[hempick]

I understand card grading from the perspective of, if I am going to buy a card from 1933 or 1957, I want a graded one because IDEALLY professional card graders can tell better than I can if a card is authentic or not.

That said, I ONLY care that it is deemed authentic. The actual grade doesn't matter to me.

Of course, considering that they are (apparently) grading trimmed cards left and right, it seems that grading companies can't even be trusted to say whether a card is authentic or not.

Remember when it was a thing to have one graded card per box? That seemed so silly to me at the time. (...and it still does.)

[pjrussell529]

I do not grade cards and I have a few ebayers I buy from so it doesn't affect me directly but I would not touch a listing from PWCC nor would I have anything to do with PSA.

It's not drama it's straight up fraud. It's a shame that no one besides people in the hobby care so I doubt much will be done. PWCC and the trimmers have scammed thousands if not millions from people. Who knows how many trimmed cards are in collections right now.

I don't buy high end vintage(especially graded) but now I'm sure I probably have some altered cards in my vintage collection.

Sucks for the hobby overall.

[kstjulian]

http://www.sportscardradio.com/gary-mose...ding-scam/

[DrMitchJ]

http://www.sportscardradio.com/gary-mose...ding-scam/

Thanks, that was a great informative piece! It really was able to break it down and make it understandable ... Moser should be in prison based on those facts!
Bad for the card biz, indeed!

[rjcj2017]

The other thing is the autograph authentication process.

Long story short, a few years back I bought a raw Mike Trout IP auto after researching basically every certified/pack pulled auto I could find online to compare the signatures.

I sent it in to PSA for authentication and got it back unslabbed/questionable.

I then sent it in to Beckett and it was slabbed as authentic.

However, after my initial rejection, I looked up a bunch of PSA IP autos of Trout and some of them were absolutely laughable as far as how bad they were, but they were slabbed as authentic.

Granted, his signature has changed a lot over the years, but this was in 2012 when I bought the IP auto, and I literally compared the one I bought to at least 100 other autos for comparison.

[DrMitchJ]

I believe that There are now auto authentications that are computer-based FBI-forensic-like programs that don't allow a potentially subjective 'grader' to give an opinion. I was going to have a signed comic book slabbed and auto-authenticated, but it added a huge expense to the process because of this newer tech that's available. Maybe the cost comes down with wider accessibility in the future?

[DrMitchJ]

So is it safe to say that Beckett's grading service is still legit and unhindered by this PWCC/PSA/Moser debacle?

[pjrussell529]

So is it safe to say that Beckett's grading service is still legit and unhindered by this PWCC/PSA/Moser debacle?

No ties to the PWCC/PSA/Moser stuff but they have the possible black label issue(which is circumstantial as far as I can tell)

[bzross]

I read these threads with both interest and horror, to be honest I won't read any more as they have started to come back on themselves and still a bit too much speculation. However there has to be something there, and I feel more so on the trimming issue.

I have always graded cards that I like and want to keep in my PC, don't care for the grade, I just want them protected (UV in particular) as I frame and display them.

What I have found in the last few days in when I'm looking at cards on the Bay, I skim past every graded one, I now have no interest in buying any graded cards. I have bought a lot of raw cards from Probstein in the past and have had good results when grading them, but I just cannot bring myself to buy a graded card now.

I look at my own trade pile, for a while I was collecting 1 RC, GU and AU of every HOFer inducted from 2000, I got several of these graded for protection but have since stopped this and focus more on Astros. I am now trying to trade several of those cards and wonder where that will go in the future...

I've had 2 cards returned to me by BGS stating they were trimmed, 1 was a Frank Thomas RC that I traded for, the other was a George Springer RC I pulled myself, the latter had me pissed! PSA graded the latter along with a Springer AU Strata card BGS also returned as being too thick to slab!

I have used PSA only once, I got an Altuve auto graded a 6, I don't understand why as there was nothing obviously poor with the card. I don't like that PSA grade without giving you the breakdown of where the card was lacking, however I am now planning to break it open and send it to BGS as it is for my PC.

I'm intrigued to see where all this will go, if anywhere, I will keep protecting my PC cards but in the near future I doubt I will grade a card to trade hoping to increase it's BV, as I would doubt it would be worth it and many others will be as sceptical as myself.

[hempick]

...the other was a George Springer RC I pulled myself, the latter had me pissed!

This is the thing that gets me, too.

I haven't had any personally pulled cards returned by BGS nor SGC with them stating that they were trimmed, but I do know of others who have.

Seems ridiculous.

I've never had anything graded by PSA, so I can't say anything specifically about them.