PSA/SGC Waiting Lines At 2019 National

Peter_Spaeth · #1 07-05-2019, 10:54 AM

I suspect, Bob, that PSA will aggressively downplay it with their auditors, and claim nothing is new here just an intensification of the chatter that's always in the background. I think they could probably afford a significant increase to the reserve, as they seem to have (you would know better than I would, interested in your opinion) a decent amount of cash for a company their size, but at the same time that could affect perception of their confidence in their own abilities to grade and I doubt they want to send that message. But we'll see.

BobC · #2 07-05-2019, 01:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I suspect, Bob, that PSA will aggressively downplay it with their auditors, and claim nothing is new here just an intensification of the chatter that's always in the background. I think they could probably afford a significant increase to the reserve, as they seem to have (you would know better than I would, interested in your opinion) a decent amount of cash for a company their size, but at the same time that could affect perception of their confidence in their own abilities to grade and I doubt they want to send that message. But we'll see.

That is exactly what I'm thinking also, that they will downplay any current issues as nothing new and assert that as always they will vigorously defend themselves against any and all false or misleading allegations. And quite frankly, that is really all everything is right now, allegations. Despite all the scans and evidence that the Blowout guys have unearthed, and what looks to be fairly damning evidence across the board, nothing has yet been definitively proven as factual in any applicable court or by any other organization or party deemed/felt by the hobby community to represent it in determining such things. The sad truth is that up to now, the hobby has been looking to the likes of TPGs like PSA to be considered and treated as the be-all-end-all arbiters of what is or isn't authentic or altered. So with the recent, sudden revelations of all the suspect graded cards that are showing up, do we really expect any of the TPGs to suddenly realize they may not know as much as they profess to in regards to cards and what they are doing in grading them, and to openly start to admit that they have mistakenly been grading altered/doctored cards for years? It financially could be ruinous to them to now start doing so, and upend the hobby itself by putting things like the entire Registry in question. So as I've said before, it seems that even if the TPGs were not knowingly involved and collusive with card doctors, dealers and any other parties possibly involved in these fraudulent schemes, because of the financial and business effects these revelations could have on them, it behooves them to shut up and say nothing about this. They are in a virtual Catch-22 where if they admit to their prior grading errors and mistakes, it can end up costing them financially and reputation/business-wise. And if they say and do nothing and stick by their earlier grading opinions, the evidence found about their alleged mistakes will still find them guilty in the court of public opinion, which these myriad of threads about the issue already seem to prove true, at least among people on the BO and Net54 forums. In all the threads and posts I've seen, I don't seem to remember many, if any, posters taking the side of the TPGs and defending them as being correct.

And think about this, despite all the before and after scans the Blowout guys have been able to find and share with everyone, does anyone truly think the card doctors would have limited themselves solely to only picking up cards from other recent auctions to then perform their magic on and have re-graded and sold right away? What about all the cards the card doctors may have picked up at shows, from private sales, that were originally raw, etc., etc., where there were no convenient, recent, high-res scans the Blowout guys could go back to and show the similarities and then highlight the alterations made to such cards? My guess is that given the years over which these card doctors have been known to be operating and the multiple sources and areas they could have been getting their subjects to work on and alter, the number of supposedly altered/doctored cards that the Blowout guys have been able to find before and after scans of and show us are probably only an unbelievably small fraction of the doctored/altered cards that actually could be out there in the hobby, all sitting in otherwise legitimate, TPG graded holders.

And here is the scariest thing of all to me. If these card doctors are that good and can make these alterations so that they cannot be readily detected by the so called expert TPG companies when looking at them, without the availability of these before and after scans that the Blowout guys have been able to find and share with us, there is no way to tell beyond a doubt that any other graded cards with a numerical grade, regardless of what that grade is, have not also been altered or doctored. Unless it was found that these cards doctors over the years had been keeping records of all the cards they had worked on and then got re-graded and what they got as a bump in the grades, the new cert numbers, and so on, it will be impossible to tell. And I sincerely doubt the card doctors or anyone else possibly involved would be that stupid to keep such detailed records around that could possibly incriminate them. And even if they did keep such records, how would you be able to coerce them into making them public unless legal authorities started going after them criminally and somehow getting such data from them before they had a chance to destroy it.

