Please pardon our delayed response time on this matter as we have been conducting our daily business operations.
To whom it may concern, my name is Bill John Sliheet and I am the operator of SuperiorSportsInv.com. Our company has been in business for over 30+ years – from when my brother was still serving in the United States Marine Corps and I was still in High-School up to today. We have had direct relationships with both Collectors Universe (PSA) and Beckett Grading Services (BGS) since the inception of both companies and have been grading with both companies since the mid-1990's with an excellent reputation from both. We also travel extensively around the United States and to shows and spend over $500k+ a year alone on cards that have already been graded by other people. More than half of our inventory is secondary market acquisitions which were already in graded holders when we acquired them. An extremely small percentage of those have turned out to be shown as having been trimmed by someone (Not Us), but still made their way into either a BGS or PSA holder.
The 4 cards that have been highlighted on this forum and others that may be in our inventory are not something that we can control as we have to ultimately rely upon the professional opinion and expertise of Beckett and PSA to let us know these issues exist with the cards we submit or have been previously submitted if they are already in a graded holder. We still consider them to be a valid 3rd Party opinion just like 99% of the card hobby/community does. We have graded over 500,000+ cards combined with BGS and PSA in our life-time. These cards may have been purchased in completed form by us, however, based on our business structure, we buy and sell both graded and raw cards in bulk and simply do not have the time to research every single card we purchase. Given the nature of what has been occurring here lately, we do plan on doing that on all our higher end serial-numbered cards going forward.
We are not the guy(s) that only grade 10-20 cards a month. We grade extensive amounts as well as purchasing large amounts of cards that are already graded to relist on our website monthly. As we all know, the altering of cards is a problem in our industry and has obviously been brought to light with other recent posts on this forum and it has brought some extra attention to the matter. We have pulled down the cards that were highlighted on this post for the time being and we will be doing our own independent research on the issue. However, with an inventory of over 30K unique graded cards, trying to pull anything down that may be suspect may take some time as we still are continuing our daily business operations. We will accept any assistance with any other cards people may have hard evidence on in regards to having issues, but we would ask that it be done in a private and non-accusatory manner.
As any real graded card collector knows, the world’s most expensive card sold to-date - the PSA 8 T206 Honus Wagner is a known trimmed card. There are other higher-end modern cards that suffer from these issues as well. A large amount of the high-grade 2000 SP Authentic Tom Brady Rookie cards and high-grade 1993 SP Jeter Rookie cards on the market today more than likely have been altered. I would welcome any one of you to purchase one of those cards and try cracking one out of its respective holder to see what PSA or BGS would do with those today. Needless to say, the results would probably not be very good for your wallet.
For the time being, we are conducting our own independent investigation and research of our inventory to do what we can based on our own internal manpower ability. We would hope that any accusations made by anyone on this public forum against our company, our employees, or our associates and publicly posted on here in regards to us actively trimming/altering cards can be proved accordingly without any circumstantial evidence which is all that has been provided on this thread. The author of this thread and others who have made libelous comments and have previously posted private contact information/profiles will be potentially prosecuted to the fullest extent a court of law will allow if any further harassment continues. I urge those people to tread carefully and think twice about what they are posting on this public forum. We have and currently are taking notes and screenshots of everything being posted on this thread and elsewhere on the forum for use if it is potentially libelous. It will be used as evidence in any prosecution we may potentially engage in against those specific individuals.
As we all know childish posts or Google searches of our family, friends, and business associates is something that people should report to the moderators on this forum. We would ask that other members on this forum report the issues that they might see to get this issue cleaned up as productively as possible. We would hope posts such as “I received an anonymous tip” and providing circumstantial evidence are not the standard on which everyone is going to be judged while the accusers hide behind anonymous User ID’s themselves. It is easy to simply place a label on someone without truly knowing everything and having HARD evidence/proof of direct nefarious activity. We would ask that you announce yourself personally and directly if you truly have hard evidence/proof and let us know how we can also help resolve any issue they may have with our company head-on.
As we all know this is only one of many issues in our industry along with resealing of boxes/packs, back-doored cards, or the massive shill bidding occurring on both PWCC and PROBSTEIN auctions that have basically driven mid-range graded card retailers out of the market. It’s a daily occurrence that will be incredibly hard to remove from the hobby 100%, but we hope the steps we’ve taken today and, in the future, will help in our own small way to do just that.
Thanks,
Bill Sliheet - SuperiorSportsInv.com
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