How does this not reflect on the grading companies more than anything?

In April of this year I found at the bottom of a box twelve pieces of what once were a Louisville Slugger Poster from the 1939-1941. I put the pieces together and marveled at nice the poster once looked. I searched online for a person who restored Movie posters. There were many and I narrowed my search down and chose a man named Dario from Vancouver Canada. He said he could restore the piece and it would take eight to ten hours of work. When I got the poster back I took it to a reputable art dealer who dealt in prints to frame and preserve the Poster. You can see the result below. Up close you can see what appear to be folds along the lines he repaired. But from a foot or so away you judge. What was done to this poster can and is done to cards all the time. (Search on Dick Towle) Paper items can and I believe sometimes should be restored and preserved. If it is not it will deteriorate and your grandchildren will be left with dust instead of The history of baseball as it was recorded (In Paper form) for most of it's first 100 or so years. Now for me a baseball card collector for many years I will not even clean the gum or wax off of a card just never did so never will. But others do. In about 1975 I visited the Metropolitan Museum of art and they brought out the Burdick Album with T cards and in there was The Wagner displayed on a stamp hinge so that you could look at the back. I have seen that card later and there is no trace of the hinge. They can and did restore their card. People do and some very rare cards and posters would be lost if they were not restored. BUT ANY ETHICAL SELLER SHOULD ABSOLUTLY ALERT BUYERS TO THE RESTORATION. And any buyer should be aware that this could happen to ANY card and it would be very very difficult to detect. This has been the state of our hobby since the get. And I for one still love this stuff but find it hard to like many of the people who sell this stuff for a living. Alerting each other to folks who are looking to get over is necessary and thank you Vintagetopps guy for spending the time to help the rest of us on this message board.

MHO

Jonathan

good post

Not only should the seller make buyers aware, they should not allow shill bidding to take place on those (and really any) items.

Why am I not surprised Rick has not come on. He has defended himself before but now cannot be bothered. Too much evidence? Too much money involved?

Joshua

Why? I will tell you why. It may be because this is an "attack first, defend later" Board that refuses to be objective. Rick could have been in a coma for 2 months, wake up today, sue Pankiewicz for the excess profits, give them to the original sellers, and hire 2 more assistants to scour his auctions to look for potential shilling. But he would still be attacked for not having the foresight to hire the assistants before he went into his coma or not knowing that some of his clients are submitting under false names from another state.

Responding to this Board only increases the attacks and if I was Rick I would do the right thing but say nothing.

What's a bump from a 6.5 to an 8.5 worth?

Obviously it does not reflect well on them, but it also speaks more fundamentally to the problem of (likely) rampant card doctoring. To some extent, yes, the issue is inconsistent grading and the same cards -- without alteration -- can and do get different grades. I have seen some incredible journeys within a 3 grade range for the same card simply cracked out and resubmitted. But I think more often than not, what's going on with these bumps is that someone has improved the card.

Eric, I would agree with your assumption. However, there is enough info within this thread to say otherwise. It would be in Rick's best interest to address this issue of one individual. This link should open many eyes. He provides links to past auctions making it look like they're his auctions that lead to Probstein. Ok, let's assume Joe is the consignor, click on the 1961 Topps baseball set. The 3rd highest bidder with a fb of 9622, aka pank21 is Joe P. In older links at the bottom he even says "check out ebay seller pank21" What does this tell us??


https://www.facebook.com/pages/Josep...18125758251089

Agree. And, it could also become a bigger issue for Rick if he continues to willingly accept consignments from "Joe" knowing "Joe" has shill bid and submitted altered items in the past. A jury probably won't be kind to him. Then again, it's Rick's life and business, he can do whatever he wants with it...

This card is the subject of a thread over on CU (I wonder how long that thread will last). Not one corner is deserving of an 8 (especially the bottom two - left in particular) and this card probably should have been a 6. Somebody will buy it though because of that "8" on the flip, not really caring what the card itself looks like.

Hey, Panky, I know you read the boards. You ought to buy this one and turn it into a 9. :D

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/1959-TOPPS-BA...NVQ~~60_57.JPG

/

Nice profit for pank...hey buys the 7, resubmits and receives an 8. Same card for sure!


http://tinyurl.com/mqoyxfg

nice comparo Chris!!!!!

the rt border is dramatically thinner!

