PSA Response from President Steve Sloan

benjulmag · #1 06-10-2019, 05:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark17

To me, the proverbial elephant in the room is this: Exactly (and I mean, EXACTLY) what is illegal? I am not saying that deception is not happening in these well documented cases, and I am not in any way defending deceptive practices, but from a legal perspective, what can and what cannot a person do to a card before re-selling it?

Obviously, turning a Magee into a Magie is fraud. But consider:

1. If I find an all original 1966 Ford Mustang in Aunt Nellie's barn, and then clean the pigeon poop off the hood, vacuum and use stain remover on the flooring, put air in the tires, can't I still sell it as 100% original? Note that I did not replace the tires, hoses, belts, gaskets, which would have made it no longer "all original." All I did was clean off dirt. So, what's different between that and cleaning dirt of an otherwise original card?

2. If I buff out a scratch on that old Mustang, how is that different than spooning out a wrinkle?

3. What is the legal rule, exactly, on cutting (or trimming) cards? If I have a 1962 Post Cereal card that was hand cut to begin with, and has wide borders, can I trim it down to the correct card size, giving it razor sharp edges and corners? If not, why?

4. Suppose I find an uncut panel of Post cards, or Bazooka, or 1975 Hostess. Can I get them laser-cut into 10s? They were meant to be cut by the collector in the first place.

5. In the Junk Wax era, when many people like me were buying Topps vending cases by the hundreds and getting them sorted down, a guy named Rick Starks came up with a brilliant idea. Doing business as Steven Juskywicz (something like that,) he bought tons of uncut sheets directly from Topps and had them laser cut himself. I mean, pallets upon pallets of sheets. What was brilliant about it is that he'd have a bunch of the same sheets on the cutting machine at the same time, so when they were cut, stacks of the same card could be lifted off the cutter and set into 800-count boxes.

In other words, no sorting necessary. I finally got smart and purchased my 1990 Topps inventory from him. I bought 800 complete sets and what I received were 792 800-count boxes, each box contained 800 of the same card. It only took me a few hours to sort them into teams (for the teams I could sell) and separate the keepers from the commons.

When you'd open one of those boxes and look at the edges, they were smooth as glass. Perfectly cut. Plus, the centering was way better than the cards Topps was cutting. I will bet6 that a large percentage of graded Topps cards from that era, especially 9s and 10s, were cards cut not by Topps, but by Steven Juskywicz, Inc.

So, if someone found a vintage sheet of cards today, could they get it professionally cut to produce some beautiful individual cards? If not, how would that be different from the above example. For that matter, what would the difference be between cutting a sheet of cards, and buying a vintage sheet of stamps and breaking up the sheet to sell the stamps individually?

Before people start jumping all over me, please understand, I am NOT defending or advocating deception. My point is: What, exactly and precisely, is illegal, and what is not?

We can't simply say that certain people and companies are "Guilty" without defining exactly what they are guilty of. What does the law say about doing stuff to your baseball cards?

Probably easiest to respond to your points in your order. In doing so, I am not representing that I am stating the hobby's view (to the extent one can ascertain what that is) as opposed to only my view.

1. I do not think there is anything wrong with removing a foreign substance from a card provided in so doing you are returning the card to its same original physical state. If, say, to remove a glue stain a minute layer of the original card is removed with the glue, then that removal will have morphed into an alteration.

2. Two reasons: First, the crease can return, and for that reason the removal needs to be disclosed. Second, we are not selling old cars. We are selling cards that are represented to be unaltered by recognized grading standards. Should the day ever come that used cars before being sold need to be evaluated by national TPGs who specialize in car grading and the car grading standards mandate that scratch removal be disclosed, then at that point not disclosing it would be violative of that evaluation process.

