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D. C. MarkelI agreed with boxingcardman's post and you "could not disagree more". I don't want to put words in your mouth Jim, but are you saying, "Card grading should ALWAYS be used as a substitute for intelligence, judgment and skill and should NOT function as an additional tool to supplement a collector's experienced and appreciative eye.......?"
First off I do believe grading has "overall" provided an invaluable service to the hobby. I would rather trust the experience of PSA or SGC over some dealer selling raw cards over the internet. Do I think grading companies catch every alteration? No. Do I think I am as good as any professional grader? Overall, clearly not, but I do believe I'm extremely good at the years I collect ('67-'72 Topps Baseball) and when you've looked and studied thousands upon thousands of those cards you develop a 6th sense of what is good and what is bad. I've spent about $400 on various types of equipment that I've found to be extremely helpful in reviewing cards and its paid for itself several times over. So yes, in those years, I would accept your challenge for detecting five good cards from five bad, and if I miss one or two, then perhaps I'll learn something more.
Card altering is certainly a problem but when boxingcardman posted his message, the first thing that came to my mind is how grading has taken away the appreciation for aesthetics. There are gorgeous 8's and 9's and ugly 8's and 9's. What bothers me so much is that many collectors do not seem to care what the card looks like as long as it has the desired grade. I take into consideration at least 8 aspects pertaining to "the look" of a card before I consider buying it. Do the top dogs in the registry do that? Not from what I've observed with some.
One recent glaring example of late is the 1965 Topps N.L. ERA Leaders PSA 10 card with the five noticeable "fish-eyes" that sold for $25K that's in the latest SMR (p. 134).