I get nervous enough cracking out a card to resubmit for the fear of it coming back a lower grade (or even trimmed). Who would crack out a card worth several hundred dollars, altar it and then try to resubmit it, unless that person already knew that they didn't have anything to worry about - that it would receive a numeric grade? There’s a lot of risk involved there – unless there really is no risk at all.

In my professional opinion this thread gives a whole new meaning to the definition of "Plastic Surgery".

Indeed so..and the bottom border too. Assuming they are the same cards either someone has the ability to mimic factory cuts or SGC missed the boat. With that much of the card gone I cannot imagine it measures properly. Either way it is way too expensive a card to be in anyone's holder.

I understand the FBI is sitting on bidder records from many of the auction houses. Seems like a fairly easy job for someone to start identifying purchases and consignments and matching up before and after pics. One 40K card does not warrant an investigation but it is pretty easy to see how you can get up in to the millions of dollars of fraud. It has always been my opinion that the amount of money taken from collectors in this manner far exceeds what has been taken via shill bidding.

Here is a side by side pic of the two cards...

I'd say somewhere in the $15k range, maybe more. A good day at the office, that's for sure.

So David, do you still say that "anybody that can look at a thread like this and still submit cards to PSA has absolutely no moral conscience"? Or do you now see that SGC is also capable of making mistakes. Good fraudsters seem to be able to take advantage of both companies.

I'm just wondering if this Joey P...who supposedly "used" to work for SGC...has an inside connection there...who is upgrading these submissions. So mistakes weren't/arent bring made...maybe this is intentional?

It does beg the question, why the crossover if PSA brings consistently higher sale prices? Assuming this card had an equal chance of making it past either company, why go to SGC and not back to PSA?

How could you have no risk? Unless you owned the grading service or had an in, I suppose.

Daryl,

I'm not so sure they're mistakes. To answer your question very honestly, I will have to strongly consider if I ever submit another card to any grading company. My last SGC submission consisted of about 15 E92 Dockmans. 2 came back as EOT (which I'm pretty they're not), one came back as minimum size requirement not met and another was a PSA 4 that would not cross over. So, I'm led to believe they can detect trimming on $50 E92 common, but they can't detect trimming on a $25K+ Gehrig? Horse crap! Those two Gehrigs are definitely the same card and it has definitely been trimmed.

David

Edited to add a side-by-side scan of the back of the Gehrigs. I circled all the print marks on the PSA card and they are the same on the SGC card. The SGC was scanned with brighter settings, but still the same card, only TRIMMED.

This thread finally convinced me to become a member of the Forum.

Thanks for posting. Keep up the good work.

Robert L Rumcik
o.c.trading

A well-centered 6 (or raw EX MT) card is the ideal purchase for a card doctor.

Stamp hinges are designed to be removable. The adhesive is water activated, so it damages the gum on unused stamps, but the adhesive will usually come off a used stamp without leaving any trace it was there. Some are better than others, and the Met would have known which were the best.

Steve B

That's a terrific before and after comparison! Thanks for posting that.

Has the SGC Gehrig been sold? If so, that promises be a rather stiff buy-back if the buyer is aware of the problem and pursues that route. One would think that losing $10K or $15K on a card should hopefully change the way the grading company screens cards and screens submitters.

Dan, yours for the asking.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=321179871436

If the Gherig had simply been cleaned I think that would have been ok. A light surface cleaning is acceptable in nearly every field, as the dirt will eventually cause damage.

At first I had a few doubts that the two were the same. The various marks are all from the production process, and I wouldn't be surprised to see two nearly identical cards. But thinking about it, the circumstances that would lead to there being two nearly identical Goudeys in that condition would be unlikely.

One of the things that made me think they were the same was the slight diamond cut, especially of the lower border.
It's odd that someone would retain that diamond cut while trimming.

But if it was done on a factory type cutter, The edges would remaim paralell, so the diamond cut would remain. And the cuts would be almost impossible to tell from factory.

