Quote:
Originally Posted by jgmp123
Josh,
Okay if you disagree then please answer...
What does Leon have to do with my statement?
What do you owe the hobby?
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Leon runs an auction house. Do you feel he owes nothing to the hobby? Bill Huggins has been in this hobby since 1976. I have been with him since 1985. Is it a business? Yes. It is also a hobby? Yes. To dismiss our integrity by saying "we owe nothing to the hobby" is a presumptuous statement about who we are as people. We have always done the right thing, in the best interest of the hobby. If there is a problem, we address it in an open and honest manner.
For this particular case, I don't think we have done anything wrong. I guess I don't understand how "you feel for someone who is going to purchase a piece from us." I promise you, anyone who is going to spend the kind of money that this piece is going to sell for, has their own opinions and beliefs about the validity of the piece. They trust the authenticators and their opinions and therefore they are going to spend their money on a piece they like. What business that is of yours, I'm not quite sure. Additionally, all I've received from anyone in this thread is opinion. I had a conversation with Chris yesterday where he told me in a "factual manner" that this was no good, but he couldn't really reveal his sources on certain questions that were unanswered (including why he thought PSA rejected it, when they have never seen it). He told me the ticket was "bullshit", although again, there is no proof of that and I infact showed other tickets stamped exactly the same way for a different game from this series. He told me that I needed to tell JSA the name of the forger, but I promise you that if Chris was so sure that this was done by that forger, JSA has a very similar exemplar file with examples from that forger and after showing to JSA two different times, he still felt, in his opinion, that this autograph is good. We also showed it to SGC's ticket authenticator for a second time, and they still think it's good. For our auction, those are two of the third party authenticators that we use and offer our items for sale with. The people who bid on those items trust those peoples opinions and bid accordingly.
To be very honest, I have never sold any piece with a Chris Williams LOA (nor have I ever seen one). I also have never been asked by a single bidder of ours if we could get a Chris Williams LOA for one of our pieces, so we don't use him as an authenticator. Conversely, we have been asked more times than I can count for authentication from JSA, SGC or PSA, so those are the ones we use.
I'm sorry for the long winded response, but James, your assumptions about our integrity really got under my skin.
Josh Wulkan
Vice President
Huggins and Scott Auctions