Stay Away From Off-Brand Grading Services!

Let’s just say that you see a 1981 Topps #216 Joe Montana Rookie card Graded a Pristine 10 by Gem Elite Grading Services with a Buy It Now price of $189 on eBay. That’s not too far off ungraded book value ($150) and it’s in “pristine” condition, WOW!. Not WOW…you have to ask yourself a question.

Q: Is this too good to be true?

A: Yes!!!!! Why would whoever got this card graded leave money on the table by not getting it graded by PSA or BGS when a PSA GEM MT 10 or Beckett 9.5 is worth in the neighborhood of $4,000!? That’s pretty generous of him to give me the card for $189, nice guy right. WRONG! In addition, this deal of a lifetime has been sitting there on eBay with no offers. That’s odd…

Here’s the thing with Gem Elite Grading, they are notorious for knowingly grading counterfeit cards and trimming the genuine cards before they place them into their ugly slabs. It really is too good to be true when you see a vintage Mickey Mantle card with razor sharp corners selling for $200 when if graded by PSA it would worth thousands. Most ungraded vintage Mickey Mantle cards look like they’ve been run through a garbage disposal because of their age so it’s quite an anomaly to see one in that condition. The people buying a card like this think that they’re going to cross the card over to PSA and have a cardboard treasure, but in reality PSA will not grade the card and say that there is “evidence of trimming.”

Now let’s take a look at the Montana card in question. This card looks absolutely amazing, it has perfect centering, nice coloring, and razor sharp corners, but upon closer inspection you can see that the card is trimmed on the right and left sides because the card seems to come in from top to bottom. In other words, the card narrows at the bottom. If you were to put this trimmed card on top of a real ‘81 Topps Montana rookie, they would not overlap perfectly; you would be able to see the bottom left and right corners of the real Montana card because the altered card is too small. Look at the one graded by BGS, the edges come straight down, it’s not trimmed.

Another very unprofessional thing done by Gem Elite Grading is that the owner and sole card grader also sells the cards on Ebay! In other words he’ll get legendary, sought after cards from wherever, trim them, grade them pristine (everything is graded pristine, no standards), and then sell them on eBay. Quite the conflict of interest!

This goes for other off-brand grading services such as CSA, PRO, etc… Just stick with PSA, BGS, SGC, and GAI. Please don’t waste your hard-earned money on a scam artist that is basically stealing from people and making a fortune on eBay. Just be patient and jump on a raw card or buy one graded already. Do your homework: if somebody is selling a raw card make sure that you look carefully at the scans for evidence of trimming. Also, ask for more pictures from the seller. Give yourself as much knowledge as possible to make the best decision so that you don’t get screwed!

Happy Collecting

Joe (joe@joeknowscards.com)