Reasonable request?
 

I have an autographed baseball for sale right now on Ebay. It is an unauthenticated ball. A potential buyer e-mailed me asking if it did not pass 3rd party authentication, would I refund the cost of the ball, to and from postage and the authentication fees along with authentication postage.

I have no problem refunding the price of the ball, but I think my liability should end there. I have absolutely no doubts that the signature is authentic or else I would not have bought it. I would have it authenticated myself, but it is not an extremely valuable ball and the cost of the ball, fees and postage would pretty much make it not worth it to resell.

I took on risk buying it with no COA. Should that risk now be passed on to the next buyer as far as authentication fees are concerned? I bought a collection of autographed baseballs to resell and I am concerned that this might come up again in the future.

I thought I'd ask some experienced people how they would handle this. Thanks!!

Hell no you won't (shouldn't) do that. It is the buyer's choice to use (or not) these TPAs. You are doing ebough by offering a refund if they think it's not real. For that kind of money, you could send it in yourself and potentially add to the sale price. You put your word behind the items that you sell, and in so doing you only back the price that it sells for.

+1

Completely agree...I would offer refund on ball and that's it. End of story.

yes

I agree, that's asking too much. It's not like the authentication companies are 100% accurate anyway. You could end up paying more for their error.

I agree that your liability should only be for the cost of the ball (and if sold on eBay, that will extend to the cost of shipping as well if they file a claim).

One thing to be aware of though: Some potential buyers will use a statement like that as a sort of backwards way of suggesting you take another look at the signature and be sure yourself that it's authentic.

Personally, I would rather they just come right out and say, "are you sure it's authentic, because I don't think it is, and here's why" than to give a laundry list of fees they could stack up to prove its not authentic and expect you to reimburse them for, presumably to scare you into taking another look at it. Some feel that the indirect approach gets better results though.

Whatever the case, talk it through with the buyer. Actually engaging in conversation with them will ease their minds more than a terse response, and you may find that they are simply reacting to some other situation where they got burned.

I would refund the cost of the ball + the shipping cost to the buyer, but nothing more than that (and none of the shipping costs to the TPG). I would probably advise potential buyers if they are unsure of the auto, they can go to PSA for a quick opinion that is just a fraction of the cost of the cert, so that they can obtain some initial assurance that the auto is genuine.

BTW, when I was selling photos on ebay that I was pretty sure were Type I (because they had the newspaper clippings and date stamps on back), here is what I put in my listing. You might want to do something similar:

"Although I am nothing close to a photo expert, I guarantee that the photo would be a Type I, and if you send it to PSA/DNA for verification within 45 days, I will offer a full return policy if it does not come back as Type I. (However, I will not refund grading fees.)"

case by case basis but i think it's reasonable in isolated situations. i see some sellers doing good business selling $2-$5 items with a money back guarantee, knowing most people wouldn't spend the $15+ psa/dna or jsa fees to get a 2nd look.

just back up what you sell and refund the price if found to be not authentic.

but don't play the game of refunding authentication fees, and letting psa or jsa decide for you what is authentic.

once you go down that road you let other people run your business.

if someone ever asks me that i guarantee it will pass psa or jsa, i say no, i know its authentic and do your homework BEFORE you buy.

too many instances of psa or jsa not knowing what they are doing and passing a bad autograph or rejecting a good one. why let them run your business? it's such a mess to go down that road.


ask them to get all the opinions they want from whoever they want before they buy. that's it.

The simple answer is it's no. You give a refund for what you're selling, not for what someone else is selling.

to the point and makes sense!

Awesome responses. I thought that was a rather bold request. I think I will update my description with some of these suggestions. If I could get that kind of guarantee from sellers, I'd just buy everything because there would be nothing to lose.

Thanks for responding!!!!

kind of curious what ball it is?

It is a Mark Fidrych ball. Not an expensive ball. That is a pretty common autograph to see here in Michigan. I've seen enough of them to be confident in its authenticity.

I would also just refund the price of the ball. The rest of the risk should reside with the buyer.