[travrosty]

Coa wars-hypothetical question


I have a hypothetical question I would like to ask because I am curious about how people react toward COA's and autograph authentication.

Suppose a round of COA wars started - EBAY vs. PSA and JSA.


Ebay being the largest online auction house in the world, is many, many times bigger than all the brick and mortar auction houses combined. With that much power, suppose they started their own coa system with their own autograph authentication system. let's call it Ebay Autograph Services Team

EAST

So EAST starts and ebay announces that all autographs are required to have an EAST COA or it can't be listed on ebay. They give a 1 year grace period in which to have all psa or jsa autographs crossed over to EAST for a discounted fee. And they have a submission service for all uncerted autographs to be sent into EAST, or brought to a show in which they are present. But after 1 year, only EAST certed autographs are allowed on Ebay, no exception.

My HYPOTHETICAL question is that knowing this, would you start certing autographs with EAST knowing it is needed to be sold on EBAY with their own cert, or would you stick with PSA and JSA and skip Ebay all together and just sekll elsewhere online and at the auction houses?

Remember that the brick and mortar auction houses that have agreements with PSA and JSA would probably band together and not allow EAST certs to be listed with them but any EAST certed autograph could still be sent to them uncerted and go through their precert and auction loa route like they offer now, so the autographs wouldn't totally be shut out of the major non-ebay auction house route if they were only previously certed by EAST.

So what would you do? Go with Ebay certification and continue buying and selling on EBAY? Or stick with PSA and JSA and drop Ebay alltogether?

Also remember that buying on Ebay would be buying all autographs with East certs so sticking with PSA and JSA would mean getting any autograph you buy on Ebay recertified through PSA and JSA if you liked their services better. Would you still BUY from Ebay?

If the COA wars went down this way what would you do? There is no wrong answer and I am just curious and thought of this by myself and not coaxed from any company whatsoever to ask these questions? It's all hypothetical.

My own opinion is that I don't go out of my way to buy certed autographs so it wouldn't matter to me, but I think if Ebay had enough leverage they could gain a foothold and maybe enough people would want to stay on ebay and get their certs if they gave a grace period and didn't kick off their certs for a year or so. I don't know what JSA or PSA could do to counteract this except to circle wagons with their present auction house contacts and maybe give up aution loa's and precertification and make it a true war convincing the other auction houses to band together and require all consignments to have a full psa or jsa cert before consigningm thus forcing all customers to choose one avenue or the other, Ebay or PSA and JSA. I think we can agree that Ebay is big enough to be the only one that could maybe pull this off.

If that happened, what would you do? Maybe more Leland type auction houses would spring up, that don't need or recognize any TPA certs, they do their own in house authentication.

thoughts? no wrong answer. hypothetical question only. Don't be scared. No one is writing your name down on a list.