Crossover experiment

Krems

After hearing the rumors of BGS giving out more 9.5's I decided I would experiment a little and crack some cards out and submit them to BGS. I cracked 15 modern PSA 9's and two PSA 8's. I have never used BGS before this. The results were as follows:

2 PSA 9's bumped up to BGS 9.5's
1 PSA 8 bumped to a BGS 9
1 PSA 8 bumped to BGS 8.5
2 PSA 9's dropped to BGS 8.5's

The remaining cards stayed the same.

Four cards got bumped up in grade and two cards dropped. I didn't really prescreen the cards for high end cards for their grades.

I'm not sure what all this means. I guess I was just bored and wanted to grade something.

bsfastball

i bumped three PSA 9's to three BGS 9.5's in my last submission

phreakydancin

A worthy experiment, but I would think a better measure of increased lenience on grades would be to crack and resubmit cards already slabbed by BGS.

SDavid

Were these newer cards?

Krems

There were all modern....mostly between 1989 and 2000. The two that got bumped to BGS 9.5 were a 1989 Fleer Griffey rookie and a Flair Showcase Iverson rookie.

SDavid

Getting bump ups on two out of fifteen modern cards is really pretty low.

I think the increase in 9.5's and 10's has more to do with the availability of these puppies than it does lowered standards. It's like anything else - people see dealers raking it in, so more people get in on the action.

It's really not a tough way to make money, if you can afford the upfront costs. It's basically just a matter of finding oversized cards with mint surfaces and trimming down the edges with a laser cutter or some other professional instrument. You just have to make sure that you keep them even. A lot of upper deck products - new and old - are prime candidates for this since they're almost always oversized. That's why the same old sellers always have spx bgs 10's when it's about impossible to find a legit 9 or 9.5 from a pack. Ironically, most of Bonds rookies are generally oversized too. I swear, a lot of his bgs cards might even be more juiced up than he is. If you want to meet one of the buying id's for one of beckett's largest dealers (who routinely has bonds rc's up for sale as either bgs 9's, 9.5's, or bccg 10's), just list some well centered 86 fleer update or 87 Fleer Bonds psa 8's on ebay. Or just list one raw with a description indicating that the card is mint with the exception of some chipping on one edge. If he's in a buying cycle, he'll find you. I say "one of" because I know of several buying id's that he's used in the past.

One thing I've noticed with a few other sellers who frequently auction off 80's rookies as bgs 9.5's with the occasional pristine 10 is that their beckett stuff will always have certification numbers that are sequential (indicating that they all came from the same submission) with almost all 9.5's or 10's and then, every so often, they'll auction off some well centered psa 8's or 9's with certification numbers that are all over the place. That seems like a pretty good indicator to me that they're buying 8's and 9's and then reselling the ones they can't improve. You could argue that they're just resubmitting them, but, trust me, you're not going to get a bevy of 9.5's from bgs by resubmitting 80's psa 9's. Not gonna happen, not without a little "work.".

I know I'm drifting off-topic, but I even question how many of the older "sheet cut" bvg cards are even sheet cut. (For those who don't know, beckett freely admits to grading "sheet cut" cards.) Finding high grade sheets isn't exactly easy. It seems to me it would be much easier and cost effective to find a well centered oversized card and just trim it. After all, what's the difference between cutting a sheet and trimming a card on all four edges, provided that the card comes out standard size? Either way, you're just cutting cardboard, right? And if they allow any kind of size variance (which other board members have claimed they do), then it would be even easier.

I've heard that there is some kind of scientific way of determining the approximate date on which a card was cut. If that service exists and ever finds its way into this hobby's circle, I'm afraid there will probably be a lot of gnashing of teeth. But the lawyers will be happy.

envoy98

Finally...somebody else posts what I've tried telling people on various boards for a long, long time. I heard about dealers at some larger shows who actually brought these in their RV's or to their hotel rooms at the shows and had the cards graded on site the next day. I've had a couple of dealers freely admit they do it and in the same breath denounce those "$hithead patch fakers" like they are somehow better than them... These cards end up in every companies holders, believe it.

Think about how fast you could pay for this machine by trimming up a couple Brady SP Authentic rookies that are in BGS 8, 8.5 or 9 holders but have strong surface and centering grades. get it into a 9.5 or 10 holder and you've more than doubled your money (@ $600). Do some Pujols bowman chrome rookies, or any other number of modern cards from any sport. If there is money to be made, people find a way to do it...legitimite, or otherwise.

Anyway, nice job getting a couple cards bumped up to 9.5's, which should pay for the finite loss by dropping the other two.

SDavid

These cards end up in every companies holders, believe it.

Yeah, I know...we've spoken about this before...but from what I've heard from dealers it's not quite as easy with other companies, and I imagine that's especially true with older cards since these other companies don't slab cards that have the attributes of "sheet cut" cards. As more dealers hear about and get into this racket, the market for this era's graded cards will become saturated to the point that it isn't economical to grade newer cards.

I'm not sure what will happen at that point...maybe the grading and card companies will get together and create a solution (such as producing cards with a thin colored film on the edges)...but my money would be on the grading companies with stock in the vintage market being the ones who survive.