Originally Posted by BobC
Rob,
Don't disagree with you at all, but here in a nutshell is where/how we all get screwed.
There is absolutely nothing illegal about trimming, altering, or doing anything else your heart desires to a baseball (or any) card you own. There is also absolutely nothing illegal about submitting an altered or trimmed card to a third-party grading company or service. And to my knowledge, there is no legal requirement that you tell any such TPG you submit a card to that it has been altered, trimmed, or doctored in any way, by you or anyone else. Now as for the TPGs examining said cards, they explicitly have it worded in their documentation and agreements that they are only giving their "opinion" as to a card's authenticity and condition. How do/can you ask a jury to find someone guilty of simply giving their "opinion" about something, especially when there is no single recognized, documented, and/or enforced set of codified standards or measures that a TPG, and their individual card graders, are required to follow? Short answer - you can't.
Card graders are not licensed by any independent, overseeing authorities, like say doctors, CPas, licensed architects, etc. There is no single, unchanging set of card grading standards to hold any TPG and their card graders to. Look at how many times on just this forum alone we've discussed how different TPGs all seem to have their own separate grading standards, and how even those standards appear to continually change over time. And also, not everyone in the hobby is in agreement as to what exactly constitutes an alteration or doctoring of a card. In fact, there are those that look upon such work as perfectly acceptable restoration or preservation of a card. Again, just on this forum alone, we have threads where soaking, erasing marks, removal of glue and stains, pressing out creases, and so on, are discussed and considered at different levels of acceptability by different people. So, if we in the hobby can't possibly all agree on one single, unchanging, recognized and documented set of standards and measures regarding the authentication and grading of cards, how could we expect some jury to ever find anyone guilty of having committed a crime regarding the grading, authentication, and sale of supposedly altered and doctored cards?
If anything, you'd likely have better luck prevailing against Ebay in their claims that their new authentication program virtually guarantees you'll get authentic cards, and as described. The independent TPG doing that authentication work is once again, only giving their "opinion", so how could Ebay truly guarantee anything? They really can't. But if you dig deep into Ebay's terms and conditions regarding this newly offered service, I wouldn't be surprised to find wording that helps to protect and/or indemnify them from any such potential claims.
And the worst thing is, there's not a whole lot we can do about any of this.
|