Question about new Ebay Authenticity Program???
 

I have a Nolan Ryan rookie card graded by SGC. I was thinking of putting it on Ebay. It is mistakenly labeled by SGC as the regular version, when it is in fact the Milton Bradley version. I was thinking of listing it on Ebay as the Milton Bradley version, since that is what it truly is, instead of the mislabeled regular version. Will that throw up a red flag with their Authenticity Program?? I have heard stories about a scenario like mine being a problem.

I would hope it would cause a problem because of it being mislabeled. I have a similar problem with a Roger Clemens. I am trying to figure out the best way to fix the problem.

Well..maybe we can find out together?? I am putting mine on Ebay at .99 cents and calling it what it really is.

Best of luck. I want to get mine fixed first as it is the highest graded PSA example and now has a silly price killing qualifier.

If you add set break to the title it may avoid the whole stupid program.

If the card is already graded, supposedly the only thing PSA (eBay's graded card authenticator) is supposed to do is confirm that the case has not been tampered with.
Is it an obvious Milton Bradley? As in, does it have a white stripe on the left side of the card? Or is it less obvious, like the yellow color back and the differing cross-hatch pattern on the front?

So if the seller sends a $5 card instead of a $5000 card PSA is not going to step in?

Probably better to ask eBay if you want the correct answer or we can all bash a amazing program meant to help people from getting scammed.:rolleyes::D

PSA person 1. The auction was for a 33 Goudey Ruth, but it looks like the seller shipped a Barry Larkin rookie.
PSA person 2. That slab is definitely genuine, pack and ship.

What an interesting conundrum.

Let's start by assuming your card is worth over $750, which means it would be sent to PSA for review.

Card is in an SGC slab and is incorrectly labeled as regular issue. Let's say the person examining it at PSA agrees that the label is wrong. What on earth happens? SGC isn't a part of this program, so who is now responsible for correcting the error? OP as the seller lists it correctly, so what next? Returned to seller and buyer refunded due to SGC's error which was already pointed out in the listing?

It would be nice if PSA simply slabbed it with the correct information, but I'm not seeing that happening. It's not their fault.

Give it a try and if it works please let me know.:eek:

Authenticate THIS.:eek:

So what bothers me is that the service is mandatory. I just bought a card from house of cards, md on eBay. It shipped to the Authenticator, whoever it may be. I don’t need eBay to tell me it’s genuine, I can tell for myself. Besides, the seller is Huggins and Scott’s eBay site, and I doubt they would risk their reputation over an $800 card. But I’m not “allowed” to opt out. When I’m told I don’t have a choice in the matter, I remind the company I always have the choice of doing business elsewhere. So no one needs worry anymore about me sniping you on eBay again. My 2 cents.

get over it.
you'll get the card & it will be fine. it may take 2 days longer.
You are NOT paying for the service, so why get worked up.
Seems EXTREME !

It’s okay to be obtuse. You just be you.

Sometimes you may NOT get the card. If PSA rejects it for the label being incorrect or the description being factually correct but not matching the label, the buyer does not get their card at all. This is one of the many concerns; especially for those of us who collect oddball items the authenticators don’t know what to do with. I the buyer am aware that many items I buy are not listed correctly, because they are rare and little known. I still want them, don’t need a grader rejecting because they don’t know if it’s real or kicking it back if they do recognize it because it wasn’t described right. I don’t need some third party to tell me what deals I am and am not allowed to make.

It has the white strip...

https://imgsrv.sellersourcebook.com/...1660043272.jpg

If you’re transparent in the description ( e.g.state SGC listed as Topps but because of the white strip it’s actually a Milton Bradley), you should be fine. But if you want to avoid all this you could do what Peter Spaeth says: write “ Set Break” in the title which bypasses the Authenticity Guarantee program.

A raw card I recently bought from Greg Morris that had set-break in the listing title went through the authentication process which surprised me. I thought having set-break in the title was one way to avoid it, and I also thought I had seen a while ago that Greg Morris was somehow exempted from the authentication process. Apparently not anymore if they ever were.

Yeah, I just bought a raw card from GM Cards with both set-break in title and it's a 1980's Star basketball card...and still is going to the CSG authenticator just to be delayed and not ultimately authenticated. Greg Morris lists the set correctly (in the Item Specifics section) as 1984-85 Star, so I don't know how that gets tagged for authentication.

I also had a GM PSA card win go through PSA to authenticate. Since I live on the east coast this caused only a 3 day delay in my receiving it. I won a $500+ PSA card from an east coast seller and after being shipped to PSA and then back east it was almost 10 days (five days on 2 day PM).

I just won a PSA card for $499.99 from a seller 4 hours away from me. Somehow this card also now needs to be sent to PSA to be authenitcated....instead of arriving in 2 days, it will likely now be 8-10 days to receive due to 2 cross country trips. I intentionally offered this amount to AVOID this time-consuming process.

The card was a best offer option (originally priced over $500), the sale price w/o s/h was less than $500. Per ebay's t/c, $500 is the floor. Any ideas as to why a card with a sale price less than $500 now has to be authenticated??

My guess is because it will still show the over $500 price in sold listings.

Look at the bright side. You get a fancy box and a card saying that Ebay approves of the card!

Wouldn’t it be best to let SGC correct their error before selling?

Yes, they apparently base it off the total the customer paid, including shipping and tax.

You're right, the box is quite fancy and certainly makes up for the "lost time" with my new card. BTW, I am amassing a stack of these fancy boxes lately, are they recyclable or should I just pitch them in the trash?

