General Forum

Just an update on this: https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/1929959001

thanks for the update

drain the swamp of fraud, lock them up!

mark

I flagged a card just this week on COMC that i suspected was trimmed.  I was looking for a nice 57 Mantle and when looking at what was available one of the card stood out because the 2 side borders were significantly thinner than the two other cards on the page.  If i had not been looking at cards side by side i would not have noticed, but when several examples were on one webpage it was very obvious.  the odd thing was the all 3 cards were from the same dealer with the same price, so i don't think it was intentional i think the dealer missed it.

The card collector YouTube community has many videos out there from last week's national which include footage of the pwcc "booth". One guy even went up and confronted them. They had a security guard stationed in their area. 

Moser said in a phone interview that he does not alter cards. That could be true if he is paying someone to do it.  $$$$

This does go both ways, remember the razorblade card. Darnay Scott 1999 Upper Deck #44.

I have always seen that grading cards is a con to make money. We all know you can send in the same card a few times but won't get the same rating if you do. A sold con. But is also looked at as a true fact when you sell it?

If that is all he is doing then he is just working a flawed system to his advantage and that's on the card grading companies. Just like belt ranking in Karate. There are no set rules that everyone uses for ranking. 

I also think about when I was a kid in the late 70s you could get a soft art eraser and use it to clean the dirt off a card to make it look better. But we never sold them. After all, if you want to sell something used you clean it. No one will buy the last candy bar in the box if it's got some dust on it.

It's going to be hard to determine what is crossing the line. Painting, inking & cutting. I would say is crossing the line. But it's going to be hard to prove who is doing it.

This will be interesting to see what the outcome will be. 

I remember using a nylon stocking to remove gum stains from cards back then

When a crime crosses state lines and involves interstate money transactions and the mail, it creates an easy ground for federal jurisdiction. There are a number of crimes that are illegal at the state level and the federal level (drugs, illegal obscene photographs of minors, etc.), and you can theoretically be prosecuted at the state and federal levels for those same crimes. Any criminal offense must be codified, and most federal criminal offenses involve interstate commerce (the current definition of interstate commerce is extremely broad) at least at a theoretical level. Most federal prosecutors are interested in crimes that are large, notorious, or generate positive press. The card scandal has some appeal since it involves a large amount of money over time. 

Federal offenses aren’t “worse” per se. Those just involve some infraction that invoked federal jurisdiction, and a prosecutor thought the event had enough sex appeal to spend his or her time pursuing it. For example, any felon in possession of a firearm can be charged federally. This happens all the time every day. The only people who get charged with this at the federal level are usually criminals that the Feds were after, and that’s the easiest conviction that could nail them on.