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More BGS shenanigans

I was just cruising the pages over at thepit.com, when I stumbled into this little nugget. Apparently in the recent past thepit.com offered 70 1986 TT Bonds BGS 9.5's for sale. As of 1/11, the total number of these cards graded by Beckett was 8210, and the total number of 9.5's was 146. At about the same time thepit's deal came out, the same guy checked the pop report at BGS and discovered that 8304 of these cards had now been graded, but the total number of 9.5's had ballooned to 181. Which means that 94 more '86 TT Bonds' had been graded, and 37 of those had been awarded the 9.5 grade. Another poster over there did the math, and figured the odds of this happening with impartial grading was 676,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.

Shady dealings over at Beckett? I'll let you be the judge. But I submit that these types of backroom dealings have the potential to do exponentially more harm to the graded card industry than the jokers out there pawning off trimmed '58 Mantles in PRO holders. If this can happen to the '86 TT Bonds, which is a heavily graded card, then it can sure as hell happen to any other modern issue. And despite what the vintage collectors on these boards may think, the future health of the grading industry is directly tied to its ability to get modern product into the grading room. Crap like this surely can't help that cause.

I can't believe anyone out there who cruises hobby message boards buys BGS stuff. It just blows me away. Joe Tuttle told me about a year ago that BGS was, in his words, 'total garbage'. I didn't know why then, but I sure know now.

Comments

  • WinPitcherWinPitcher Posts: 27,726 ✭✭✭
    i am starting to think that too Boo
    Good for you.
  • CON40CON40 Posts: 1,324 ✭✭✭
    OK... let me get this straight. Topps owns the Pit.com. BGS is giving favorable backroom grades on Topps cards to the Pit.com. Topps sponsors a monthly column in Beckett, advertises heavily in multiple Beckett rags. Spends lots of money on those ads. Topps -- err, the Pit.com -- makes lots of dollars pushing favorably graded BGS Topps cards on the Pit.com.

    This makes political "fuzzy math" look like 2 + 2.

    Excuse me while I go vomit or cr@p myself... whichever comes first.

    image
  • schr1stschr1st Posts: 1,677 ✭✭
    Can you post a link to the Pit story? I just went over there and was unable to find it. Thanks!
    Who is Rober Maris?
  • BoopottsBoopotts Posts: 6,784 ✭✭
    Not sure how to post a link, but if you go to their website, then click on the message boards under 'community', you'll see one of the featured threads titled something like 'the pit.com deals aren't really deals'.

    If you still can't find it let me know and I'll try to be more specific.
  • Nice stat finding, but despite my curiosity with BGS and some shadiness (I saw three BGS 9 Pujols Bowman Chrome RC's that were short left to right this week), but this Bonds story actually checks out.

    Why... you might be asking?

    BGS offers the crossover service at the big shows, and the PSA 10 Bonds Topps Traded XRC is the most common target for crossover. I've seen many dealers switch their PSA 10's to BGS 9.5's by paying the $7.50 at the show and then the cost of grading to slab, so BGS doesn't mind accepting $20 to cross it over (many get declined the crossover also) and the dealers don't mind making $100 or more by crossing a PSA 10 to a BGS 9.5.
    Jason
    Baseball Card Heaven, the closest card shop to the Las Vegas Strip.

    Our current ebay auctions, and of course BaseBallCardHeaven.com
  • BoopottsBoopotts Posts: 6,784 ✭✭
    Jason-

    I don't doubt what you're saying. What I do find odd is that there was a sudden flurry of BGS 9.5's graded shortly before thepit offered their deal. Assuming that dealers have been crossing the '86 XRC for some time now, you wouldn't expect to see the pop report balloon in such a short period of time.
  • estangestang Posts: 1,322 ✭✭✭
    Why don't you contact BGS online or by phone and see what they have to say and report back to us.
    Enjoy your collection!
    Erik
  • I can't believe I am defending BGS but I think there is an explanation.

    BGS Raw Card Review cards do not show up in the Pop Report until they are slabbed. Someone could have taken 1000 of this card to BGS and only had the 9.5s slabbed.

    I once sent 100 of the same card though the Raw Card Review service and about 70 came back 9.5. I only had those 70 slabbed, so the pop report looked really skewed for a while.

    Bailey
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