Fake Patches and Trimmed High End Cards

The guy (312... on COMC) on Blowout has been doing fantastic work finding all these cards. It does shake my confidence in grading and graded cards, but as well it is making me scrutinize my purchases more as of late. when I buy raw, graded or serial #'ed cards that are over /25 I am keeping it to sets just released so there hasn't been time for devious activity to proliferate throughout these sets.

As well I've been noting down all low serial #'ed cards mentioned in the Blowout users posts/ doing my own research on low serial numbered cards I buy through worthpoint. I try to stick to HG Young Guns and low numbered inserts to lower the probability of trimming/altering.

It hurts to see but I also enjoy this hobby too much to consider leaving, this will be my way of combating it for the time being... until these grading companies can get this straightened up. Ultimately, there isn't 100% liability on these TPG's as they are subjective opinions, but they have given a standard and assurance to their customers that has obviously not been upheld. NOT IMPRESSED, some accountability should be taken.
 
Similar vein to what Seth was saying, I'm in full support of the collect what you like crowd, but this kind of thing makes me think of how lucky I am to not center my collection around Graded cards. Never been my thing really.

I would hate to have invested or payed a premium on graded cards, only to question there legitamacy when these stories come out. Now, I don't want to hate on graded cards, and I'm sure most of what's out there is untouched, but it makes you wonder. Especially if high-end graded is your thing.
 
The only graded cards I have that anyone might mess with are a Crosby YG BGS 9.5 it has a sub of 9 on the edges and I got it from a fellow member here who might have been the only other owner of the card, a Gretzky OPC RC PSA 6 which I got from Jeremy (Gomez) so I am very confident it is legit, Carey Price Ice RC /99 which I got in a trade from a fellow member and I actually had it graded myself (via Simonja).

I have a Matthews YG 9.5 which is possible but I bought it from a random eBay seller so I am guessing they were the ones who had it graded.

Anything else I have in a graded card are all $200 or less cards and not in very high grades for that given card.
 
At this point, I would not touch PSA cards at all.

Same for PWCC auctions - I bought a couple of ungraded cards from them, and they were trimmed. I have stay far, far away from PWCC auctions.
 
HighEndPlease said:
At this point, I would not touch PSA cards at all.

Same for PWCC auctions - I bought a couple of ungraded cards from them, and they were trimmed. I have stay far, far away from PWCC auctions.
Click to expand...

If you think it’s only PSA your fooling yourself. That run of McDavid FWAs exposed on BO are all in BGS slabs. In fact they appear to have targeted BGS for crack out candidates that had low edge sub grades. All those McDavid Black label YGs that have clustered BGS cert #s ��.

It most likely won’t be a hockey card that starts it but I’m waiting for the first lawsuit. Should be entertaining.
 
Thanks for all this information on graded cards and PWCC. I had thought of buying a graded Michael Jordan rookie, until I saw the prices(bidding), I can buy a car or fix up my house but I cannot live inside cardboard. I got taken for once when I bought a open-chee Mario Lemieux (not graded) from someone I knew at a card show in San Jose, went to have it graded and it came back trimmed and they wouldn’t give it a grade. Oh well I learned
 
HighEndPlease said:
At this point, I would not touch PSA cards at all.

Same for PWCC auctions - I bought a couple of ungraded cards from them, and they were trimmed. I have stay far, far away from PWCC auctions.
Click to expand...

Yea same here. I noticed most ungraded cards sold through them are either trimmed or damaged but not listed as flawed. So very suspicious for sure.
 
Triple B said:
Another high end vintage hockey card shown as being trimmed...
Click to expand...


Firstly... a big thanks to "TripleB" for the awesome scans. Great investigative techniques my good man. :D

So after reviewing the comparison's presented, I have to concur that these are definitely the same cards.

Wow....wow... I am really shocked on this one! From my experience, PWCC is supposed to be that go-to place for buying and even selling high-end graded cards, especially the emphasis on graded.
Their presentation is always top notch for all their monthly auctions, as well as there auction history as presented here in the link above.
I like what they preach!

With that said, I am at a crossroads here. I have spent a good amount of coin over the past couple of years with this consignment company. In many cases I have overpaid on my graded PC items, simply because I valued the credibility that came with my transaction purchase.
That said, I am content with what I have bought from them thus far...so no worries there on authenticity.

So now what? Do I refrain from their "Too good to be true" auctions moving forward? I honestly don't know what conclusion to gather from this.
Am I supposed to look the other way because of the same input I see posted on occasion such as "they are a consignment seller and they don't know if it's fake."

Two big problems I have with this theory and the above scans in this example, is that they put a PWCC label on the back of the original scan, and then the re-graded trimmed card that they re-sold does not :|

Secondly, both have the new PSA logo as we can see here. I guess I am perhaps misinformed, but I thought PSA's pitch was the new cases can't be manipulated after-the-fact due to better casing technology.

Whatever the case is, I would like everyone else's opinion...primarily our fellow longtime graded collectors here on the boards.
What are your thoughts?
 
Thanks for the shoutout but just to clarify, these aren't my scans nor is this amazing detective work my own. These are from members of Blowoutcards that have taken the time to really dig deep and find proof of their claims. I'm passing it on to people here that may not be members there.
 