3. No reason you cannot provided you disclose what you did. Again, we come down to the recognized grading standards. FWIW, I am a collector of final production-run uncut sheets that contain the vintage card(s)/set I want to own because I believe pristine cards/sets in such sheets are more valuable than the factory-cut versions. But then again I make that statement as a collector who collects for his subjective pleasure only. If I should one day decide to cut the sheets and then submit the cards for grading, I would need to disclose what I did. In another thread I made the observation that in my ideal world all the flip would reveal is whether the card is genuine and what has been done to it. There would be no numerical grades. So for a card cut from a sheet (or recut if cut improperly the first time), a person who couldn't care less provided the card is real and of proper size would presumably value it along the lines you are suggesting.

4. It depends on how such cards are graded. Not being a collector of them, I do not know if any such card can ever receive a numerical grade. Provided they can, then once again the key point here is disclosure.

5. This one is bit trickier as one could argue the dealer who cut them did so at the behest of Topps and that Topps for some of the sheets subcontracted them out to be cut. From that perspective, one could reasonably opine that the cards, provided they were cut substantially at time of issue, be treated as cut by an authorized agent of the manufacturer and therefore be deemed to have been cut by Topps. Question - when the dealer cut them, did the borders exhibit the same physical characteristics as when Topps cut them? Assuming they did then to me there is nothing wrong with what was done. That is my view though. Others might feel disclosure is still mandated.

Conclusion: If there is one "elephant in the room" that emerges from this discussion it is the absurdity of taking the subjective grading standards TPG companies employ and treating them with the same reverence as if they were an 11th commandment God gave Moses. BUT, because the hobby does IMO when submitting a card for grading one has a duty to disclose work done which if not picked up by the TPG would result in the card receiving a grade inconsistent with these standards.

Mark17 · #2 06-10-2019, 06:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by benjulmag

Probably easiest to respond to your points in your order. In doing so, I am not representing that I am stating the hobby's view (to the extent one can ascertain what that is) as opposed to only my view.

1. I do not think there is anything wrong with removing a foreign substance from a card provided in so doing you are returning the card to its same original physical state. If, say, to remove a glue stain a minute layer of the original card is removed with the glue, then that removal will have morphed into an alteration.

2. Two reasons: First, the crease can return, and for that reason the removal needs to be disclosed. Second, we are not selling old cars. We are selling cards that are represented to be unaltered by recognized grading standards. Should the day ever come that used cars before being sold need to be evaluated by national TPGs who specialize in car grading and the car grading standards mandate that scratch removal be disclosed, then at that point not disclosing it would be violative of that evaluation process.

3. No reason you cannot provided you disclose what you did. Again, we come down to the recognized grading standards. FWIW, I am a collector of final production-run uncut sheets that contain the vintage card(s)/set I want to own because I believe pristine cards in such sheets are more valuable than the factory-cut versions. But then again I make that statement as a collector who collects for his subjective pleasure only. If I should one day decide to cut the sheets and then submit the cards for grading, I would need to disclose what I did. In another thread I made the observation that in my ideal world all the flip would reveal is whether the card is genuine and what has been done to it. There would be no numerical grades. So for a card cut from a sheet (or recut if cut improperly the first time), a person who couldn't care less provided the card is real and of proper size would presumably value it along the lines you are suggesting.

4. It depends on how such cards are graded. Not being a collector of them, I do not know if any such card can ever receive a numerical grade. Provided they can, then once again the key point here is disclosure.

5. This one is bit trickier as one could argue the dealer who cut them did so at the behest of Topps and that Topps for some of the sheets subcontracted them out to be cut. From that perspective, one could reasonably opine that the cards be regarded as cut substantially at time of issue by an authorized agent of the manufacturer and therefore be deemed to have been cut by Topps. Question - when the dealer cut them, did the borders exhibit the same physical characteristics as when Topps cut them? Assuming they did then to me there is nothing wrong with what was done. That is my view though. Others might feel disclosure is still mandated.

Conclusion: If there is one "elephant in the room" that emerges from this discussion it is the absurdity of taking the subjective grading standards TPG companies employ and retreating them with the same reverence as if they were an 11th commandment God gave Moses.

