in five months.

Regardless this issue that has created many to be upset isn't going to change the direction of PSA.

I guess people keep grading the new bullion coins although I can't imagine why as even the MS70s don't seem to bring much of a premium, unlike PSA 10s of current cards.

I joined this site about 7 years or so ago. Scarcely comment, but always follow the forum. I have made a few purchases from other here, including Leon from whom I bought a few items shortly after joining. Unsolicited he disclosed the condition about each item, including that the item had been altered. That let me know that I could trust those here. This debate and the emphasis on disclosure lets me continue to believe that this is the right place to be. Thanks to all for that!

From their press release.


Part of the growth in PCGS Bulk was aided by a successful Apollo 11 coin-grading program that generated thousands of these popular commemorative coins for submission. The creative packaging designed by the PCGS team helped raise our Q3 Bulk ASP over last year's ASP.



"The PSA and PSA/DNA business set another all-time revenue quarterly record for the division and eclipsed last year's Q3 revenue by roughly $1.3 million, a 24% increase year-over-year. Based on the first three quarters of fiscal 2019, this part of our company is expected to close out its ninth consecutive year of top and bottom line growth. The PSA backlog remains at record levels heading into Q4. The Company is currently revamping our existing space to expand operational capacity, so we can ultimately improve the extended turnaround times facing our customers."

Suuuuure they are. Wanna buy a bridge in Brooklyn?

WOW! Thank god for PWWC and PSA for that matter for helping to bring such great cards to market!

And doing good things for the hobby?

On a roll on BO.

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showpo...&postcount=691

Their charm offensive didn’t last very long did it? Back to the drawing board!

My 2 cents
 

Ideal World

1. There is full disclosure of what was done to the card, without any pretense to give such "work" a definition.

2. The sole purpose of a slab is to opine that the card is authentic and to describe what was done to the card without concluding whether such work fits into the category of conservation or alteration, and that all numerical grades will be eliminated.

Real World

1. People buy the slab, and once it is slabbed, what was done to the card becomes irrelevant.

2. IMO all T206 10's have been trimmed.

3. IMO the overwhelming majority of T206 8's and 9's have been worked on.

4. The cover card of the hobby has been trimmed and would grade an "A" if taken out of the slab and resubmitted.

5. To my knowledge, the founder of PSA has not recanted his view that because he is one of the very few people who has seen said cover card out of the slab, his opinion that the card was not trimmed is correct, regardless that the person who trimmed the card has admitted such and went to prison in part because of such admission.

6. To almost everyone in this hobby, points 2, 3, 4 and 5 are irrelevant.

7. This entire discussion of "altered" versus "conserved" as a practical matter is irrelevant because regardless what one calls it, if the card gets slabbed with a numerical grade, mission accomplished -- to most people in this hobby the end justifies the means.

8. The notion of paying multiples more for a 10 than a 9 is my definition of insanity.

9. That PWCC came into being with its business model was inevitable.

10. At some future point PWCC's business model will be looked upon with the same awe and respect that PSA's set registry now is.

Conclusion

1. I feel very fortunate I got started in the hobby when cards had no value, which allows me to continue to collect as a hobby and for fun.

2. It felt good to vent.

Finally there is a well reasoned lawyer in this thread.

Whatever you do, don't text. They can come back to bite you and that might not taste as good as some other things.

Corey may be right that most people don't care, but for anyone who is bothered by trimming, this thread is quite educational and disturbing on several levels.

Obviously PSA cares because they're on the hook for reimbursing people when their inability to catch these alterations is proven. And it's obvious they're being targeted because their cards have proven to sell for much higher over time for vintage. The majority of modern cards found so far were in BGS slabs and the majority of the forged T206 autos were in SGC slabs. None of the major grading companies are coming out unscathed.

Has anyone determined the identity of the eBay user whitman111?

Looks like they've recently bought cards from Greg Morris and painthistorian. Will those cards end up trimmed/bleached in slabs?

Years of complaining and nothing's changed. Nothing will change. Your frustrations are misdirected. Until you focus on the root of the problem, things will remain the same. But ignore me, just keep doing what you're doing while PWCC keeps profiting.

Profiting While Collectors Complain

He was identified today on Blowout.

And has a very long relationship with Brent.

Reported to be Gary Moser. Scams going back 20 years if you google his name.

