Quote:
Originally Posted by barrysloate
Bob C- with regard to all the detective work the blowout forum did, I think every card in their before/after comparisons were altered. There were no examples, to my memory, of cards that were merely resubmitted and got a bump. They showed the diagnostic points that were changed by the card doctors. Maybe that's a small point based on your comprehensive post, but wanted to point it out.
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Barry,
I don't disagree with you at all. All I was getting at was that we unfortunately do not have a standard, agreed upon set of grading standards that all TPGs follow, nor do they submit to independent third party peer reviews to ensure that they are following and executing all the required tests and applying all the standards in a consistent and proper manner, nor will they unless and until the collecting/hobby community can get together and make them, or force them out of business for not complying. And without a set and agreed upon set of standards and testing, I can see it being argued by attorneys that some card doctor has technically not done anything wrong. I also stated that I agree there is definitely something wrong with the tremendous amount of submissions being listed and all the scans the Blowout guys have found and put out for people to see. I tip my hat to them for all their detective work and we both know there are tons of doctored/altered cards included in those lists. Now is every single card in those lists doctored/altered, I honestly don't know. And I don't believe (I could be wrong) that the Blowout guys have found before and after scans for every suspect card in those listings. And that is part of the problem. If you try to accuse someone of doing that many altered/doctored cards and in going through the lists you start finding more and more that you can't definitively prove were altered in some manner, it starts to eat away at your claim and accusations to some extent. Plus, I have to believe that in a lot of cases, these card doctors are not always so successful in their attempts to improve a card. In such instances, they probably just submit the cards to whatever TPG will grade it and push them out to get as much cash as they can to go back and buy other cards to try their luck on again.
And those before and after scans the Blowout guys found are definitely damning evidence, but again, we've often mentioned on here about variances and issues with scans and differences that can occur. A good attorney would likely argue that some of the issues and such may be due to scanning issues/differences. Also, just because the Blowout guys find scans that show similar marks on supposedly the same card graded twice and bumped up with the second grading, doesn't mean that there couldn't actually be others of those exact same cards with the same, similar marks on them. So what would happen if in court a defense attorney presented ungraded cards that were the same as ones being questioned as having been altered and resubmitted for grading as evidence, and they also showed the same or similar marking as the cards in question? So then the argument could be that the two scans were possibly not of the exact same card after all and that just because two graded cards had some similar markings, it didn't definitely prove they were in fact the exact same cards. If a card doctor can remove something, can't they also possibly add something to make two separate cards look more alike? Probably not as easy, but still possible.
I'm with you and pretty confident these cards are being doctored and resubmitted, but then again like you, I've been collecting and handling cards a long time and think I'm somewhat experienced in regards to what is and isn't acceptable and probable. However, if selected for jury duty, the chances of you or I being allowed to remain on that jury by the defense counsel is about as good as the chances of a snowball surviving in hell! Have a good one.