Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
They have missed thousands upon thousands of altered cards that collectors have been able to show and prove just the last 2-3 years alone. They have been busted gifting grades to former graders. It is at best incompetent, sometimes corrupt.
We don't seem to be at the point where we have no idea when things have been altered - the graders are just bad at it and don't really care to improve (which is the most generous possible statement to give them). Your scenario is a future possibility, not really current reality. PSA is not the arbiter of actual truth.
I suppose we could declare being against literally anything as 'shaking ones fist in absentia' unless one has the active power to stop it (what am I realistically supposed to do? Private citizens are not really in a meaningful position to do anything about a host of bad things in the world and regulating crime, shock, does not eliminate it either). Because I cannot stop bad thing X does not mean I should not be against bad thing X. I know it is increasing in hobby popularity to support, tacitly or openly, alteration and fraud (which is the whole and entire point of the alteration - show me these sellers redoing corners, removing creases, micro trimming to sharp perfection and disclosing that honestly when selling them) but a number of folks are not going to go along with these soft justifications.
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Greg, no real argument with you on the graders. In many respects, they are all horrible right now if their aim is to truly prevent such things. (It isn't). As I've said before, it's ironic that an industry supposedly born because of the widespread problem of alteration now helps perpetuate that very problem when they endorse and thus escalate the value of such cards by putting them into legit slabs.
As for the rest of it and what to be for, what to be against - to me there has to be evidence of a crime that can be proved a week later when you sell said card to someone totally unsuspecting that has no idea of its history. You can be mad all day long at people who fix corners and remove creases, and soak away dirt and grime and wrinkles - but if at the end of the day there is ZERO proof that the card has been physically altered - then how has the card truly been changed from it's original state? It hasn't.
I would agree with you in many cases even with numbered graded cards - that of course you can tell. I'm not talking about these cards. Here is where collector knowledge and a personal eye for something being "not right" has to come into play. But say for s&g that you truly CAN'T tell for decades that anything Kurt's Card Care products do actually change and alter cards? This whole thing - as it is right now for people who buy cards that people have worked on with his products and have no clue - is a gigantic moot point. Not only will they never know, there is nothing TO know if the true physical state of the card cannot be proven to be altered. Will this always be the case with the types of leaps and bounds technology is currently taking? Probably not.
PS - I will say this again for those who maybe haven't read the entire missive of this thread. I quit using Kurt's products myself for my PC, not that I ever truly did anything much with them to begin with. They work to an extent yes, but it's just too much work. My more valuable cards with dinged corners and wrinkles can remain in their SGC 2 and 3 slabs. They are still beautiful without me doctoring them. ;-)