And because of all this uncertainty and the ultimate inability to be able to possibly prove definitively what graded cards are or aren't altered/doctored, I can see a large part of the hobby community turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the whole thing and waiting till it blows over. Too many people have too much money tied up in their collections or inventory, or associated with their Registry holdings to want to see the entire hobby trashed to the point that they end up suffering financially as a result. Because of the unknown numbers of already altered/doctored cards that may be sitting in graded holders, and the inability for anyone to now go back and prove otherwise, the hobby in general may just end up accepting the fact that there are probably a lot of altered/graded cards in TPG company holders out there, but that if the TPGs couldn't detect any issues, then the'll leave them as is and basically the hobby will have started accepting these as restored/conserved cards and leave them as graded.

Otherwise, how can you feel comfortable buying any graded card then? Will one/some of the TPGs admit they may have had shortcomings and revise their grading procedures and testing so as to be able to detect these alterations in the future? if so, could it possibly mean that any future sales of graded cards will now require the seller to have a card re-graded to see if it were possibly altered before someone purchased it? I just can't see that happening due to the sheer number of graded cards out there and the costs to go through doing all that. And even so, who would trust any of the existing TPGs to get it right anyway. Quite honestly, you know who would probably be the best party/group to set up a new TPG to do the grading and detect these alterations, the card doctors themselves! Who else would be better able to detect the alterations than those who knew how to do them in the first place, right? But hopefully, that isn't ever happening either.

Getting back to the issues with regard to the CU financials and Annual Report, we don't know what their year-end numbers as of 6/30/19 will look like right now, but the measure of what is considered material to the financial statements will be determined based on those year-end numbers. And I already mentioned that based on the prior year-end numbers as of 6/30/18, the measure of materiality on those financial statements would probably have been around $500K, not really that much. So depending on what PSA graded cards were showing up on those Blowout lists as questionably graded, and the potential differences in their cumulative value should they actually only have been graded as "A" (authentic) instead of receiving numerical grades, that is what should be considered and factored into the Warranty Reserve that will show up on CU's financials. What actually ends up on their will thus be very telling.

swarmee · #3 07-05-2019, 01:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BobC

And because of all this uncertainty and the ultimate inability to be able to possibly prove definitively what graded cards are or aren't altered/doctored, I can see a large part of the hobby community turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the whole thing and waiting till it blows over.

This is what has happened in all the previous scandals, and you can see those heavily invested parties already hoping this will blow over too, so their their baseball card nest eggs aren't decimated in value.
However, now the investigators are the collectors that are fed up with Beckett, PSA, and to a lesser extent, SGC claiming to be unbiased arbitrators of card condition. They are not letting this blow over. It's now been 2 months since the first card was noted to be "conserved" through PSA, and the number of fraudulent cards detected and number of Cert # submission records are only INCREASING in severity and sheer numbers. Currently, PSA is liable for approximately $1,000,000 in Grade Guarantees for just the cards with before and after pictures.
But as I informed them, if PWCC pays for the reimbursement, that lessens their liability. If PWCC or Gary (or other fraudsters) then try to get reimbursement through the Grade Guarantee on cards they KNOWINGLY submitted as altered, PSA should tell them to pound sand since they violated the rules they signed when they submitted the cards. And Brent himself in that hour-long video, promised to refund from PWCC's pocket the fraudulent cards submitted directly by the company.
We haven't even gotten to the National yet. PSA may be sticking its head in the sand, but if their reserve doesn't go up to the millions in the next shareholder statement, someone should refer it to the SEC for investigation. PSA still has not made ANY notification to its collectors, save the worthless "we were duped" statement on their never read message board. It's never been on their website, emailed to their customers, and they haven't been calling anyone, as far as I know.
PWCC actually had reached out to some of the collectors who had cards outed (a.k.a. "slandered" as a Brettism) on the Blowout boards, but not to any of the other customers who bought cards on the same tainted submissions. If people aren't willing to demand accountability for PSA, Beckett, and SGC's lack of accuracy, then nothing will change without law enforcement. But some are speaking with their wallets.

I know I've directly contacted about 30 of their Set Registry guys to inform them their cards were tainted. If PSA isn't going to protect their customers (despite their "NEVER GET CHEATED" motto), I will step in. And so will the other Blowout Detectives. This isn't really like any scandal they've had in the past.

