New to the forums and wanted your thoughts on these two Aarons I purchased last week

[buckydent]

Hi,

I am new here and actually found you folks by way of Google on researching ways to detect fraudalent and counterfeit high dollar cards. If you are like me, I am very wary of the scammers and too good to be true deals on certain cards, and the hobby is loaded with folks that ruin it for the rest of us at times.

I collect sets primarily from 1952 through 1971. For the most part I splurge only on the 10 -15 key stars or HOF'ers in the set, and then fill in the rest of my set with ungraded and graded cards that fall into the "5" range because you can find some really nice looking 5's without having to spend a fortune. I save the bigger purchases for the key cards and also try to find cards that have the look and feel of a 7 or 8, but may be in a 6 holder with an issue that's not so important to me that knocks it down a grade or two. It's all about the fun of it, and I love seeing cards of players I remember fondly who I haven't thought about in 20 or 30 years and then being reminded of a game event , batting stance, playoff game, funny story (Billy, Mickey &Whitey ) or numerical stat associated with that player.

Most of the cards I buy are on ebay. I have a handicap, so it's not easy to get around to shows on foot, so I do alot of buying online. It's also great for putting together sets, because you can indeed find commons on the cheap. For the most part, I thought buying graded cards was the way to go ( trust and always verify of course once you receive it ), and learned my lesson about 12 years ago with CSA that not all grading companies are created equal (on aspects such as trimming). But I really thought PSA and SGC were the gold standard. I did not know people were opening cases, resealing cases and changing labels - yikes ! I assumed you could not open and reseal holders without doing grave and obvious damage to the case.

I picked up three Hank Aaron cards last week: 1954 Topps, 1955 Topps and the 1955 Bowman on ebay. For 2011, I am currently working on all Aarons that I do not have from 1954 through 1971 and on completing my 1955 and 1971 sets with 1971 as my first priority ( my second favorite all time set ). The ebay scans of all three graded cards looked great, but when I received 2 of the cards ( the 55 Bowman has not arrived yet), things did not quite look the same as the auction scans on ebay, and in one case the PSA case looked tampered with which is what pushed me to quickly start checking google to see if PSA, BVG and SGC holders were being fraudalently created or tampered with. Low and behold, I found your discussions on case frosting and the likes that indicate tampering and I am grateful for this community to be educating unknowing buyers like me who thought that the graded cards gave you piece of mind. I do always check them under light, with a magnifying glass and most importantly to me: compare to other cards in the same set for size , color, imperfections, printing trends etc. The case in the eBay auction did not show these marks as the photo hid the edges on the 54 Aaron that has marks inside the plastic.

I have enclosed photos of the 1954 and 1955 Topps Aaron, please let me know your thoughts. The 1954 Aaron case looks tampered with along the right side, top right and entire bottom. Why would a case be this crummy on a '54 Aaron?, that to me was a red flag, and none of my other PSA cards have cases that look like this, it's still sealed and firm, but why all the stray markings, and greyness/cloudiness in a few areas that shows up under light. One thing that looked strange under the magnifier, was that the jersey bleeds into the bottom border ( the red goes into the white boarder ) and I could not find this happening on any other 1954 card that I have, and was wondering if any of you had an AAron that did this. It's a gorgeous card, albeit off center ( which does not bother me ), that has rich colors and nice corners. The PSA case back has white writing from PSA, not silver and a collectors universe hologram logo. I could not find one other graded card I owned, that had white PSA writing on the case back, and all had either a PSA logo or silver writing with the stock ticker. Was this another version of the PSA case? The seller told me that the card was freshly graded, but that he obtained it in a online auction, not from PSA directly. If it was fresh, why is the case not perfect on such an important card? How do I know if the card is real? Any tell tale signs?

For the 1955, an even more disturbing problem - the case looks 95% perfect with one stray blotch on the bottom but the card looks too good to be a PSA 6 except for top /bottom centering and the logo area. The logo area is what concerned me most - excess inks outside the circle and to the right of the logo. Should that be? See it?

Please see the attached photos, and let me know your thoughts, I used a digital camera, and lighting and zoom can be an issue, but I think the photos display all the potential issues. Please let me know your thoughts, and I really appreciate your help ascertaining that these are the real mccoy and legit cards. I have many more photos, but thought this would get the ball rolling for all you collecting detectives to jump on.

I have more detailed photos, but could only include 5.

Thanks in advance for your help and happy to be here,
Greg