[Archive]

Posted By: Joann

Ted,

My two cents worth on outing auctions. Generally, I'm against it. Even to warn of a fake I think the person should be very, very sure it's fake before posting a link. I am against anyone outing an auction because "it looks iffy" or "this could be off". Often, those of us that use visual cues like font and appearance can be something less than positive it's a fake. Fairly sure - even sure beyond the "this looks iffy" level - but less than certain.

You, I think, carve out an exception for T206's. You can see from the blurriest scan and the most indistinct of fonts that a card is bad because it has an impossible configuration. To me, this puts it squarely in the 100% category and in that case it is being exposed as fraud, not outed to gather opinion or warn of a vague possibility.

I go by visual cues and auction cues (grandpa's attic, et al). I think I do fairly well at it, but my personal expertise falls far, far short of being able to zoom to 100% via knowledge of possible and impossible configurations.

I appreciate when someone like you reports on a certainty - either by vast knowledge of possible cards or, with some people, a far sharper eye for visual cues than mine. Having someone identify a 100% fake allows me to look at that card and test my visual ID skills, or add to them.

Just my two cents worth, but if you know something is impossible, I don't think it's outing the auction to post a warning with the associated 100% certainty.

Joann