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. I pretty much agree with you all the way down the list. Here are my thoughts to your comments:

1. Removing a foreign substance that causes paper loss... I am not sure how that is substantially different than handling my cards and creating a bit of paper loss from normal wear. It seems that your standard is that you can't do something that alters the card from its original state. Well, my cards had sharp corners in their original state, and now the corners show some fraying and rounding. Must I state to the TPG or buyer that I handled the cards a little, to account for their current non-mint condition?

2. "Unaltered by recognized grading standards." Are those standards universally accepted and codified in law somewhere? I'm being rhetorical - I think this is what is lacking in terms of being able to prosecute.

3. The problem with being able to do things to cards as long as you disclose what you did only goes one generation. Do I disclose what I did to the TPG and let them then grade the card (and now it is "officially" a 7 or 8 or whatever, after they take into consideration what I did) or do I disclose what I did to the buyer? Once the card has left my hands, there is no certainty the story of what I did will be recounted every subsequent time that card changes owners.

4. I don't think disclosure would be needed with cards that every collector knows were issued on the sides of boxes (cereal, jello, bubble gum pieces, cupcakes, etc.) What would the disclosure reveal? I cut these really cleanly? That would be self-evident.

5. I agree with the first part of what you said - Stephen Juskiewicz Inc. bought authentic cards from Topps and cut them with their blessing - but not with their equipment. As I mentioned in my post, looking at an 800 count box, the edges of the cards looked like glass, which is not how the edges of the cards in a Topps vending box look. They also paid much better attention to centering. In short, they did a superior job than Topps, which is why I suspect their cards were prime candidates for the top grades.

Your conclusion was good and I agree. But with all this gray area, I really wonder what the card doctors could be charged with, from a purely legal, prosecute-able standpoint. Not to get into a head-butting contest about who's elephant is bigger, but I think the biggest elephant in the room is that there might not be much of a legal leg for any prosecutor to stand on, even with all the evidence.

benjulmag · #3 06-10-2019, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark17

Thank you for your very thoughtful reply. I pretty much agree with you all the way down the list. Here are my thoughts to your comments:

1. Removing a foreign substance that causes paper loss... I am not sure how that is substantially different than handling my cards and creating a bit of paper loss from normal wear. It seems that your standard is that you can't do something that alters the card from its original state. Well, my cards had sharp corners in their original state, and now the corners show some fraying and rounding. Must I state to the TPG or buyer that I handled the cards a little, to account for their current non-mint condition?

2. "Unaltered by recognized grading standards." Are those standards universally accepted and codified in law somewhere? I'm being rhetorical - I think this is what is lacking in terms of being able to prosecute.

3. The problem with being able to do things to cards as long as you disclose what you did only goes one generation. Do I disclose what I did to the TPG and let them then grade the card (and now it is "officially" a 7 or 8 or whatever, after they take into consideration what I did) or do I disclose what I did to the buyer? Once the card has left my hands, there is no certainty the story of what I did will be recounted every subsequent time that card changes owners.

4. I don't think disclosure would be needed with cards that every collector knows were issued on the sides of boxes (cereal, jello, bubble gum pieces, cupcakes, etc.) What would the disclosure reveal? I cut these really cleanly? That would be self-evident.

5. I agree with the first part of what you said - Stephen Juskiewicz Inc. bought authentic cards from Topps and cut them with their blessing - but not with their equipment. As I mentioned in my post, looking at an 800 count box, the edges of the cards looked like glass, which is not how the edges of the cards in a Topps vending box look. They also paid much better attention to centering. In short, they did a superior job than Topps, which is why I suspect their cards were prime candidates for the top grades.

Your conclusion was good and I agree. But with all this gray area, I really wonder what the card doctors could be charged with, from a purely legal, prosecute-able standpoint. Not to get into a head-butting contest about who's elephant is bigger, but I think the biggest elephant in the room is that there might not be much of a legal leg for any prosecutor to stand on, even with all the evidence.

Again, in your order.

