PSA Debacle - What to do for a Novice Collector?
 

Hello everyone,

I’m a newbie to vintage. A couple of years back, I bought a ‘54 Aaron, but needed to move it for some cash later on. I’m in the market again to purchase this card, and maybe a few others. With all the trimming scandals that have come out recently, how can I avoid getting burned? It seems like even buying from someone reputable, they might not have known they owned a trimmed one. Is it safer to just buy SGC? I do really like their holders, but it seems like PSA holds their value better. I would love to hear some opinions of how I can acquire a few key cards for my collection, and feel like they are fully legit. Thank you!

Very long story short - yes, for the moment PSA enjoys higher resale value and a kind of oddly unaffected reputation in the market. The scandal has broken and the details are known, but the implications for all investors and collectors have not fully set in yet, and they may not ever. Folks who have safe deposit boxes full of high-end vintage cards have a lot of skin in the game, and at the end of the day have not really decided yet whether or not they are going to make PSA / CU pay the price they should over the scandal, either the complicitness or gross incompetence, and the like.

SGC is historically a more consistent grader of vintage cards, and their customer service and turn times are much better than PSA's.

If you have serious concerns about investment potential and losing value, PSA is a safe bet in the short term. If you are a collector who wants accurately graded cards, I would do business with SGC all day long. PSA is probably going to be safer for low-grade vintage right now. An Aaron rookie that is an honest-looking PSA 3 has a lot lesser chance of being altered / tampered with than a stunning 8 with white borders and razor corners that looks too good to be true.

The PSA sells for more makes no sense to me at all. Most seem to ignore that means you are paying more for it.

SGC is more consistent at grading and they are generally cheaper to buy. That means when you sell it you are still going to get the lower SGC price. The big plus is you can own a nice card a little cheaper in a WAY nicer looking slab.

+1

This is all very true. I think I may look more into this, as I would rather have the nicer card

I could not agree more with every single thing you said. :)

If you go over on the prewar / main board, you will find a lot of consensus with the opinion that PSA still sells for more because big picture, the vast majority of collectors and investors of their product are either woefully ill-informed on the scandal, or (worse) know and simply do not care. Big wheel collectors of high-end vintage face a very bleak proposition if they truly care about cards not being altered, or the fact that their incredible PSA 8 T206 Whatever HOF'er that is worth 5 or 6 figures on the open market may suddenly be worth DRAMATICALLY less if they tell someone they care about that fact, and start a movement to trash PSA, their market value, and the value that their slabs currently bring to cards and collections. Mainly that said market value will drop quickly, and they will be left holding the bag.

Soooo....ummmm, why not just leave well enough alone? Yes, that card may be altered now that I read all this, but you know it looks really nice in that new slab, and it's in my safe deposit box anyway, and it would be really hard to prove for sure, er - wouldn't it?

It becomes an ends justifying the means situation. Not enough people care or have any real desire to burst the bubble to come forward. So what, some waves are being made on some message boards where people really care about the hobby. This too, shall pass. I could be wrong, but I will be very surprised if in the next 6-18 months, people start coming forward en masse to demand that PSA make good on their grading guarantee for a bunch of high dollar cards in slabs with grades that they don't agree with.

It's just stuff...right?

John,

Everything you said is 100% true and the bottom line.

Well put

Thanks.

I have personally chosen to wait until the FBI concludes their investigation and hands the case to the US Attorneys Office before I buy any more high end vintage PSA cards. There's still a few unknowns about what role PSA had in certifying these cards. We do know that card doctors targeted high end vintage cards to alter. We also know that they trimmed cards worth less than $5. It's hard to know what is safe at this point. The '54 Aaron would be riskier than most at this point.

If I was considering buying something I would do a certification lookup to see if PWCC had their hands on a card at any time. I would also closely inspect the difference between the edges of the card and the interior holders on the slab. The trimmed cards that I have seen all have a noticeable gap, indicating that the card would be loose and move around inside the slab.

I largely, and respectfully, disagree with John and Johnny's theories.

Do people who own and have large amounts of money and belong to the PSA registry want altered cards to be priced by the grade label? Of course. Will people involved in the current PSA system want things priced that way? I assume for many, yes.