Johnny630 · #4 07-05-2019, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swarmee

This is what has happened in all the previous scandals, and you can see those heavily invested parties already hoping this will blow over too, so their their baseball card nest eggs aren't decimated in value.
However, now the investigators are the collectors that are fed up with Beckett, PSA, and to a lesser extent, SGC claiming to be unbiased arbitrators of card condition. They are not letting this blow over. It's now been 2 months since the first card was noted to be "conserved" through PSA, and the number of fraudulent cards detected and number of Cert # submission records are only INCREASING in severity and sheer numbers. Currently, PSA is liable for approximately $1,000,000 in Grade Guarantees for just the cards with before and after pictures.
But as I informed them, if PWCC pays for the reimbursement, that lessens their liability. If PWCC or Gary (or other fraudsters) then try to get reimbursement through the Grade Guarantee on cards they KNOWINGLY submitted as altered, PSA should tell them to pound sand since they violated the rules they signed when they submitted the cards. And Brent himself in that hour-long video, promised to refund from PWCC's pocket the fraudulent cards submitted directly by the company.
We haven't even gotten to the National yet. PSA may be sticking its head in the sand, but if their reserve doesn't go up to the millions in the next shareholder statement, someone should refer it to the SEC for investigation. PSA still has not made ANY notification to its collectors, save the worthless "we were duped" statement on their never read message board. It's never been on their website, emailed to their customers, and they haven't been calling anyone, as far as I know.
PWCC actually had reached out to some of the collectors who had cards outed (a.k.a. "slandered" as a Brettism) on the Blowout boards, but not to any of the other customers who bought cards on the same tainted submissions. If people aren't willing to demand accountability for PSA, Beckett, and SGC's lack of accuracy, then nothing will change without law enforcement. But some are speaking with their wallets.

I know I've directly contacted about 30 of their Set Registry guys to inform them their cards were tainted. If PSA isn't going to protect their customers (despite their "NEVER GET CHEATED" motto), I will step in. And so will the other Blowout Detectives. This isn't really like any scandal they've had in the past.

+1 Joh

perezfan · #5 07-05-2019, 02:39 PM

It's arguably the biggest scandal to hit the hobby, and is receiving virtually no "mainstream media" attention. Of course it behooves PSA to shut up. PSA is counting on it all blowing over, but if enough attention is brought to the matter at The National Convention, there will definitely be mainstream coverage that finally captures it. Media is always present at The National...

Spreading the word (as swarmee is doing) is really up to the collectors who care about the hobby. There is no other "voice" in our corner, and the opposition has far deeper pockets to defend and deflect blame.

Bob, you made a lot of good comments in your post, some of which may have gotten buried (due to the length of it). But one of the keys is that nobody knows how many altered cards are in numbered slabs. Card Doctors have been at it forever, and it's only recently (through use of the internet and excellent detective skills) that these alterations have been identified.

I cannot even imagine how many thousands of raw cards were bought at local shows or from private collections, which cannot be traced like the ones on Blowout. And how many altered examples that now reside in numbered holders is anyone's guess. Those who are deeply invested (whether monetarily or emotionally) will never be able to give it up, but the numerical grading system is now called into question and has largely been rendered meaningless. The timing is ripe for a complete system overhaul.

Peter_Spaeth · #6 07-05-2019, 02:44 PM

The timing is ripe for some serious prosecutions. This hobby will never police itself. 99 percent will look the other way or gladly take in the profits from the price umbrella.

And continue to protect card doctors buying from them or consigning to them.

Johnny630 · #7 07-05-2019, 02:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

The timing is ripe for some serious prosecutions. This hobby will never police itself. 99 percent will look the other way or gladly take in the profits from the price umbrella.

And continue to protect card doctors buying from them or consigning to them.

Agree Peter sadly it�s always been that way and will continue to be....

barrysloate · #8 07-05-2019, 03:11 PM

If the hobby is going to accept that a great percentage of all high grade cards are altered and not what they appear to be, then these cards should start selling at a deep discount. You can argue that a card altered to look like an 8 is still a beautiful card and worth buying for one's collection, but it would make no sense to pay top dollar for it.

If you are willing to pay say $1000 for a genuine NR MT/MT, you can't pay the same amount for a lower grade card that's been doctored, trimmed, recolored, dry cleaned, or whatever else. Somewhere, somehow collectors have to wake up to the ridiculousness of this all.

Or maybe absolutely nothing will change. Let's find out.

swarmee · #9 07-05-2019, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perezfan

I cannot even imagine how many thousands of raw cards were bought at local shows or from private collections, which cannot be traced like the ones on Blowout.