Ben and Jim, I agree that either the amount shown on the screen or the total with s/h being over $500 are the reason(s) why this $499.99 card get's to go through this process. Seems like ebay's T/C should be more specific in regard to exactly how the $500 is calculated.

I don't know...anyone can see that the card is obviously a Milton Bradley.

My guess is because Greg Morris is now putting a hyphen between set-break which doesn’t throw off the algorithm ( I bought several cards from him in which the title had Set Break and it bypassed the authenticity guarantee program). I know for a fact that one particular seller is putting “Set Break” ( minus the hypen) in his titles to avoid going through the authenticity guarantee program.

I noticed there was a hyphen as well. I was wondering if that was what made the difference.

No plans on buying an expensive card soon.
And I don't mind a bit of delay.

But I do mind the risk of shipping a card twice instead of once.

The other thing is that some of my better buys have come from wildly mis listed cards. (and other items)
So if someone lists a really nice George C Miller as "old baseball card" and it sells for 500+ ...... how would they handle that?

Yesterday, the price floor for graded cards being authenticated was $500, today the price floor is down to $350.

You need your full name in your posts, please. thanks

back to sort of on topic. I just won a 400 dollar raw card and it recently came back from ebay authentication., They are definitely going to charge for that service and the fancy wrapping., The only question is, how much?
.,

I just received an eBay authenticity guarantee card. For what its worth the card came packaged well and is presented in a hardboard display case. It is nice. The psa graded card is encased in a sleeve with a sticker that voids the guarantee if broken.

I am sure this has been answered in other posts.

If seller offers no returns I assume if a card comes back not authentic the buyer gets their money back. How does that happen? Does eBay hold money in escrow assuming you pay via PayPal?

eBay holds the money until it passes authenticity in my experience.

Unlike the pwcc sticker which has been found 99% of the time to also mean the card had been conserved!

Last weekend I listed a raw card for 250 or best offer. I accepted an offer of 200 and off it went to the auth program. After that I listed a PSA 48 bowman for 250, it showed up in my listings as auth program, so I revised it to 225 or offer and still in the program. I'm glad I'm usually a bottom feeder!

What Leon said... "definitely going to charge for that service"

It is a fancy box. And the fancy box is in a nice shipping box. When we buy/sell on eBay, they assess a varying fee. And the service (not the best word, because some of us want to not be 'served') is paid for by eBay from the money they collect from us. So all eBay participants are paying for it, just like we indirectly pay for the salaries of eBay employees, for the computer hardware they use, for their health insurance and such... We are paying for it, it just isn't a line item that we easily see, like we see our state sales tax.

It's certainly possible that they will charge for this "service" in the future. The cost to provide it has got to be $10 (maybe more) per item, by the time you add up shipping, packaging, and inspection, plus just the infrastructure of managing it all.

At the same time, I suspect that it also saves eBay by reducing the number of disputes over items that were not shipped, or were not as described. I suspect that the annual dollar amount in prior years for settling fraud disputes on their platform can't have been small.

Even if it just keeps honest buyers/sellers from getting cheesed at eBay from having a bad experience when they get hosed by an unscrupulous counterparty, then that seems like a win for them.

Of course, the counterpoint is that around these parts, there seems to be no shortage of people who are cheesed at the very existence of the program. So it cuts both ways!

That's not the way a free market works. Retailers charge what the market will bear, the ones with the lowest expenses make the most money.

As Nicolo says, ebay is probably reducing their costs with this program.

On the topic, I do have a large stack of those cases that the authenticated cards come in. Has anybody figured out anything useful to do with them?

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

All my fancy ebay boxes went right into the recycling bin...hopefully they can get recycled! :D

I pop them all out of those guarantee sleeves instantly too. Ha! ;)

I just have a hard time believing they are reducing costs with this program. That's a lot of manpower, and expense, to have this function.
.

Given the number of scammers polluting the hobby these past few years, I imagine there were significant expenses dealing with fraud.

There were, of course, times where eBay ate the costs associated with scams. I'm sure they also spent considerable time (read, payroll expenses) dealing with the scammers.

The eBay execs probably crunched the numbers, chose the more profitable route, and put the new program in place. Considering the fees they collect on $250+ card sales, spending $10 or so per card really isn't that much. Besides, they've already increased seller fees at least once (maybe twice) since launching this.

Zero, Leon. Nada. That's not how it works.

If all you had to do is increase your internal costs and then pass them through as fees, Scott would be paying you a 7-figure consulting fee to get us all to consign our cards over to The Collector Connection. And Scott could then take a 50% markup on all his sales. It's not that easy.

This just happened...
 

I won a 1980 Rickey H RC in 8.5 from 4SC on eBay. They sent it in for their lame authentication. It was REJECTED as authentic. I was refunded by eBay.

I contacted my people at 4SC and they said this is a 1st for them. They have never had a rejection until now.

I could care less. When the card gets returned to 4SC I will buy it again.

The cert # was recent, so not worried.

Weird. I wonder if there’s more to the story here. Would be interested to know more about the details.

I purchased 2013 Arenado and it was rejected because of scratches on the case ..
Also it says I filed a case which is not true I was patiently waiting to receive the card

Who knew that the authenticators were getting into case grading now??!!

I guess that's the new frontier. Maybe we'll get cases within cases so that we all know what grade the inner case got! Sooner or later we'll end up with nesting dolls and so much plastic between us and the cardboard that you won't be able to see what's inside.

People bitch that altered/trimmed/counterfeit cards are sold on Ebay then bitch when Ebay tries to do something to combat it. This system is far from perfect but it's better than doing nothing.

Many just like to complain, the subject is really irrelevant. :D