Will future collectors, people who are obtaining rather than currently invested, consider value that way? I doubt it. Will a future buyer pay the same invest the same amount of money than he otherwise would have in a card he knows is likely altered because of the incorrect label? I doubt it.

I think valuations will shift and change for graded cards, especially high-grade cards, as knowledge spreads and as new buyers not invested in the old system enter.

Another practical and major problem for the PSA 'true believers' is that when cards come up for sale and shown to be altered, that has to be addressed-- possibly the auction stopped, the card in its holdered form being removed from the market, or, at least, the seller overtly saying that this card is altered, mislabelled and being sold as such. If the card is proven to be altered, PSA itself may insist the card be removed from the holder and the serial number removed from the database. The PSA registry card owner's ideology about "buy the label" will be irrelevant in that matter, and it will be out of his hand. The involvement of lawyers and the FBI in the PWCC sales have shown this.

In fact, I am sure some big PSA registry owners are currently thinking "How do I go about selling my collection, knowing that many cards will be shown to be altered?" I assume that some have already consulted lawyers.

As people say, science doesn't care about your feelings . . . And the law doesn't care about baseball card sentiments. PWCC's arguments of "it's okay, just ignore the conservation and focus on the label' already hasn't worked with the FBI.

Just find and buy a nice raw lower to middle grade card from a reputable dealer and forget about this slabbing crap.

Great thread. So David, are you suggesting that the value spread between graded cards will start to narrow? I.e that the difference between a graded 5 and 8 may someday only be a few hundred bucks instead of a few thousand given the mounting absurdity to the specific grades being gospel and the growing sense that the 8 grade is more likely to be altered in some way and the 5 more likely completely authentic?

As I've said repeatedly before, it doesn't require everyone to change their minds to alter the market and values. It requires merely a large enough percentage. That there are people, even many people, who cling to and want you to cling to the old "Move along, nothing to see here" theory of card valuation may prove to be neither here nor there.

I believe that no one with knowledge of the current scandal considers high graded cards the same as before. You see this even on the PSA boards. This change in consideration and sentiments will change or shift values in the future. Plus, there will be a shrinking of the market for such cards. Even on the PSA board, posters say they won't, if at least currently, buy such cards, and many future collectors, otherwise would have, simply won't enter that game and/or accept the old "ignore that the label is wrong" paradigm.

And, as I said, the law puts a big chink in the "just ignore that the label is wrong" financial model. Irrelevant to their sentiments and valuation beliefs, I'm sure many wealthy Registry people aren't about to follow the PWCC model of selling known altered cards. And guess what? It was that illegal PWCC model, coupled with the before-the-scandal collector's sentiments and lack of awareness of how many cards are altered and mislabelled, that created the market values.

To think the valuations, especially of high-grade cards, won't be shifted and changed in the future is daft. How exactly they will be shifted and changed I don't know. However, I'm certain many future, and current, collectors aren't going to pay the current, or recent, rate of 50x value for the removed wrinkle, erased pinpoint spot or lightly pressed left corner. And, believe it or not, not everyone (obviously) but many collectors and investors are not going to say "The card is grade poor but the label is wrong as says it's a 10, so I'm going to pay the higher 10 value."

Millions of dollars worth of current collectors and invistors, including on the PSA board, are already asking for and have asked for their money back for such mislabeled cards-- which, in and of itself, demonstrates that they value, or fear/know others value, such cards less than what was paid. And it only takes a good percentage of those people, coupled with the evergrowing expansion of the knowledge of how many cards are mislabelled like that, to shift market values-- and the returns to PWCC for refunds shows that they already exist. The value for all those millions of dollars of "ignore the card, and price by the label" cards have already fallen, and won't be valued the same if they return to the market. I would offer that as proof in the pudding.

All one has to do to answer the qeustion is ask oneself how many of those outed cards are valued the same. I would guess that 99.9% are valued less, usually majorly less. that what was paid. As evidenced by all the returns, refunds and the ubiquitous, even on the PSA boards, question "What do I do if my card is outed on Blowout cards?"