That's one of the interesting things. The whitman111 account has purchased some complete sets from raw card sellers, so it's not just cracked out slabs.
There are many sets in the PSA registry that are completely useless due to fraudulently slabbed cards, IMO:
1952 Topps Look-N-See
1950-60s Parkhurst Hockey
1948 Leaf Baseball, Football, and Wrestling
T206 (not just from Moser, but years and years of trimmed cards)
1952 Topps baseball
1950s Bowman
1951 Topps Ringside
1952 Berk Ross
N162 Champions
1937 O-Pee-Chee hockey
1961 Fleer Basketball
N28 Ginter Champions
1933 Goudey Sport Kings
1957 Topps
1955 Bowman
1955 Bowman FB
1958 Topps
1960 Leaf baseball
1959 Topps baseball

Thousands upon thousands of cards altered from some of the nicest/most collected sets in the industry.

Peter_Spaeth · #10 07-05-2019, 03:13 PM

John all these guys are or were show guys, relentlessly looking for raw cards they could alter.

Johnny630 · #11 07-05-2019, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

John all these guys are or were show guys, relentlessly looking for raw cards they could alter.

You’re correct! I would see them either set up yup....or last year, even worse, white plains he was walking the floor with a badge/dealer pass.......I was like what the hell !!!!

BobC · #12 07-05-2019, 05:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by perezfan

Bob, you made a lot of good comments in your post, some of which may have gotten buried (due to the length of it). But one of the keys is that nobody knows how many altered cards are in numbered slabs. Card Doctors have been at it forever, and it's only recently (through use of the internet and excellent detective skills) that these alterations have been identified.

Sorry for my long posts, but I'm old school and not a child of Twitter and Instagram. If I'm going to say something I'm going to try and present a complete picture/argument/statement and not just put out a quick line or two. All too often someone puts down a line or two and it is so vague or incomplete that most people misinterpret or misunderstand what they are trying to say, and then more or less ignore or really don't even think about what they read. If someone reading my posts realizes I'm not just blurting out or making a knee jerk reaction or statement as to what is going on, it will hopefully get more people really thinking about the issues and problems.

The questionability as to the alteration of so many cards is already out there, the proverbial horses have already left the barn and they aren't coming back!!! Absent card doctors coming forth and admitting what they have done and what graded cards are out there that have been altered, we'll never know for certain which cards are or are not good. And that is only if they kept complete, accurate records and finally agreed to/were forced to share that information with the public. But because of all the time that has likely passed and the myriad of cards they have likely altered and put into the hobby over the years, who knows how many of those cards over time have been cracked out of their originally misgraded holders, re-submitted, changed from one TPG to another, or put back into raw form so that none of them can ever be traced back to original card doctor records. It is already too late as the taint to so many cards now exists, and unless we can come up with tests and measurements that definitely prove that a card has or has not been doctored/altered, we'll never be able to tell for sure the correct nature of almost any graded card, and unfortunately, maybe even quite a few raw ones out there that had been broken out of their holders. And even if it were possible to come up with definitive tests and procedures to prove or disprove alterations, who is going to bear the brunt for the costs to have every card out there re-tested and graded, and who is going to be the group/company to do it? And maybe even worse, if you have a large collection or inventory of graded cards, do you really want to have someone go through them and then let you know a large portion of them are not completely legit and have been altered? There are so many innocent collectors/dealers out there that stand to get hurt it is frightening.

And as Swarmee mentioned in one of his earlier posts, in previous scandals the powers that be in the hobby would be quiet and merely wait for things to blow over and then go back to business as usual. This may be a little different though as the current scandal may be a lot bigger than previously thought and more far reaching. Also, as I've tried to point out, with the possible involvement of a publicly traded entity, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, it has added a new, unique perspective and twist to the issues and also the potential for another stage on which news of the issues can be presented and brought to the media and public at large. Issues and potential scandals involving baseball cards is really only of interest to a very small part of the public, and a lot of people in the mainstream think we're weird and strange to begin with because we still collect cards as adults, so they really aren't going to be that interested and care much about are situation or problems. However, now have those same issues and scandals possibly affecting a publicly traded company and its stock value and suddenly you have a whole new and potentially larger portion of the public that may be interested in what is going on. So all the more chance it finally gets more publicity and notice. PSA/CU is not really a very large company, even though publicly traded, and likely won't ever get front page mention on the Wall Street Journal, but you never know!!

Peter_Spaeth · #13 07-05-2019, 05:40 PM

Speaking of the WSJ, a reporter who writes for them had a story ready to go, but the editors killed it. Very disappointing.

Peter_Spaeth · #14 07-05-2019, 05:41 PM

Bob -- please take this constructively, but if you could break up some of those long paragraphs your posts would be easier to read.

Johnny630 · #15 07-05-2019, 05:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Speaking of the WSJ, a reporter who writes for them had a story ready to go, but the editors killed it. Very disappointing.

Ugh that�s disheartening Peter......

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