Gary Moser... looks like it’s been officially confirmed over there, so I will just let it out over here... yes a very long history with Brent... so much so the cards he purchases pre conservation from Brent they stay out of the “vault”... only the newer nicer version of the card makes it in... with the strong eye appeal sticker... He sure is a talented conserver!! Scary good!

Is this relationship good for the hobby though?

Another long time scammer connected with Brent. I guess they must be targeting him. There are no such things as coincidences. Wondering when the Forbes article comes out?

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Waiting for the hammer to fall.....I’ve been selling most all into this market when it crashes it’s gonna crash hard....real hard. The sad part is many good guy collectors will also see their cards drop big time. I hope the good guys do not get hurt, we will be collateral damage. The time to sell is now.
:-)

Per Blowout the 52 Mantle asset has not been paid for yet by the winning investor.

Agree with Corey 100% that nearly all high end T-206's have been tampered with, and likewise that nobody cares as long as they are numerically slabbed.

It's possible that the original intent of third party grading was to objectively grade and authenticate cards, but the way the industry evolved their job now is to make cards as marketable as possible, and to mint money for their clients.

I don't think that's entirely fair. PSA is for the most part grading very strictly -- higher grades obviously would bring in a lot more money -- and they reject tons of cards which if slabbed would make lots of money. What I think you're missing is that card doctors are very very good, or some of them, and without a crime lab and without the before and after photos that make alteration obvious that you see on Blowout, it's pretty tough sometimes to tell.

I think Peter is spot on. And it’s the same with forged signatures. As long as a slabbed card is accepted as a liquid asset, criminals will be flooding the grading companies trying to get worthless garbage into their holders. PSA, SGC, and Beckett are all very good at sorting through the garbage, but well done fraud will sneak in occasionally. And if it gets caught by enterprising collectors with days and weeks of research, it highlights the limitations of the system.

If you want to spend thousands on graded cards, you must accept that system that graded your card very likely devoted less than a minute or two on your card.

Someone really ought to invent a grading company for high end cards, where the company spends a few days at least on each individual card that gets submitted — check each paper fiber, get a few different eyes in each card, do some research into the history of the card on-line and otherwise, build a database of crooked submitters that gets shared with the FBI and local law enforcement, keep records of each card and track the history going forward, with a digital notification if the seal ever gets broken, and other fun stuff I’m just making up.

The PSA grader is overworked. They clearly do not have enough help in that area if you consider their turnaround times are double and triple of what they say they are.

And a grading service for only high end cards would not work unless it said PSA on the label. I would bet the large majority would not want their cards scrutinized to that extent also. It would be a money losing proposition for anyone who tried it (except for maybe PSA).

Extremely well put. I feel fortunate I got started in the hobby after cards had value, but at least before the advent of professional grading so that I have some perspective on what makes a card have worth and utility to me personally...

So why aren't they developing technology that will help to spot these alterations? If a painting has been restored and you shine a black light on it, the modern work is easy to detect. It seems to me the same technology can be used on cads. To use a common phrase, they can land a man on the moon but they can't detect card doctoring?

False equivalency.

Go back and read VCBC 7. These people are very sophisticated.

Two very different "theys". One set of "they" were literally rocket scientists. The other, well, aren't.

But wouldn't it depend on the type of doctoring? Obviously a black light isn't going to detect a water soaking or a trim job, but it should detect added paper (building up corners) or re-coloring, right?

I would think unless they have come up with ways to pass a black light test, which I agree seems unlikely. I don't think, though, that that's where the major alteration is taking place, I think it's trimming, filing, taking out creases, laying down corners.

Then if it is in fact impossible to detect sophisticated alterations, then what is the purpose of the whole third party grading business? To make cards marketable, and to make sure as many clients as possible are making money with slabbed material.

Maybe a new TPG could be started, even by somebody here - with a focus only on authentication and detection of attempts at altering - along the lines of earilier suggestions where that and that alone, not a numerical grade - is what is important. My fear of course is that we would be in the vast minority with something like that, and it would not be a sustainable business.

I asked the same question in another thread, just in a different way. I was told it was to "add value" to the card. Well, the card doctors are certainly doing that.

