Posted By:
MWScott --
You're absolutely correct. When the average non-collector finds something old -- particularly a baseball card -- they immediate contact everyone they know, both dealers and knowledgeable collectors, to find out if they've struck it rich. Even if it's a 1933 Lajoie that has the value printed on the reverse, they still spend their entire weekend investigating the value of what they've just found.
On the other hand, when there are questions about authenticity or when the item (e.g., baseball card) has a dubious nature about it, little or no effort is made by the owner to "dig deeper." Instead, he simply lists it on eBay, much as a fisherman might cast his bait into a muddy brook, and hopes for "the big one."
In the future, maybe eBay will construct a system by which good sellers are rewarded and bad sellers are immediately punished. I have in mind a certain experiment where food consumption in rats is limited by the administration of electrical current. Is the application of such technology on the world wide web that far off?