Worst crossover experience ever

VitoCo1972

Before I take any grief for having a registry with BGS, I'll say that I intend to keep this set for as long as I can and I just happen to like those slabs more for my PC. I have registries with PSA and am a CU member. (Disclaimer finished)

With all that said, I crossed over 14 61-62 Fleer Basketball cards by cracking and submitting to BGS/BVG 20 days ago. Here are the results. I know many of you believe BVG to be an inferior product, and that is totally understandable...I have modest worries too...BUT...for 4 of 14 cards that were slabbed by PSA to come back trimmed is unbelievable. Plain shocking. Also, if you notice, not a single card was upgraded (even though BVG had no idea they were originally PSA slabs). There were only 2 even crosses - both 7's. Please take a look and tell me why I should not have any concerns about buying PSA slabs to cross for this particular set in the future. This is CRAZY!

5507461 1961-62 Fleer Jack Twyman IA 5.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 6)
5507460 1961-62 Fleer Oscar Robertson IA Card Restored (ORGINALLY PSA 6)
5507459 1961-62 Fleer Frank Ramsey IA 7.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)
5507458 1961-62 Fleer John/Red Kerr IA Card Restored (ORIGINALLY PSA 6)
5507457 1961-62 Fleer Tom Gola IA 6.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)
5507456 1961-62 Fleer Frank Ramsey Card Restored (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)
5507455 1961-62 Fleer Don Ohl 4.5 (ORIGINALLY PSA 6)
5507453 1961-62 Fleer Tom Meschery 7.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)
5507452 1961-62 Fleer Rudy LaRusso 4.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 9OC)
5507451 1961-62 Fleer Sam Jones Card Restored (ORIGINALLY PSA 6)
5507450 1961-62 Fleer Bailey Howell 5.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 8OC)
5507449 1961-62 Fleer Tom Gola 5.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)
5507448 1961-62 Fleer Larry Costello 6.0 (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)
5507447 1961-62 Fleer Arlen Bockhorn 6.5 (ORIGINALLY PSA 7)

OYE!


Also, just to note: I had been buying these cards raw and submitting before now with very good success. Many 7+'s with BVG including a couple 9's and 8.5's. This was my big experiment.

CDsNuts

Does their "card restored" mean trimmed?

VitoCo1972

<< <i>Does their "card restored" mean trimmed? >>



From what I gather, based on asking on their boards, yes. Now I'm super freaked out about sending that Chamberlain that I received from you today. Nice card btw. Pleasure doing business.

And FYI: their sub pop doesn't say (ORIGINALLY ETC). That's what I added for shock value. They didn't know they were PSA crackouts.

CDsNuts

Here's the thing about 61 Fleer- the cutting at the factory was all over the board. Cards were cut short, tall, tilted, miscut..... it's pretty much a crapshoot. You send the same card to PSA 100 times, and maybe 75% of the time it ends up in a slab and the other 25% it's "trimmed" or "does not meet minimum size requirements". I would guess the same goes for Beckett (decent graders for all intents and purposes). It's just a herky-jerky set and no one can really tell for sure whether a card has been trimmed or not because 30% of them were cut short to begin with. I wouldn't put too much weight into what the grading companies say on this set- their guess is as good as yours.

Lee

bigfische

i hope restored doesnt mean rebuilt corners etc.

Allen

When you get the cards back you will find the sticker that BGS uses that indicates the reason it was not slabbed and they circle the affected area on the sticker.

BobS

Lee -

Whacky cards from the factory are one thing, but they did all come from a factory, right? Aren't all the grading companys supposed to determine if a card is trimmed or not by the cut itself? A "post-factory" trim job is supposed to look very different from one that was made at the factory. I've talked to some of the top graders in the past and more than one has said they make the detrermination if a card has been trimmed BEFORE they measure the cards - it's all in the cut. There should NEVER be a case of a card getting rejected for trimming, and grading on the next pass through. I know grading is subjective, but this is one aspect of the whole game that I cannot understand why people stand for it.

Taking my soapbox and moving on - thank you.

ebayaddict

Ouch!.......Thats tuff............i feel for you. Suddenly those PSA graded slabs dont look so bad.

CDsNuts

Bob- They're not running CSI tests on the cards to see if they're trimmed. Some cards are trimmed well and don't exhibit the telltale signs of trimming. Graders basically guess whether a card has been trimmed or not. Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're not. It's not as black and white as you'd like it to be.

SoonerCowboy

Restored can refer to coloring such as to the borders and edges. I sent in a 1971 Unitas and it came back restored due to the fact that some of the border was colored in with a marker. You couldn't see it with the naked eye only under magnification.

BobS

I'm back.

Lee - I understand 100%, but still have a problem with it. Mainly - if the first go around they say "evidence of trimming", and the second go around the card is graded, what happened to the "evidence"? People are paying for an "educated" guess? Crazy, just crazy. I guess that's what $5/$6 get's ya these days.

dizzle

<< <i>Does their "card restored" mean trimmed? >>



It can mean
pressed
trimmed
shaved edge
recolored
And so on
like allen mentioned there will be a sticker on the cases of the cards in question explaining what and where the card was altered.

NickM

Beckett's subgrade system and grade algorithm kills the grades on OC cards. I have seen lots of cards with no worse than 70-30 centering (which can readily get a PSA 7) get a Beckett centering grade of 5, which gives the card a maximum grade of 6 if everything else is NM or better.

Nick

VitoCo1972

Well, they SAY they no longer use the algorithm for vintage. I have 3 vintage sets on those registries and am here to tell you that I don't think they actually have gone off of that system. It IS the centering that's been destroying the overall grade IMO. Even if they say they have, if you grade WITH it on a modern card and your next card is vintage, you can't change your brain to look at it with different criteria. It's just impossible.

blades3

If you know what you are looking for on vintage cards, there shouldn't be any gray area with trimming and not trimming, regardless of whether the cards are short. Rotary cuts are obvious with some magnification and other cuts are fairly telltale also. It seems like BGS and in some cases, PSA, gets too hung up on whether a card is short of the minimum size requirements when they should be focusing on the edges of the card. Nothing pisses me off more than when a card gets rejected because it doesn't meet the minimum size requirements...to me, that means "we don't know how to determine cuts and edges so we're going to reject it because it's off by 1/64 of an inch."