1. Worn corners are apparent and need no disclosure.

2. A successful fraud prosecution has nothing to do with whether the grading standards are codified in law.

3. If you are submitting it to a TPG, you disclose it to them. If the card is raw and you are selling it privately, you disclose that what a rational buyer would reasonably regard as material that otherwise the buyer would not reasonably be expected to know and from the circumstances reasonably would not expect to have been done to the card.

4. No argument.

5. Again with this issue, a murky area to some, but to me, I would be okay with it. The fact that this dealer did a better job cutting them, because he was an authorized subcontractor of Topps, would be analogous to different, say, tobacco factories cutting Piedmont brand t206s having better cutting processes. Despite that, those tobacco cards would all be properly regarded as factory cut.

Conclusion: The card doctors could properly be charged with fraud. Whether law enforcement wants to devote the resources to pursue this, that is another matter.

Peter_Spaeth · #4 06-10-2019, 10:02 AM

Corey do you mean a card doctor who together with an enabler (more likely multiple enablers) swindles people out of potentially millions of dollars through interstate commerce, by participating in a scheme to defraud by concealing patently material facts about the cards, could actually be charged with a crime?

benjulmag · #5 06-10-2019, 11:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Corey do you mean a card doctor who together with an enabler (more likely multiple enablers) swindles people out of potentially millions of dollars through interstate commerce, by participating in a scheme to defraud by concealing patently material facts about the cards, could actually be charged with a crime?

Peter,

One thing I like about you is your understated nature.

RollieFingers · #6 06-10-2019, 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Corey do you mean a card doctor who together with an enabler (more likely multiple enablers) swindles people out of potentially millions of dollars through interstate commerce, by participating in a scheme to defraud by concealing patently material facts about the cards, could actually be charged with a crime?

Why not? Government has done it to you for 100s of years.
But they are the only ones allowed to. It's only against the law when you do it.

Fuddjcal · #7 06-11-2019, 09:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RollieFingers

Why not? Government has done it to you for 100s of years.
But they are the only ones allowed to. It's only against the law when you do it.

Exactly, the Government can F*** us all they want. Brent mastro can not.

Fuddjcal · #8 06-10-2019, 04:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Corey do you mean a card doctor who together with an enabler (more likely multiple enablers) swindles people out of potentially millions of dollars through interstate commerce, by participating in a scheme to defraud by concealing patently material facts about the cards, could actually be charged with a crime?

that's precisely the point Peter in a nutshell. Here we have other gentleman that wants to talk cars and other analogies. It's silly at this point. You can see the people who are smarter than the next guy, they don't see the legalities so to each their own. LOL Brent Mastro doesn't have a problem with it either because he BUILT his business on this premise. Personally I think Brent mastro is complete DICK.

Please just save this response for the next nonsensical post so you can just copy and paste it so you don't have to keep repeating yourself.

Bored5000 · #9 06-10-2019, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fuddjcal

that's precisely the point Peter in a nutshell. Here we have other gentleman that wants to talk cars and other analogies. It's silly at this point. You can see the people who are smarter than the next guy, they don't see the legalities so to each their own. LOL Brent Mastro doesn't have a problem with it either because he BUILT his business on this premise. Personally I think Brent mastro is complete DICK.

Please just save this response for the next nonsensical post so you can just copy and paste it so you don't have to keep repeating yourself.

One thing I don't quite understand about the discussion is how often people want to bring up art or classic cars or stamps or coins. None of it has any relevance to what is or is not acceptable with cards.

mark evans · #10 06-10-2019, 05:22 PM

One of the problems is that there is no consensus as to what treatment/alteration/conservation, if any, is acceptable with regard to cards. Hopefully, one of the results of the current scandal will be an agreed-upon standard for these activities.

RollieFingers · #11 06-10-2019, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bored5000

One thing I don't quite understand about the discussion is how often people want to bring up art or classic cars or stamps or coins. None of it has any relevance to what is or is not acceptable with cards.

stamps and coins do.. are comparable in some sense

especially stamps.. they can be altered in similar ways

Mark17 · #12 06-10-2019, 12:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by benjulmag

Again, in your order.

