Big problems in the hobby

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Posted By: Joann

I think Kevin could very well be right in that flip creation and manipulation could be a much bigger problem that card alteration. There are a lot of possiblities:

1) For a "smash & grab" kind of card scammer, someone could use altered flips and blurred or no scans to sell a small number of big ticket items on ebay and then disappear. If buyers couldn't see the problem in a scan and relied on the grade, a seller could pull of a few relatively large scams before people caught on.

2) It could be even more profitable and go on longer if someone used it for smaller scams but many of them. Suppose you have a few dozen minor HOF'ers that were 4's and used a fake flip to put them in 5 holders? Many buyers would probably write it off as simply coming out on the wrong end of a grading outcome. And "no returns on graded cards" is almost standard. This could go on until the hobby started to realize that so-and-so's cards are always overgraded.

3) Finally, if it were used very sparingly, rarely, but in conjunction with expert card alterations, it could make big money over a few instances and possibly never be uncovered. If the alteration were expert and no owner ever took the card out of the flip, it is possible that the alteration would never be detected.

So yes, I agree it could be a big problem. Flip creation could be done much more easily, and by more people, than card alteration. Ironically, the best 'police' for these things might be the registries, as people tried to enter non-existant cert numbers.

On the other hand, the availability of high-quality images would help buyers. Scanner technology is much better. Image posting is easily available to almost everyone, and in particular on sales sites like ebay. So this does put the buyer in a much better position to buy the card and not the holder via internet.

And a note to Kevin. The history of the board has been to take a skeptical tone with what might be promotion of commercial enterprises on the board. There have been several other instances of posters - even long time members - getting called out for posting on the board about a commercial site or service, or with something commercial lurking in the background of the posts.

Before now I think it was fairly well known that you were considering dabbling in this area as a business. In that light, I believe that John has been asking some very fair questions. If it had ever gotten to the point that you had launched your venture in seriousness, it's pretty likely that the entire board would have been asking very similar questions.

I didn't realize until your post above that you are no longer thinking of doing this for profit. That does make a difference, although I think that there will always be some of the questioning as long as you are holding yourself out as being an expert in commenting on the hobby. At that point it becomes human nature.

And as an aside, I don't think John made the comment about "cryptic nonsense" that got you mad enough to be less cryptic and post some how-to info on your site. I think that was "bulldog", in his infamous post blasting the other board.

Joann