Another tale of trimmed cards - ebay seller kane04

[Rice80]

Over the last few months I gave a lot of attention to my Rice collection, and that involved scouring ebay for his rookie card with the goal of submitting them to PSA to add to my collection. I was mainly looking for raw or other graded cards that would cross 7 or higher. I only collect PSA but I also know BGS and SGC are legit companies as well.

Much to my ignorance, I paid a pretty penny for 3 graded Rice rookies, 2 of which were 10's (obviously) from Gem Elite. The other was from some no name company. What I acknowledged is that Gem Elite only hands out 10's so I was totally OK with taking the risk of them coming back much lower from PSA. What I did not know until I recently researched this was that anything in a Gem Elite holder could be worthless - meaning trimmed, fake, etc.

So. I crack the cases, send them in raw to PSA, and all 3 come back trimmed. I was fuming. Since PSA is seeing longer than normal lead times, both cards fall outside of ebay's return window where they will step in, so I filed for a return to see if the sellers would make good on their own.

After going back and forth, 1 of the Gem Elite sellers offered a 50% refund. Since they were nice about it, I realized this was something they had laying around and sold with no malicious intent, so thanked them and politely refused the refund.

The 2nd (no name grading) while telling me to piss off, was a small time seller who was offloading a collection. While I don't think there was malicious intent, I still filed a claim with my bank.

The 3rd, kane04 (another Gem Elite), is where I saw a huge problem. He said he can only file a refund through ebay and was unwilling to offer anything other than that. After telling him he could easily refund via Paypal less shipping and fees, he went silent. After looking at his other auctions, I realized he makes a living off selling trimmed and/or fake cards in Gem Elite holders. After filing a claim with my bank, I looked into this further and was kicking myself for not doing this before.

kane04 pops up all over the forums as a known seller who peddles trimmed cards in Gem Elite holders. I even came across an article from 2007 about Gem Elite which admitted Gem Elite does not authenticate but merely grades the cardboard submitted at face value.

My gut tells me since I can't find Gem Elite online anywhere to submit cards as if I were a potential customer, that kane04 (Jeremy Bachman) himself is actually the person behind Gem Elite grading. Both Gem Elite grading and Jeremy are located in Indiana. Jeremy also runs a brick and mortar out of Indiana (Spectator Sportscards), it's all public information.

So word of caution as I'm sure all of you know (hard lesson for me this late in the game) - avoid Gem Elite cards like the plague, and stay away from kane04. If my bank does not come through with a refund, I'll be taking my public complaints to his store page, its FB page, Google listing, and the BBB.

[FireRob]

Man I feel your pain!!!

Fortunately, for me my recent trimmed card purchase was probably no where near as expensive as yours.

Really appreciate the information in your story. I have been buying lots of vintage raw cards to have graded. Some are big time cards like 1933 Red Grange, 1962 Mike Ditka, 1971 Joe Greene etc. After my recent trimmed card buy I am a bit gun shy and nervous especially with cards from sets I’m not extremely familiar with or don’t have any others to compare with. I have even thought about doing what you did with buying the Gem Elite cards that looked good knowing they won’t grade as high but thinking at least they would be authentic. Not now, THANK YOU!

Not sure how to express my thoughts and opinions on how to handle the claims once you got the results. I don’t agree or disagree with anything you did. It’s a ruff situation, for sure. All I can say is what I did with my recent. Nothing. I did nothing at all and won’t do anything. It was a $30 mistake and I’m just going to eat it. I’ll put that card with my others from the same set and label it so i don’t sell it to anyone else and it will end up where ever my family puts it after I die. Well.... actually I know my son who is named after that player will hold onto it until he dies along with every other card of that player.

Sorry it happened to you and thanks for sharing.

[Rice80]

Thanks man, this was a very expensive lesson. I'd say between the 3 Rice rookies I bought, along with PSA fees, I'm out just over $1000.

My big issue is intent, which I why I chose to not accept a refund for 1 of the sellers even after they offered. They were understanding and I was convinced they had no idea it was altered.

But the other 2 - my logic is that even though one of the sellers claimed my beef should be with Gem and not them, is that the grading company offers a subjective value on the condition, which is obviously debatable between grading companies. If I sent it in to PSA and it received 7, 8, or 4, that's acceptable as it's understood the grade is subjective.

What is not acceptable nor subjective is the authenticity of the card. They are the seller and represented the card as unaltered and authentic. Raw or graded, this is the standard every seller is held to, regardless of whether or not they were aware of it, or if the card is slabbed. Just because the card is slabbed or they are selling their grandfather's collection doesn't mean the authenticity is irrelevant. To me it's like purchasing a purse or expensive pair of sneakers that look brand new but are fake, both of which ebay takes very seriously regarding authenticity.

With kane04, the dude makes a living on this and at minimum should issue a refund, nevermind be forced to insert disclaimers into his listings that his "graded" cards could be trimmed, altered, or fake. It blows my mind that people think they can hide behind a slab from some bogus "grading" company that anyone with a few bucks, plastic, and a sonic welder can do themselves.

With Covid, the sports card industry along with grading services saw a huge boom because people are home, have time for it, and are looking for ways to dig up some nostalgia during turbulent, unknown times. We owe it to ourselves to preserve the integrity of our hobby and pastime.

[pwaldo]

Is there anyway you can post a picture of a Gem Elite holder? I want to know what to be on the lookout to avoid but when you search for it all I am getting are search results for gem mint cards and whatnot. I hate how crappy search engines have now become.

[Rice80]

Back in the day there were 2 tiers to Gem's "grading" service (quotes on purpose as the grading itself was and currently is a joke) - Gem Grading and Gem Elite, same company. Gem Elite gave you subgrades, which were typically all 10's and 9.5's anyways, lol. Gem Grading 10's were classified as "Gem Mint" while Gem Elite Grading 10's were classified as "Pristine." All lipstick on a pig.

Nowadays everything Jeremy peddles seems like it's Gem Elite. I don't know if the back of modern day Gem Elite "pristine" 10's have subgrades, but here's a few pics:

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Notice how the Gem Elite holders don't have a shape outline for the cards similar to PSA or Becket holders? Gem Elite has large openings for the cards and keep them in toploaders so it's more difficult to tell if the edges were trimmed.

If you were to slab a trimmed card within a PSA or BGS holder, you'd be able to tell it was trimmed much easier by the gaps along the edges. Not so easy to do in Gem Elite holders to the untrained eye.

[pwaldo]

Thanks for the scans. I don't normally grab graded cards but I'll be sure to stay away from these from now on.