[travrosty]

i dont think there would be any more liability risks more than now. we see companies that authenticate use the "its an opnion" excuse and they are wrong in some stunning instancs, and i dont see lawsuits being filed.

people forget that ebay is so huge with such a powerful legal dept. anyone suing them would be in for years of litigation with a legal tab stretching from here to the moon. who is going to sue ebay for a 5000 dollar autograph and expect to win and collect and not spend less than 5000 doing it considering the legal team ebay has? almost all autograph listings are 5000 or less. peanuts for ebay. they just have to have an ironclad agreement that their coa is their opinion and that all disputes go through mediation, etc.


cons for ebay: people might leave ebay and sell their autographs elsewhere.

pros for ebay: no more dueling authenticators, no more joe blow's corner coa's, no more quick opinions, no more banned coa list.

they could require that everyone who lists an autograph upload their ebay cert onto their listing, they could have recognition software compare that image to the one they have in their database when they authenticated the item. and also a hidden field that you have to enter the coa number when you list. then you couldn't list something that didnt have an ebay cert and get away with it for awhile. they could have a verifier word on the back of the loa, say the word 'walnut', when you list, there is a hidden field to ask for this verifier word, so no one can steal the front image of the loa and try to list something similar with the loa. The coa #, the front image of the coa, and the verifier word on the back of the coa would all have to match what ebay has in their database in order to list.


i wouldnt say they would be bold to actually do this service, but i think it would get all the junk off of ebay, the crazy fakes and even the bad psa and jsa items, if they hired people to authenticate within their specialty, like a music dept. a sports dept. , an entertainment dept. instead of one person to do all of sports, like steve grad does. they are bigger than CU, they have more resources.