OilersRule said:
So now what? Do I refrain from their "Too good to be true" auctions moving forward? I honestly don't know what conclusion to gather from this.
Am I supposed to look the other way because of the same input I see posted on occasion such as "they are a consignment seller and they don't know if it's fake."

Two big problems I have with this theory and the above scans in this example, is that they put a PWCC label on the back of the original scan, and then the re-graded trimmed card that they re-sold does not :|

Secondly, both have the new PSA logo as we can see here. I guess I am perhaps misinformed, but I thought PSA's pitch was the new cases can't be manipulated after-the-fact due to better casing technology.

Whatever the case is, I would like everyone else's opinion...primarily our fellow longtime graded collectors here on the boards.
What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...

1). The card no longer has the PWCC sticker because it was cracked out of that slab, trimmed/altered, and then resubmitted for grading. The card graded higher by the TPG so there was no need for the PWCC sticker.

2) They are not being altered and then placed back in the same slab. That’s the BIG problem here. They are all being bought graded, cracked out, altered and then regraded!
 
I have no proof, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is happening in non-sports, too. Some of the vintage cards can demand top dollars, even if not filtering through PWCC's hands.
 
I don't shell out a lot of money for high-end stuff, but it means that when I do, that card is extremely valuable to me. Last March I purchased a Gretzky OPC RC, graded PSA 6, the most I've ever spent on a single. I went back and looked, and it was something I won from PWCC. How worried should I be? Am I fine because most of the attention is on cards that can be bumped to 9s or 10s? Even a bump from a 4 to a 6 would be a Nice price increase. I'm now sitting here questioning my purchase, even if there's a good chance it's perfectly legitimate. But it's a bad feeling and not good for the hobby.
 
weasel-king said:
I have no proof, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is happening in non-sports, too. Some of the vintage cards can demand top dollars, even if not filtering through PWCC's hands.
Click to expand...

If you are a member of the vintage non sport site there is about 2-3 pages talking about this problem with non sport. Seem one of the sets hit the worst is 'Look N See'.
 
I've certainly taken advantage of the obvious markup on getting modern cards graded but I really don't get it. Financially it makes sense to send any $200+ rc to BGS but for the majority of these cards they will slowly lose value like most cards do over time.

The obvious exception being Crosby's Young Guns but just like the Mike Trout guy from Vegas, if you have enough cash, you can easily manipulate PWCC auctions by continually buying the same cards over and over again for higher prices until you move your stack.

Since the quality of most modern pack pulled cards is rarely below 8.5, the value of the grading should be based on verifying that the autograph is real, the card isn't trimmed or edited and the patch is real.
 
I've been dealing in graded cards since 1998. I've been one of the people that will buy cards, check which ones are gradable (I'm batting above 90% for BGS 9.5 or higher and PSA 9 and higher) and sell for a premium. That's how my hobby experience has been funded for all of these years. I rarely use my own money.

Honestly, I have always suspected that there was SOME manipulation going on, but not to this level. Some pointed out that a former BGS employee has 12 consecutive serial numbers graded BGS 10 Black. They're all base cards. What's the big deal? He took 50 cent base cards and turned them into $200 cards.

My take is this: With what I have read and I have been shown (and listening to Brent's one hour interview defending his sad stance on "altering" vs "conserving"), I think PWCC and PSA are absolutely complicit in this whole thing. My opinion is that they were well aware and know the players and assisted in the whole thing and now everyone is in damage control. I'll be in Chicago for the National and I'm looking forward to see if anything is said or done.

As for grading itself, I credit grading for saving a dying hobby. When grading (to the level it did) showed up in the late 90s, it was a shot of adrenaline. Now, a bunch of people got greedy and they've been outed and Lord only knows what the fallout will be. I don't think it will be good and to the point where it has ME considering changing course.

It's sad because the hobby was on an uptick. Vintage was king. Grading allowed people to make more money and people with money were able to purchase the best copies of a given card. Now those people are left wondering if what they have is "conserved" or whether they are legit.

If you want to hear Brent's rambling attempt at defending it all, here is the video. I listened to the whole hour and it's a feeble attempt at saving face for both himself AND PWCC.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f3k5VSqVt4
 
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Well, the "detective" that has been doing all of this work hinted at a bomb that would be dropped at the end of this week. I thought it was the former BGS employee getting favourable grades. I was INCORRECT. That was a grenade...

THIS is the WMD...

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1297351

If this isn't the knockout punch...I have no idea how PWCC is going to recover from this.
 
Im late to this party, but HOLY XXXX!!! So in short PWCC has been buying graded vintage over the years, cracked the cards out, “conserved” them and resubmitted to PSA to get higher grades and PSA knew about this?
 
This blows MASSIVE chunks.

I was going to slowly dabble in hockey cards again in the graded vintage segment because I felt there was good investment potential there and it wasn't UD's overproduced and monotonous crapola.

At this point I think I will stick with the modern BGS baseball Bowman Chrome cards. Those are much easier to get good grades on, have long term potential, I can buy cheaper (relative to vintage hockey), and trimming those would be fairly obvious and likely damage the card with the super-sensitive foil edges.

Shame all this is happening to the hockey market.
 

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