Sunday, June 2, 2019

Major Scandal Involving PWCC and TPG and Altered Cards

There has been a heck of a scandal with lots of breaking news happening the last month or so.

If you're not on either Net54 vintage baseball cards forum or the Blowout forums then you might not know about the scandal involving PWCC (eBay's biggest sportscard seller) and the grading companies and altered cards that are being graded and sold as non-altered cards with number grades.

I don't know how many readers I really have, but I wanted to let you all know about this in case you didn't know what was going on.  Here are some links to the message boards so you can read up on the whole thing.  There is a lot to read by the way so get ready for a long eye opening read. 

Net54 Vintage Baseball Card Forums

Blowout Forums

The link to Blowout is going to take you to the list of related threads exposing the many many different examples of cards that have been worked on. 

Basically, PWCC has been selling cards to a known card doctor who then cracks them out and "fixes" them and then consigns them back to PWCC where they are selling for sometimes huge profits to buyers that have no idea they are buying trimmed, pressed, recolored, etc. cards. 

There are a ton of examples that have been outed so far.  If you ever bought from PWCC you have a chance that you have an altered card in a PSA or BGS case.  And a lot of these trimmed cards are obviously trimmed so PSA really missed them.  Or, as some are speculating, they are in on the whole thing.  Or at least they have a grader that is in on it and they don't know it.  Again, all speculation at this point. 

It has been proven, however, that PWCC has been working with several card doctors over the years.  Make up your own mind, but read the threads and get educated.

Enjoy the hobby all...if you still can.

1 comment:

Jon said...

This has been all over Twitter as well. Seems like PSA is getting a pass so far, which I don't understand, because they either knew about it and didn't do anything, or their "experts" missed 100's (maybe even thousands) altered cards -- either scenario makes them look really bad, and in theory should be losing a ton of credibility going forward.