Originally Posted by glchen
First, the disclaimer, as in my last post on this thread, I have sold cards to Ken before, so I am not a completely unbiased poster. I have always felt that our dealings were very fair and professional. However, take this and my opinions on this as it is.
That story from Glyn is pretty bad. I'm not saying that I'm unsympathetic to the man and his wife. It's a horrible story. You don't wish that on anybody. However, did Ken know that the man was dying of cancer and was spending his life savings on cards when this was going down? I assume he did not. He was just a face on TV, doing his job of trying to sell cards. A lot of dealers sell over-priced cards. It could be on TV (like Ken did), it could be at card shows like the National, and it could be on ebay with overpriced BINs. If the same person spent his money on seriously over-priced BIN's from Levi and 707 after watching news on his TV about the Black Swamp find, would it be Levi's fault on what happened to his family? Some people are justifiable shocked at Levi's high prices, but others counter that he is a nice guy and ships quickly with good service. OKAY...
The argument will be that Levi did not hype his cards like Ken did or promise huge returns. I think Ken already addressed some of this in his earlier 4 posts, which basically came down to this is how Shop At Home operates for all of the things they sell. However, the point I want to bring up here is that you have to be knowledgeable about this hobby if you buy anything of considerable worth. This is why this forum has been so great, because there are a lot of people on this board who are very knowledgeable with many, many years in the hobby and are very willing to dispense it. You have to have an idea of what you are doing, or else there is a very good chance that you are going to get creamed. Knowledge is absolutely vital in this hobby whether it is which TPG's are reputable, how to tell if a raw card is authentic, use VCP and past sales for your pricing data rather than SMR or Beckett, and so forth. Again for some people, this is only a hobby and they do not care what their returns are or if they get any money back at all. However, if you have or are planning to put any significant sums of money into this hobby, you better try to learn as much as possible.
Being knowledgeable brings me up to another story about jewelry, which is also often sold on TV. My mother-in-law is an avid fan of the jewelry channel to my chagrin. This brings me to a story about buying diamonds. When I was looking into purchasing an engagement ring for my soon-to-be wife, I really researched it. I bought a book on how to buy diamonds, and read many, many articles with helpful advice about it on the internet. Therefore, when I finally purchased the ring, I felt that I really knew what I was doing and bought the best ring and diamond for the price I could afford. This is what knowledge can give you. When my mother-in-law showed me a small diamond ring (~1 carat) that she purchased, I was shocked at the price that she spent on such a poor quality diamond. The color, clarity, and cut were all bad, and the dealer smoked her because she was so focused on the size of the diamond for the price. You can't really say it all the dealer's fault. When you walk into a jewelry store at your mall, this is what you see every day. People paying too much for poor quality diamonds.
People just need to use their own knowledge and their own judgment on things that they buy. I personally think some of the prices that people paid for the Dimtiri Young PSA 10's are absolutely nuts. Did those people get duped? Did the people who bought the hype of the Strasburg and Jeremy Lin cards get duped? Buying during the 80s-90s bubble? Insert cards? As did many others, I got killed buying cards during that 80s-90s bubble and became very disillusioned for a time and dropped out of the hobby. However, who knew these guys were printing so many cards? I guess all of during that era should have known, but were just deceiving ourselves as we were dreaming about our retirement savings already. At some point, you really have to decide for yourself if the card is really worth the price the dealer is selling it for. There was a thread in the Memorabilia section about the crazy prices people were paying for items from Heritage's recent Live auction such as the 1969 Topps Basketball set. However, other posters defended the prices as some people had the means to pay the prices, so that meant the prices were fair. If anyone was investing their life savings, I really hope that they knew what they were doing.
I believed Ken already addressed the card slabbing issue by saying he wasn't involved in that aspect of it. If I'm wrong, please correct me. However, if he had just sold the cards raw, but said they were gem mint like many raw dealers do, would that have made a difference?
Again, it is not like Ken is someone like Brian Dwyer with a "sterling" reputation. He has some work to do, and I think he's admitted this already. Let's just see how his first auction runs and go from there. Besides having stuff I want, the biggest thing that I want from an auction house is no shilling, including house bids or safety bids. That is, I want real auctions where the true market price of the item is set. I would like to see reasonable shipping charges and that my winnings are shipped fairly quickly after payment. Accepting paypal or credit cards would be very nice also, along with reasonable buyer's fee. I would also want reasonable recourse if the item when delivered did not match the auction description. Good luck, Ken.
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