Would this kind of grading company interest you?

[lowpopper]

Sorry guys but this is nonsense.

A peripheral device authenticating cards? Aside from the storing of the image for
future comparisons, the only usable data that can be reliably extracted from
a scan are measurements for total size and centering. Even that can easily be
thrown off by a print defect or a slightly irregular cut.

As far as alteration detection, the only way to use imaging technology to
identify altered cards would be to have a massive database of card
"before images" to compare to. Even if compiling a database with millions
of entries was feasible, it could never be 100% accurate due to the amount
of cards that come off the same print runs and have virtually identical physical
qualities. There would be too many "perfect matches" to identify the true
original.

I know not everyone has a tech background so I understand the optimism
when a discussion like this starts. At best, implementing technology can ASSIST
us with card grading. It could never be done with perfect accuracy. There will
always be errors: human and mechanical. The best we can do is use before and
after pictures on currently graded or serial numbered cards. Anything beyond
that would not improve upon the accuracy of a human physically measuring and
inspecting a card.

Has anybody calculated the current accuracy rate of the current grading process?
I hear a myriad of complaints regarding the grades that were assessed wrong, but
how many are done correctly? I would imagine it is something very north of 99%,
no? Millions upon millions of graded cards out there and a few thousand are turning
up bad? As far as ratios go, that sounds irrefutably reliable for a paid service. Yes,
one could make the argument that the sample size is smaller because the focus
seems to be on the higher value pieces, but that should not render the lesser value
slabbed cards to be irrelevant here. There may never be a way produce a process that
is void of error, collusion, or dubious behaviors. However, the current grading process
as a whole IS accurate based on the numbers we are aware of.

[Bigdaddy]

I would wager that a AI/machine learning tool set could do a much better job of authenticating and grading cards than a human ever could. At a minimum, it would be more consistent than the current 'which grader got this submission?' system that we seem to have.
There are free apps for your iphone that can measure items, are you telling me that a system specifically designed to measure cards, in all three dimensions, would not be better than a human?
Look what computers are doing in solving crimes, tracing genealogy, facial recognition, image processing, etc. Cameras in the Dallas Cowboys stadium scan the crowd and identify areas where trouble may be brewing in the crowd by analyzing the dynamics of the people. Just today I read about Stanford researchers who used Google street view images (50 million of them) to predict local demographics and election voting patterns. The machines were able to process the images in approximately two weeks, where a human expert would have taken over 15 years. And that was just to classify the images, not to use that data to predict anything.
Now these machines are only as good as the software and sensors on them, but their ability to quickly process images and extract useful data from them is far beyond what a human can do. And they do it much quicker and more consistently.
Are they perfect? No. Is this an easy task? No. But it is one where machine vision along with AI/machine learning would make a tremendous leap in the card grading/authentication clap-trap that we have now.

[topcat61]

Originally Posted by Bigdaddy

I would wager that a AI/machine learning tool set could do a much better job of authenticating and grading cards than a human ever could. At a minimum, it would be more consistent than the current 'which grader got this submission?' system that we seem to have.
There are free apps for your iphone that can measure items, are you telling me that a system specifically designed to measure cards, in all three dimensions, would not be better than a human?
Look what computers are doing in solving crimes, tracing genealogy, facial recognition, image processing, etc. Cameras in the Dallas Cowboys stadium scan the crowd and identify areas where trouble may be brewing in the crowd by analyzing the dynamics of the people. Just today I read about Stanford researchers who used Google street view images (50 million of them) to predict local demographics and election voting patterns. The machines were able to process the images in approximately two weeks, where a human expert would have taken over 15 years. And that was just to classify the images, not to use that data to predict anything.
Now these machines are only as good as the software and sensors on them, but their ability to quickly process images and extract useful data from them is far beyond what a human can do. And they do it much quicker and more consistently.
Are they perfect? No. Is this an easy task? No. But it is one where machine vision along with AI/machine learning would make a tremendous leap in the card grading/authentication clap-trap that we have now.

I use machines already when inspecting my cards -a black light, gram scale, digital microscope and most importantly, my brain. All these things help, but the one thing a machine cannot do is use critical thinking, logic and experience to know what to look for.

[Leon]

+1...though I don't use anything but a loupe, black light and experience. And I still make mistakes.

Originally Posted by topcat61

I use machines already when inspecting my cards -a black light, gram scale, digital microscope and most importantly, my brain. All these things help, but the one thing a machine cannot do is use critical thinking, logic and experience to know what to look for.

[Bigdaddy]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

Sorry guys but this is nonsense.

A peripheral device authenticating cards? Aside from the storing of the image for
future comparisons, the only usable data that can be reliably extracted from
a scan are measurements for total size and centering.

