Quote:
Originally Posted by hcv123
I guess that was one of the few they missed. (Read with sarcasm).
To me there as an obvious simple solution - they have all these different "altered" designations - just add it to the "altered" slab so everyone can see the alteration they are claiming - just the way they do numeric grades. Altered - trimmed, altered - colored, altered - sat in a screw-down to long, etc.
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Exactly. Just put the N-1 or N-5 code or whichever one applies on the flip. At least inform people of what they think the issue is.
Unfortunately though, this probably only makes a difference with really high-end cards that often get counterfeited and thus pretty much have to be in slabs to get sold. Something like a 52T Mantle. Because I think we all know what happens to 'Authentic' slabs for everything else.
The only cards I recall ever getting back from PSA that said "Evidence of trimming" were ultra-modern cards that I pulled from packs myself. I wish I knew what they thought they saw with those cards. I didn't think to set them aside or examine them though. I don't even recall which cards they were now. I just remember rolling my eyes and chalking it up as a loss.
I bought a 1956 Topps Jackie Robinson card from an older gentleman in his 80s last year. He had had the card in his possession since 1956. He watched his cousin pull it from a pack and then traded him for it shortly after. It has been in his collection ever since. A couple years ago, someone advised him that he needed to have his cards graded if he wanted to sell them, but he didn't have any experience grading cards. So he sent them off to get graded with the help of a friend. The Jackie card came back rejected with "evidence of trimming". He was pretty frustrated since he obviously knew it had never been trimmed, as it was in his possession the whole time. So he sent it in again and it came back as "evidence of trimming" again. He was furious at this point. I knew he was telling me the truth when I asked about the card. He could have just sold it raw and not mentioned it, but he was an honest seller. I thought the provenance of the card was pretty cool, and I love stories like that, so I made him a generous offer that he was pretty happy about. He said he'd send me the "evidence of trimming" flips along with the card, which he did. Once I recieved it, I examined it super closely. The top and bottom edges were smoother than the side edges upon inspection, which is probably why PSA rejected it, but anyone who collects this set and examines the edges closely knows that this isn't abnormal. And the smoother edges were far from smooth. They still had completely normal chipping and were consistent with all of my other 1956 Topps cards. So, I sent it to SGC because they're more competent than PSA, and it came back in its proper SGC 5 holder as it should have. The card isn't for sale, and probably won't be until I've passed. I love the card too much and the story that comes with it to let it go. But it does raise an interesting question about its provenance going forward. If I were a dealer setting up a booth at a show and talking to people face-to-face, selling that card, I would probably bring the rejected PSA flips along with it and include them with the sale of the card and pass along the fun story to the next buyer. That's part of the joy of the personal sales relationships at a card show. But if I were selling it on something like MySlabs.com, that's just not an option. Or even if I were selling it on eBay, I probably wouldn't even bother with it. Some of this stuff just gets lost in the digital space the hobby now resides in. Those personal stories that connect someone to a card just don't translate as well online sometimes. The funny thing is though, some people would claim that it would be deceitful or dishonest to sell it without divulging that PSA mistakenly thought the card was trimmed prior to SGC saying it wasn't and giving it a number grade. But I felt as though I had every reason to believe the guy I bought it from, and I know that PSA is just guessing half the time anyhow, so their opinion holds near-zero weight to me with respect to this card.
As I said, the card isn't for sale, and will probably get passed on to my kids one day, but it provides for an interesting debate with respect to how people view the responsibility of a seller for passing along information like this. I even remember people on Blowhard trying to get eBay sellers reported and banned because they found out that a seller was listing a card as raw that had previously been listed in a PSA 8 holder. As is often the case, he didn't agree with PSA's grade so he cracked it out. But for some reason, some percentage of the hobby believes that once a card gets slabbed, that borderline arbitrary number grade assigned to it is now somehow part of the card itself and the two cannot divorce. I think I'll refer to them as Catholic cards in the future. Personally, I don't think it's dishonest at all to crack a card out of a slab. I do it often. I know how to grade cards. If I get a bullshit grade, I'll crack it out and either resubmit it or send it to a different TPG. Very rarely do I get the same grade twice.