View Single Post
  #50  
Old 10-08-2020, 12:39 PM
jchcollins's Avatar
jchcollins jchcollins is offline
J0hn Collin$
Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: NC
Posts: 3,243
Default

Yeah Martin, I would disagree. PSA has had shady elements to its business practices for decades now in terms of who gets what grades, what cards may or may not be altered, consistency of grading over time, the list goes on and on. But the hobby as a whole did not hard check them enough over this most recent episode to make a difference, other than a bunch of the usual complaining. There's a conflict of interest here in theory for most of us - we suspect skulduggery on some level with a grader, but most of us have slabs with nice cards from said grader that would be worth less and perhaps even substantially less if indeed that grader's reputation is noticeably harmed. So we don't do it.

I don't know if that means we can't continue to call out individual bad actors and things that we know are wrong. For PSA before 2018, there is a lot of speculation, but not a ton of absolute proof in terms of wrongdoing. (That is if you don't consider the case of the very first card they ever graded - which was known to be altered at the time, and was slabbed as not being that way regardless).

If we are being positive and not criticizing the community as a whole, sure I would like to see PSA "improve" - but I think you do this via a free market and giving them more competition. Place more emphasis on correct authentication and the subtleties of alteration than simply focusing on the difference between a PSA 9 and 10, perhaps. But again, there would have to be a market demand to do this - and if the past 2 years for PWCC and PSA are any indication - a few people here on message boards that are actually card geeks and not just flip worshippers have not been nearly enough to do that.
__________________
Vintage Cubs. Postwar stars & HOF'ers.

Last edited by jchcollins; 10-08-2020 at 01:28 PM.
Reply With Quote