There are many other sophisticated scientific methods that could be used: authenticating art and artifacts

One word that I often use: provenance. Cards that have been altered don't have a history-- or at least a history that shows it wasn't altered. Of course there are new finds. However, as autograph expert Jim Stinson once said of autographs: “Authentic autographs have a history or sources. Forgeries do not. They just ‘appear’.” Provenance is one thing that is standard is the high end art collecting world that is not in baseball card world.

Also, common sense is always useful.

A really quality alteration should still be detectable. The Philatelic foundation (One of the authenticators for stamps) showed a collection of alterations they'd caught. I'm pretty good at spotting that stuff on an item in hand, but most of what they showed I'm not sure I'd have caught.

But then, I only looked for the same few seconds graders at the grading companies do.

And that's the problem. A quick inspection won't catch any thing but the simplest alterations. Philatelic foundation etc can take months, but they are seldom wrong. And the more money is involved, the slower they are.

As far as I know getting a rebuilt corner past a blacklight wouldn't be all that hard.

The only problem with common sense is, it's not very common.

The initial TPG marketing (PSA) was to detect altered cards and avoid card doctors. That was the scary advertising PSA used. The SMR was created to boost PSA card prices and market the service in the guise of price guide; I wrote an article on the fake pricing and false marketing in the SMR; VCBC ran it. Fun to write but no impact.

Fast-Forward to the creation of the Registry and the TPG idea has morphed into a pee-pee measuring mechanism: the higher the grade, the bigger the wiener. Or so I've been told (I judge myself against other collectors by height). With great power comes great responsibility. But not in PSA's case. With great power comes great disclaimers. PSA says: "PSA guarantees that all cards submitted to it shall be graded in accordance with PSA grading standards and under the procedures of PSA." It is circular: PSA guarantees it will apply its own procedures and standards, which are basically, it will look at the card and opine on it. It is a popcorn fart. Now we learn that PSA graders really aren't that good at their first job of detecting alterations. Like airport security, PSA is aimed at stopping stupid, lazy, sloppy amateur wannabes while giving the illusion of safety to the masses. Just like no security can stop a well planned attack, the fact is that no TPG can detect properly done removals and now we are seeing that they also aren't much at detecting really good work. So we must have a remedy with PSA, right? The buy-back remedy PSA offers applies: "If PSA, in fact, concludes that the card in question no longer merits the PSA grade assigned or fails PSA’s authenticity standards". Another popcorn fart: you disagree with PSA? Tough, unless you have a Mastro style confession or photographic evidence of the alterations. But at least there is a shot there. Not so with PWCC.

The PWCC case is more interesting because it shows some underlying assumptions of collectors that are not merited. What exactly is PWCC selling when they sell a PSA 8 Joe DiMaggio card? The assumption here is that they are selling a guarantee that the card is an unaltered one and that when someone demonstrates that PSA screwed the pooch, PWCC is liable. For what, exactly? The reality is that PWCC is selling precisely what it delivers: the DiMaggio card that is in a PSA 8 slab. The meaning of that designation is based on the reputation of PSA for detecting alterations: see above. Now, the best remedy any PWCC buyer of one of these shady cards has is to make a quick return via eBay or PayPal for item not as described. But beyond that, except for the cards that have been successfully traced, you are dealing with opinions layered on assumptions. I wouldn't want that case on a contingency fee.

.......
 

How close are Joe and Brent? 🤔🤔🤔

I can tell you after having spent the past 15 mins or so on the website of the Philatelic Foundation, that it's a very interesting place. And funny enough I ran into no registry competitions or SMR-type price guides...:p

PWCC's recent inclusion of high-res scans should help with some of this stuff. But, nothing is going to be 100%.

The irony of developing sophisticated technology to detect card doctoring is that if it were incorporated, thousands of previously slabbed cards would fail, and collectors would be demanding refunds en masse. As such, it may not be in the best interest of the TPG's to look at things too closely.

Another irony is that I think submissions would be just as high if they removed that guaranty. I mean where else are people gonna go?

I did not know that. Is that why SGC got out of the autograph business?

Sadly true. Which is why we are moving towards the standard becoming authenticity and nothing else. If a card looks nice and is at least an "A", then go for it, money-hungry investors and nostalgia-hungry collectors alike. Increasingly we can offer no guarantees other than the card is authentic...:mad:

+1

Supposedly no, their autograph authenticators got hired by other companies.