1. Worn corners are apparent and need no disclosure.

2. A successful fraud prosecution has nothing to do with whether the grading standards are codified in law.

3. If you are submitting it to a TPG, you disclose it to them. If the card is raw and you are selling it privately, you disclose that what a rational buyer would reasonably regard as material that otherwise the buyer would not reasonably be expected to know and from the circumstances reasonably would not expect to have been done to the card.

4. No argument.

5. Again with this issue, a murky area to some, but to me, I would be okay with it. The fact that this dealer did a better job cutting them, because he was an authorized subcontractor of Topps, would be analogous to different, say, tobacco factories cutting Piedmont brand t206s having better cutting processes. Despite that, those tobacco cards would all be properly regarded as factory cut.

Conclusion: The card doctors could properly be charged with fraud. Whether law enforcement wants to devote the resources to pursue this, that is another matter.

Someone owns a baseball card. That's legal. They do something to it to enhance its appearance. That's legal. The consistent theme of your responses seems to be, if what was done to improve its appearance is disclosed, no problem.

But if nothing of that nature is committed to paper, couldn't it come down to:

Card Doctor : I told them I was improving the cards appearance some.
Auctioneer: I don't remember him saying that (or) I didn't know altering is what he meant.

Basically, He Said, He Said. Then when the card is sold to a third person, because of the claimed confusion above, no mention of "enhancements" is communicated to the current owner of the card, and now its circulating out there.

Thanks again for your thoughtfulness in this conversation. It's so nice to catch a break from the snarkiness, once in awhile.

And again I am not suggesting nothing wrong was done, and I appreciate the fact you get that.

Aquarian Sports Cards · #13 06-10-2019, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark17

Someone owns a baseball card. That's legal. They do something to it to enhance its appearance. That's legal. The consistent theme of your responses seems to be, if what was done to improve its appearance is disclosed, no problem.

But if nothing of that nature is committed to paper, couldn't it come down to:

Card Doctor : I told them I was improving the cards appearance some.
Auctioneer: I don't remember him saying that (or) I didn't know altering is what he meant.

Basically, He Said, He Said. Then then the card is sold to a third person, because of the claimed confusion above, no mention of "enhancements" is communicated to the current owner of the card, and now its circulating out there.

Thanks again for your thoughtfulness in this conversation. It's so nice to catch a break from the snarkiness, once in awhile.

And again I am not suggesting nothing wrong was done, and I appreciate the fact you get that.

Just because there was confusion between the two parties involved on the selling end doesn't absolve them of their responsibility to disclose. It may muddy the waters as to who is more culpable, but fraud has still occurred.

Mark17 · #14 06-10-2019, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aquarian Sports Cards

Just because there was confusion between the two parties involved on the selling end doesn't absolve them of their responsibility to disclose. It may muddy the waters as to who is more culpable, but fraud has still occurred.

I totally agree, and I think the overwhelming number of verified instances that have been uncovered so far is what makes it a clear crime.

It sounds like the answer to my original question, which you've stated concisely above, basically comes down to something like links on a chain. If the Doctor discloses the alteration, he's off the hook (and presumably he receives less for the card when he sells because of that honest disclosure.) If the next guy also discloses the alteration, as told to him by the Doctor, he, likewise, is off the hook. And so on down the road, until someone decides to maximize his profit by not disclosing the alteration. That person, then, is guilty of misrepresenting an altered card as unaltered.

Muddy waters, indeed.

Exhibitman · #15 06-10-2019, 01:29 PM

Fraud is more or less common sense, guys: would you want to know that the card had been trimmed, cleaned with a solvent, pressed to remove wrinkles, etc., when you buy the card? You would? Then the alteration is material and not disclosing it is fraudulent concealment.