Ah, much more than that. Surface indentations and irregularities (indications of erasures), thickness, weight, florescence of the inks (like when folks use a black light), very small wrinkles, physical characteristics of the edges, foreign substances, etc. By using a sample of known good cards, an machine learning algorithm could be trained to detect abnormalities that are otherwise invisible to the human eye.

Think of it as looking at a card with a different set of eyes - highly magnified and sensitive to things that we don't normally see. Just like a bat sees objects at night when we cannot, or a dog detects smells that are beyond what we can smell. We don't use people to sniff for drugs, we use dogs.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

I hear a myriad of complaints regarding the grades that were assessed wrong, but how many are done correctly? I would imagine it is something very north of 99%, no?

When you mean "wrong," are you only classifying it as cards that are altered being given a numerical grade?

I would also declare these as wrong:
1) Mechanical errors: this includes wrong set information, wrong card variant, wrong card number, wrong grade attached to card by accident or process failure, multiple cards put in wrong slabs at same time, spelling errors, etc. I believe just this category would easily exceed 1% of cards/coins submitted. It's around 3-5% on the hundreds of cards I submitted.
2) Cards that are marked or miscut that are not labeled with the appropriate "we never remove these MC or MK" qualifiers, even if you ask us to?
3) Cards that are MINSIZ but slabbed with a number grade anyways: See 1975 Topps Mini set collectors thread on CU/PSA board.
4) Cards that PSA could easily identify with an internet search but are unwilling to and return as N9: NO SPEC INFO.
5) Cards that are NOT MINSIZ or EOT but are returned ungraded or slabbed AUTHENTIC ALTERED anyways.
6) Hand Cut cards given number grades despite not following PSA's own rules that the borders must be present?

You still want to tell me their failure rate is less than 1%? Watch some of the PSA reveals from Vintage Breaks and see how many times PSA slabs O-PEE-CHEE cards as Topps and Topps as O-Pee-Chees, even on easily distinguishable sets like 1971 OPC Baseball with the yellow-orange backs and different layout. They are awful at identifying modern card variants, even screwing up superfractors and labeling many hundred dollar variants as the base cards.

If their error rate isn't closer to 10%, I'll eat my hat.

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by swarmee

When you mean "wrong," are you only classifying it as cards that are altered being given a numerical grade?

I would also declare these as wrong:
1) Mechanical errors: this includes wrong set information, wrong card variant, wrong card number, wrong grade attached to card by accident or process failure, multiple cards put in wrong slabs at same time, spelling errors, etc. I believe just this category would easily exceed 1% of cards/coins submitted. It's around 3-5% on the hundreds of cards I submitted.
2) Cards that are marked or miscut that are not labeled with the appropriate "we never remove these MC or MK" qualifiers, even if you ask us to?
3) Cards that are MINSIZ but slabbed with a number grade anyways: See 1975 Topps Mini set collectors thread on CU/PSA board.
4) Cards that PSA could easily identify with an internet search but are unwilling to and return as N9: NO SPEC INFO.
5) Cards that are NOT MINSIZ or EOT but are returned ungraded or slabbed AUTHENTIC ALTERED anyways.
6) Hand Cut cards given number grades despite not following PSA's own rules that the borders must be present?

You still want to tell me their failure rate is less than 1%? Watch some of the PSA reveals from Vintage Breaks and see how many times PSA slabs O-PEE-CHEE cards as Topps and Topps as O-Pee-Chees, even on easily distinguishable sets like 1971 OPC Baseball with the yellow-orange backs and different layout. They are awful at identifying modern card variants, even screwing up superfractors and labeling many hundred dollar variants as the base cards.

If their error rate isn't closer to 10%, I'll eat my hat.

John, you just read into my post wrong.

to clarify...

Mechanical meaning anything to do with a machine, device, computer, etc.

not referring to "mech error" when PSA mislabels a card.

Bad was referring to the cards on the new suspect list. Not in reference to
under/over grades, mislabels or anything like that. My accuracy rate was
only referring to those cards that are on or will be on the list compared
to anything that is currently sitting soundly in a holder free of suspicion.

Purple Label would not exist if I believed every card was accurately graded
just in regard to the numerical grade.

Hope that clears things up

[swarmee]

Why do you only seem to care about this one list? Why are you not worried about purging all the cards from all the known bad actors from the PSA Cert system? Does someone need to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before you'll believe that PSA is ridiculously awful at their job of identifying alterations and "isolated bad actors" that PSA has allowed to submit tainted (and possibly even non-tainted) cards for the past 20 years under their own names?
I get it; you're part of the group who has something to lose if PSA goes under or takes a gut-punch to the abdomen. I've got thousands of PSA graded cards, but I'd rather see with this dealt with from the top in a manner that restores trust to the marketplace.
The hand-wringing and then forgetting is such a common pattern response to this issue that you can see the old guard believing that nothing will ever change, as long as we all get rich watching fraud happen. If that's true, we're all the perpetrators of fraud. Well, I'm not standing on the sidelines. I'm making a stand.

