PSA Grading.

[MagicVirus]

Hi! I have a question -
How to grade cards by PSA (what does it means though?).
How much it cost?

Thanks.

[Midtown]

Go check out there site, its has all the info you need:

http://www.psacard.com/

[mintcollector]

Midtown:  Nice lesbian tongue action!  Still not as good as boobies.gif, but nice nonetheless.

[hammr7]

It seems like PSA has captured the trust and imagination of many Magic collectors.  Before people get too involved, monetarily or otherwise, you might want to look at issues iunvolving baseball cards.  PSA cut its teeth on older baseball cards, and has graded more baseball cardsthan all other gradings combined, so issues with these products can give an indication of current and future problems and scams for the Magic community.

http://forums.collectors.com/messagevie ... did=280945

I've collected baseball cards for ages, and have had bad experiences with PSA in the past.  This recent thread on the PSA community bulletin boards alludes to much greater problems than I anticipated.  Apparantly scammers are cracking PSA cases, reprinting PSA labels, and selling lesser condition cards (or maybe even high quality proxies) with reprinted "real" PSA numbers.  If these problems can occur in a sophisticated PSA marketplace, they can certainly happen to us.

Anyone knowledgeable in PSA packages should be able to see the telltale signs of tampering (it takes the same kind of common-sense dedication that we use to verify if a magic card is real).  As a result, most baseball card dealers and hard core collectors can spot the problems once the package is in their hands.  But in the Magic community, how many people know how a PSA case looks, and what the telltale signs of tampering are?  And how many would be able to spot a high-quality Magic proxy if it is slabbed in plastic?

There are actually three issues here:  

The first is whether the Magic community is prepared to evaluate PSA packaging strengths and weaknesses as we accept their product.  Otherwise we leave ourselves open to the types of fraud discussed in the baseball link.

The second is whether we can assess whether PSA can accurately evaluate Magic cards, and whether we can confirm these evaluations once a card is slabbed.

The third is whether the other two really matter if Magic scammers dump a lot of phoney PSA material on eBay auctions.  We seem to already have a problem with scams involving phoney offerings of PSA material (either lottery-type auctions or phoney offerings).  The next phase will apparantly be auctions where buyers actually get a slabbed card that isn't what it is supposed to be, either due to an inproper assessment by PSA or a substitution by a fraudulent reseller.  As many eBay buyers (including me) have learned, the scammer normally wins once your payment is sent, since refunds are few and difficult at best.

[l0qii]

Any knowledgable information on how to detect tampered with PSA cases, or suggestions on how to test the authenticity of a slabbed card without cracking the case, please let me know. I would love to add a section on this to my how to spot fakes FAQ.