But then there's PSA (or Beckett, except no one uses them here, so we can go with PSA). So how does that work?

You send the card to PSA without telling PSA you did something to it and you get it through. Yay!

So you sell your freshly graded card on eBay. Guess, what? You're still a fraudster, dumbass. You knew what the card went through and you didn't tell the buyer what you'd done to the card.

So, not wanting to be that dumbass, you decide to send it to a useful idiot on consignment. Let's call the useful idiot "Brent". You don't tell "Brent the useful idiot" that you altered the card and he sells it as a PSA graded card. Yay! Money!

But then some pesky kids on some chat board figure out what you did and they have photographic proof of it. Whoops! But you figure you are OK since PSA and Brent the useful idiot are the ones who certed the card and sold the card, respectively. The chump who bought the card can't claim you didn't disclose anything; you never even interacted with him. So the chump will go after Brent the useful idiot, and Brent the useful idiot will send the chump to PSA to enforce PSA's guarantee (yeah, good luck with that). PSA can't claim the card was altered without looking like a giant clown college instead of a legitimate expert outfit, so they probably will never voluntarily pay off. And most of the chumps won't have any way to sue PSA because they can't afford to pay an attorney and retain an expert to testify, so there will be lots of meaningless chatter across the blogosphere, but so what, you got your money!

What you forget is that if the card is in the window of returns or credit card disputes, Brent the useful idiot is going to get a charge back and he's gonna want his money back from you. Even an idiot wants a refund...And you also forgot about the ways you cheated Brent and PSA with your antics, which amount to an honest services fraud perpetrated against them, all undertaken through the mail. So you are a dumbass all over again, because even though you've not sold a thing directly, you used the mail to send all sorts of stuff you knew was bad to Brent the useful idiot and to the large company, and you managed to do a crime that you never even heard of if that Laurie Loughlin chick hadn't bribed her stupid daughters' ways into USC. Whoops. Worst of all, everyone following this scandal knows your name and many of the players know where you live and the press is starting to circle around.

Then the knock on the door...If you are lucky it is just a process server. If you are unlucky it is an investigator from law enforcement. If you are really unlucky it is one of those really pissed off chumps with a baseball bat.

Peter_Spaeth · #16 06-10-2019, 01:29 PM

This is why the only hope for people who care whether their cards are altered (itself a can of worms but leave it aside for now), is for the TPGs to identify the cards submitted by known or strongly suspected card doctors, and to have an open and honest review process.

benjulmag · #17 06-10-2019, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mark17

Someone owns a baseball card. That's legal. They do something to it to enhance its appearance. That's legal. The consistent theme of your responses seems to be, if what was done to improve its appearance is disclosed, no problem.

But if nothing of that nature is committed to paper, couldn't it come down to:

Card Doctor : I told them I was improving the cards appearance some.
Auctioneer: I don't remember him saying that (or) I didn't know altering is what he meant.

Basically, He Said, He Said. Then when the card is sold to a third person, because of the claimed confusion above, no mention of "enhancements" is communicated to the current owner of the card, and now its circulating out there.

Thanks again for your thoughtfulness in this conversation. It's so nice to catch a break from the snarkiness, once in awhile.

And again I am not suggesting nothing wrong was done, and I appreciate the fact you get that.

I'm glad if our discussion helped clarify things in your mind. I can understand how some of it might not be readily obvious if in your mind what you did was done in good faith not to cheat someone but instead to improve the appearance of the card.

And you are correct that if you own a baseball card, it is yours and you can do with it anything you want. But if you submit it for grading or sell it privately, if what you did would reasonably be material information to the grading company or your purchaser and is not readily obvious, you disclose. There's no downside to doing it and it could save you from some unpleasant accusations down the road.

As to the hypothetical you describe of making the disclosure orally, not a great idea. Put it writing, and if the other party will not acknowledge receipt of your disclosure, confirm it in an email (preferable) or text. A person's mood has a tendency to shift when he/she is about to loose big bucks and is looking for someone to pin it on.

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