But to keep trivializing the depth of this fraud is hysterical to me. We're not buying it.

[ullmandds]

im right there with you john...but what does purging of all the altered cards mean? Destroy them? Try to permanently label them...give them a scarlet letter? I'd be good with either scenario...but it aint gonna happen!!!!!

Imagine if they were destroyed???? The pops would be dramatically affected in some cases!

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

im right there with you john...but what does purging of all the altered cards mean? Destroy them? Try to permanently label them...give them a scarlet letter? I'd be good with either scenario...but it aint gonna happen!!!!!

Imagine if they were destroyed???? The pops would be dramatically affected in some cases!

I mean purging the cert numbers (both the new and the discovered old ones in the before pictures that aren't really "evidence"). That will get the vast majority into PSA's hands for their guarantee to be reholdered as Authentic - Altered. I don't need the hole punch scenario. I just want to see the tainted cards dealt with by PSA. Obviously, they should keep many of them as training tools to learn how to actually detect alterations.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why do you only seem to care about this one list? Why are you not worried about purging all the cards from all the known bad actors from the PSA Cert system? Does someone need to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before you'll believe that PSA is ridiculously awful at their job of identifying alterations and "isolated bad actors" that PSA has allowed to submit tainted (and possibly even non-tainted) cards for the past 20 years under their own names?
I get it; you're part of the group who has something to lose if PSA goes under or takes a gut-punch to the abdomen. I've got thousands of PSA graded cards, but I'd rather see with this dealt with from the top in a manner that restores trust to the marketplace.
The hand-wringing and then forgetting is such a common pattern response to this issue that you can see the old guard believing that nothing will ever change, as long as we all get rich watching fraud happen. If that's true, we're all the perpetrators of fraud. Well, I'm not standing on the sidelines. I'm making a stand.

But to keep trivializing the depth of this fraud is hysterical to me. We're not buying it.

I think starting tomorrow the list -- as limited a subset of all this as it is -- will start growing quite a bit. At this point, nobody paying attention is buying the minimize and contain spin.

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why do you only seem to care about this one list? Why are you not worried about purging all the cards from all the known bad actors from the PSA Cert system? Does someone need to dot all the i's and cross all the t's before you'll believe that PSA is ridiculously awful at their job of identifying alterations and "isolated bad actors" that PSA has allowed to submit tainted (and possibly even non-tainted) cards for the past 20 years under their own names?
I get it; you're part of the group who has something to lose if PSA goes under or takes a gut-punch to the abdomen. I've got thousands of PSA graded cards, but I'd rather see with this dealt with from the top in a manner that restores trust to the marketplace.
The hand-wringing and then forgetting is such a common pattern response to this issue that you can see the old guard believing that nothing will ever change, as long as we all get rich watching fraud happen. If that's true, we're all the perpetrators of fraud. Well, I'm not standing on the sidelines. I'm making a stand.

But to keep trivializing the depth of this fraud is hysterical to me. We're not buying it.

What do you suggest within a reasonable scope that Purple Label can do
in respect to the current issues we are facing?

I have not officially queried the public with this exact question but it is
coming soon.

[swarmee]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

What do you suggest within a reasonable scope that Purple Label can do in respect to the current issues we are facing?

Why does your company need to do anything? I don't see it is a viable business model anyways.

You, personally, should demand accountability from PSA and boycott them, and not purchase graded cards. That's what I'm doing. #sinceyouasked

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why does your company need to do anything? I don't see it is a viable business model anyways.

You, personally, should demand accountability from PSA and boycott them, and not purchase graded cards. That's what I'm doing. #sinceyouasked

It's interesting to me that (and apologies if I have missed anyone) other than Al C. and Scott R., we haven't heard much if anything from the AHs and dealers who are members of this Board. As they are bulwarks of the industry it would be helpful to get their insight and perspective and guidance, but apparently they choose silence.

[lowpopper]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Why does your company need to do anything? I don't see it is a viable business model anyways.

You, personally, should demand accountability from PSA and boycott them, and not purchase graded cards. That's what I'm doing. #sinceyouasked

Ok. Have fun on your crusade!

[CobbSpikedMe]

Originally Posted by lowpopper

Millions upon millions of graded cards out there and a few thousand are turning
up bad? As far as ratios go, that sounds irrefutably reliable for a paid service.

But the millions upon millions of graded cards out there are not altered to begin with. So the actual ratio of accuracy should be calculated on the number of Altered cards that were submitted related to the number that were caught. The millions upon millions of unaltered cards shouldn't be included in the calculation. This would bring the percentage way down from 99% accuracy to a much lower number, maybe 25%. Just a guess. That's pathetic reliability for a paid service.