Not confusing anything. My entire post was about Russ Hamilton.

I think Brent was part of the 'buyer's club' that ran/shilled prices up. Why? To give an appearance that PWCC cards command higher prices. PSA was pushing heavily on advertising these record prices, too.

When the buyer's club was outed, Brent went of defense and made some posts to try to clear the air and do damage control.

Then came the next best thing: PWCC assigning grades to already graded cards. It was ludicrous, but I guess it worked as it kept the premiums coming.

Now an altered '52 Mantle exposes hundreds of other altered cards and trimmers and there is an apparent connection between one of them and Brent.

Brent again goes on defense, possibly knowing the level of fraud that took place and wanting to get ahead of it goes on record trying to link/normalize it to restoration and conservation, which it is not.

The common denominator here is Brent/PWCC.

If anyone on the Blowout forum is reading this, please look into the Topps Bobby Hull rookie, Topps/OPC Wayne Gretzky rookies, and 1989 Topps Joe Sakic rookie. There have been some phenomenal examples come to light in the past three years offered by PWCC. The 1989 PSA 10 Sakic stayed at a POP 2 for YEARS and then suddenly got flooded. Hull (a notoriously OC card) has had some clean centered ones slabbed in this time, and the Gretzky cards have been graded with too nice of edges.

I didn't realize he played the wsop again. I know no one was pleased when the full tilt guys showed up.

That's a lot of border trimmed off.

Yeah let me change ouch to my preferred word these days. Mercy.

Russ has no conscience. While what Howard and Chris did was bad too, they at least expressed remorse for basically not paying enough attention. Whether you believe that was their only level of culpability is another story entirely. But yeah same idea, "Oh if they ever show their face they're gonna get their asses kicked" or reality which was a lot of people mumbling under their breath.

I sent this along.

Agree with all, but in bold

Everyone should be worried about this. It affects the very reputation of the TPG who grades or graded YOUR cards. It's a direct negative reflection on the integrity of EVERY PSA and BGS graded card. If they can't or won't catch alteration, what the hell good are they. This renders third party grading essentially useless, beyond card protection. You can't trust a grade. If you aren't worried, your'e oblivious. Every card now carries a stigma of possibly being trimmed by these criminals. Criminals who have been handed a means to commit fraud by TPG's not doing what is supposed to be their core objective.

Not worried, just startled.

Long holiday weekend allows for reading every Blowout post.

So, we have a handful of trimmers who ONLY deal in grading and selling their handiwork. Looks like over 30,000 cards so far when Block is included and using submission data. Averaging about $1,000 per card in sales. Over $3 million in fraud sales and growing. That has to affect everyone at some point.

And let's not forget this has been going on since the 90s. They're only uncovering a bit of the most recent layer.

This was just posted on Blowout from the most recent National. Notice the top and bottom names.

Probably a coincidence on Moser.

Although, if they have that board running again this year, it would be really smart to take a picture of it every couple of minutes.

Could be a good way/opportunity to photograph the bad doctor!

Yeah, a good sized chunk of cardboard fell to the cutting room floor. And it's a really bad trim job, at that...

Look at that awful, obviously altered right border. Nice job, PSA :confused:

Is that board really legit? I thought Matt Miller was banned from subbing to PSA. Not for trimming, but a beef he had with them involving a card that they damaged during grading.

The more I read about this the more I stew about PSA. What kind of crap are they putting out as unaltered. I see there is no reply from them about any of this. They will just wait until it blows over and then continue with the same nonsense. What a friggin joke they have become.

I remember reading on 2+2 about the scathing dirty looks Ferguson and Lederer received when they showed up at the WSOP. ;)

They won't reply...

And their failures (whether it's pure ineptitude or "favorable" treatment) are much more dangerous and further-reaching than PWCC.

The only way they'll reply is if it somehow trickles over to CLCT and investors/analysts.

I HOPE they are doing something internally about this, surely they do or will perceive a threat to the brand and that should motivate them.

Good golly Miss Molly.
https://www.blowoutforums.com/showpo...postcount=1925

Terribly graded imo the 2nd time around with that huge crease.

Who owns that green conby??

My god. That card is COMPLETELY "restored". How can a card be a 3.5 if it's been cut, flattened, soaked, erased, etc. PSA has some explaining to do. This is criminal.

I'm looking at this from my cell phone so I don't have the advantage of large scans, but that top left corner looks rebuilt from what I can see.

As John pointed out, it has undergone significant .... what's the neutral word --- work.

Fixed it, after checking the PWCC thesaurus.

Thankee.

That green Cobb exhibits perhaps the most "work" of any of the exposed cards, to date...

With regard to the original, all 4 corners exhibited significant corner creases (in addition to the obvious corner wear). Yet the creases have all seemingly vanished in the "worked" version. Not to mention the cleaning, rebuilding, etc.

Very discouraging. :(

He missed one.:D
A whisker away from the VGEX designation with a tiny crease to the lower right corner present.

My bad, poor math. That should be $30 million.

Never get cheated

Always get cheated

Leading the trading card marketplace since 1998.

At least none of the Magic the Gathering cards have been found trimmed.

That's a weird one.

Ordinarily I'd say they aren't the same card, as the 6 is tighter to the holder top and bottom but thinner side to side.

But the fibers/print marks on the back are exactly identical.

All I can think of is that the holders are slightly different sizes on the inside.

Yet...…….

The big plays would be turning betas into alphas, which probably isn't hard.

soaked and stretched (pressed) is always a fun possibility

I'm really surprised that no Net54 members have fessed up to purchasing any ofthese doctored cards. Maybe they're too embarrassed to admit it?

Its a small community...maybe noone here bought any presented ao far. Certainly no reason to be embarrassed...the cards were holdered by the most trusted tpg’er on the planet.

Here’s how the corners on the 3.5 were described by PWCC when listed:

“Nicely framed with well formed corners for the assessment.”

So, I spent some time today reading old threads, some as far back as 15 years ago. Apparently, Moser has been a doctor/scammer for decades. Why hasn't he been stopped by now? Is this time going to be any different? You'd think in all these years, he would have pissed off the wrong person and something bad would have happened to him.

I suspect there was a code of silence among the dealers and AHs who knew first hand who was doctoring cards. And what was a collector with strong suspicions supposed to do?

+1....Yep, agree.....Piece of garbage.....

Good ole Brent....:rolleyes:

More succinctly "a well-formed ass(et)"

What's not to love?

As for the code of silence... Mastro/Legendary also had lots of clout before law enforcement stepped in. Their take-down required a lot more than collectors' suspicions or complaints via online forums.

Hopefully a similar investigation can happen again (sooner rather than later). Hate to admit it, but perhaps our hobby needs a major shakedown every 5 years or so, just to keep things honest.

Sometimes that's the only way to stop bad behavior, agreed.

I would go with 5 years of major shakedowns to get the hobby clean first. Then every 5 years after that. IMHO, right now the bad sellers out number the good by a huge margin.

Since the early 90s when I got back into collecting, and made lots of contacts and some friends with dealers, the identify of the major card doctors has been well known. I imagine it's the same on the modern side.