Perhaps this is what will get TPG to look at things in more detail and for a bit longer.

Steve B

I am starting to more understand why some companies might not want to advertise where many of their customers are (here).

Has anyone contacted the seller gregbussineau about the SGC version being offered?

Much more concerned about a clearly trimmed card receiving a numeric grade than the light surface cleaning not being detected as I'm sure most, yourself included, probably are.

Also, does anyone know who the original purchaser of the PSA card was???

Last I checked auction houses don't tell who won their cards.

Greg has been in the card business since the 80s, I believe. I am sure he can form his own judgments.

Yes.

Makes me re-think this guy. ;)

http://i.imgur.com/YhFgIyj.jpg

I was able to figure out who won the other altered Gehrigs...

I guess now would be a good time for Greg to accept a low-ball offer on the card...I mean, I hope he wouldn't knowlingly sell an altered item on ebay...

40K for a trimmed iron horse........2.8 mil for a trimmed wagz.....I just can't believe the tpg's don't KNOW these cards are trimmed! There is something fishy in Denmark! Dave. ps The silence of the tpg's and of certain members here is deafening, and speaks volumes.

Why does the card look more heavily cut on the back of the "flashing" Gehrigs than the front? It's because the back scan of the SGC version is slightly smaller than the back scan of the PSA version. That's why the lettering moves a little, too.

While I find all of the evidence of cleaning/brightening persuasive, let's be a little cautious about relying on two scans of purportedly the same card under different conditions.

My guess is that SGC did not miss an obvious trim on the Gehrig. For instance, the SGC insert appears to fit snugly -- more so than the PSA holder does.

I took the same back scan of the SGC Gehrig, and then magnified one slightly below. Note how the eye picks up the difference in the bottom border much more easily than anything else.

Bring on the hammer.

kevin

I am guessing that you are saying the only thing changing are the borders, but the letters also change in size/shape, particularly as you get closer to the bottom of the card. This is the same card, but they are not the same size scan, obviously; not the same scanner.

I'm going to stick with my vote that SGC didn't miss a trim. Again, why is the PSA version loose in the slab, but the SGC version is snug? Did SGC miss a two-border trim so badly that they decided to also manufacture a smaller insert for this 1934 Goudey?

i think the text changes you are seeing is an optical illusion where the color changing from lighter to darker actually makes the illusion that the text inside of the color change appear to change in size. you can hover your mouse of the image at singular point and compare whether that point moves from your mouse image or not....it doesn't. the only thing that does is the left edge and bottom edge of the card. they move dispropritiantly to each other.

for instance...choose the words big league and put your mouse right on the bottom of a letter.notice how the letters don't go behind your mouse. then notice how much the edge of the card changes at the bottom of the card....

another example is the circle in the bottom right corner, that doesn't move but the edge moves dramatically. that is not possible when dealing with a scaling issue.


someone should be able to take the scans, use a measuremeant of a letter word or what have you, on the card to do a determination of the exact size of each card in comparison to that in number of pixels.

kevin

This is Greg's side by side scan of the two cards. The right and bottom border on the SGC card are definitely thinner than the PSA card. It's easy to tell that they're the same card and also easy to tell that it was trimmed before it found it's way into the SGC holder.

Not so. Put your mouse in the middle of the "I" in "BIG". The "I" grows and shrinks. In my view, the optical illusion is that you don't think the letters are moving.

Disagree. SGC holders are actually taller and wider than PSA holders. In your picture they look the same size.

This is a slightly smaller scan of the same card.

Thanks for the info Peter.

Actually someone just informed me that:

Sold at

Memorylane (id #20470) 5/6/11..

then sold Goodwinandco (id #23561) 6/21/12 for $7,299.46.

What's still not known is who was the buyer from Goodwin and submitter to SGC since it's possible that its currently a consignment item.

There's no way Greg is going to take the chance that the buyer of this altered card is going to come here and read this information after they have purchased the card...I mean, whoever buys this card from Greg is going to be notified they've bought an altered card, right???...........right...........

I have a feeling that when this is all said and done...if ever...there will be a lot of surprising names implicated...thereby showing that corruption is more the rule...than the exception in the hobby.