Posted By:
David SeabornI agree with Brian. Being from the Baltimore area, I know of several of those finds he mentioned. I also agree with Jim that the higher prices of today's market unquestionably have shaken loose some of the nicer examples that have sat in collections for decades (this is true for very rare issues as well- there were more N167's offered in the last two year at public auction then in any two year peiod going back to at least 1997-when I started tracking them).
While I don't doubt that there are a percentage of high grade cards that have been altered, to give estimates of 50% or greater being altered without any sort of quantitiative evidence is just a complete shot in the dark. You might as well just throw a dart at numbers from 1-100. Everyone's entitled to their opinions, but for those who believe the percentage of alterations is quite high - keep in mind that this is just that -an opinion. Just my own $0.02.....