PSA isn't saying "Return the mislabelled cards to the seller for a full refund" because they think the cards have the same market value as before. They are saying that because even they know the cards are worth than what was paid. They are saying that the realization, both to the collector and the general hobby that the card is altered and does not match the label has devalued the card enough that their official advice is "Get your money back."

And to think some people are claiming "Values won't change"? (?!?!) Even PSA doesn't believe that. Even PSA is saying "You overpaid. The card isn't worth that much, get a refund."

I've been steering clear of graded cards lately. I have been purchasing the best condition raw cards I can find from dealers with clean, extensive track records...for the right price.

I'll hold onto those and let all this *#$% settle down before considering having them graded.

This has generally been my philosophy. But when I completed a 1954 Topps set recently there were so many suspicious Aaron cards that I ended up buying a low-grade PSA card to be sure of its authenticity. Then I liberated it from its slab.

Hence the "reputable dealer" part. Like Scottsdale Baseball Cards. I know Brian wouldn't sell a dodgy card and if one did get by he'd make good on it.

However, buying a lower grade card and cracking it out is a good strategy too. Though the newer PSA holders and the Beckett holders do make that a challenge to safely execute.

I break out every slabbed card that I buy to complete my sets.

I'm not interested in selling them to break a set so no need to have them slabbed. I hate looking at cards in slabs -- it's just not natural.

I do have some single cards that are slabbed -- but not many. They're slabbed to sell in the future -- not to keep.

I've followed this strategy a lot here in 2018-19. PSA does remain the most difficult slab to crack correctly. Some give up easily and the two sides separate as if held together by weak Elmer's glue. But others are drudgery and take forever going a centimeter at a time down the seal on each side...

David, thanks for your insight. I do not follow the PSA boards, so was basically just speculating on what I have seen here and also over on Blowout.

It's true that the market shift may also include those who own many such cards right now, and that newer collectors may help narrow the gap by being correctly informed when they go to make those types of purchases. Yours is certainly a more optimistic way of looking at the situation - and I appreciate that.

Moser, Card-guy and 100's of others don't seem to have any troubles cracking the cards out of holders. They should teach a class on it....and the spa treatments they offer.

Cracking slabs on the whole is more difficult in some cases than it used to be, but still not prohibitively so if you do some research and take your time. There are multiple YouTube videos out there for each TPG. SGC is perhaps the easiest; you just compromise the seal in the sides and usually can slowly pull the 2 sides of the slab apart. Beckett looks the most intimidating, but just because the slab works like a shoebox - the top half sits on the lower half like a lid. If you take pliers or a cutting tool and snip off both edges and can get a little torque on one side - you can flip up the “lid” part of the upper slab just like on a shoe box and it will (at least in my experience) start to give very easily. Beckett of course then you have to cut the card out of their “inner sleeve” - which unlike a penny sleeve is sealed at the top as well. This is self-evident, but you have to be careful with whatever scissors you use not to get too close to the card. PSA I think is the most difficult to bust - because in my experience their QC and the quality of their slab strength and seal, etc. are all over the place. You start by snipping corners just like with Beckett. But then you have to work the seal more slowly with a flathead screwdriver all the way around. This is where I have found that some then pop-up easily, but others - sometimes maybe older ones - give only grudgingly and you will have a lot of small pieces of plastic break off, and a lot more start and stop.

The only card I have ever damaged was with an SGC slab before I properly understood that you could just pull the sides apart. I instead tried to open it as if it were a PSA slab by cracking up the sides with a screwdriver. When I did this, unfortunately the weak plastic on the face of one side of the slab began to splinter, creating a lot of super tiny and razor sharp pieces of plastic at the area where it broke. Unfortunately that card was a ‘56 Clemente. I turned it from a 5 into a 2 in about 30 seconds... :-(




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PSA card lookup
 

What does it mean if the cert # is not in the PSA database? I am looking at buying a card, but when I lookup the cert #, it says "no information found"

Is the slab just really old?

Contact PSA. They may have removed it for a reason.

Well said. Especially if you are a novice. Then put the money you save into a nice Roth indexed fund with low P/E ratio . Years from now you will be glad you did.

thank you, John.
I did. The problem is this is an item closing at auction tonight... so doubtful I will have an answer in time.