[the 'stache]

There is a general malaise that's pervasive in the hobby, Matt, and it is leaving a very bad taste in my mouth that I can't get rid of it. And it's not just just shill bidding, though that's part of it. The thread on the main forum about the Rickey Henderson PSA-graded rookies perfectly exemplifies what I'm talking about. It's becoming less and less about the love of the hobby, and the sport, and more about greed and vanity. And I find it morally repugnant.

You've got people cracking cards out and resubmitting them Ad nauseam to do...what? Make a lot of money. The piece of cardboard is the same, yet if you submit a nine enough times, the law of averages states it will come back as a ten eventually. There's virtually no risk involved, either. It's not as if they're tickling the dragon's tail in order to realize this desired effect. No screw driver is going to slip. And every fiber of my being as a stock broker screams that there has to be some kind of risk involved in order to make money. Unless the card owner is a dope, and they drop the card, the likelihood that the card is going to be damaged, or lost en route to the tpg, is practically nil. They're just going to keep sending that damned card in until their card by chance finds a grader at the TPG who got some the night before, and pops a "10" into the computer while happily whistling their "I got some nookie" song. So, after the card owner subtracts the fees for submitting the card umpteenth times (and PSA says "thank you very much" for playing their profitable little game), they sell that ten at a massive markup to somebody who just has to have the very best, and will spend whatever amount is necessary to impress other people. Why? Because of the registry, which is nothing more than a dick-measuring contest. "Ha, my collection is 0.0135 better than yours because I spent an obscene amount of money to upgrade my Rickey Henderson card from a 9 to a 10!" These people don't care about the history behind the card, or the player. At their most base level, they are looking for validation. So, they'll spend a lot of money (and even more than they would have because some idiot is pumping up the price), and acquire their "ten", which is really a "nine" that just happened to find somebody in a generous mood. So who ends up getting screwed? The seller of the card? Nope. They took a $500 Henderson 9 and magically transformed it into a $10,000 + 10 with their persistence. Does the TPG lose? Nope. They made money every time they looked at the card. What about Mr. Vanity and his 10? Nope. He moved up in the registry, so he's happy. What about Mr. Consignment, who made a cool profit by having his second cousin Louie make a new Ebay account specifically to shill the price? He's happy, too, as he made more money. Ebay doesn't care, because 10% of more money is good for their bottom line. Paypal? They don't give a damn. They're getting their money, too.

It's the little guy, the guy that's perfectly happy to have his nine, or even *gasp* that worthless eight with the pimple only visible under a 100 x magnifying glass-he's the one getting bent over. Now, if he wants to get that nine, he has to pay a lot more money for it, because as the price of the ten goes up, by extension, the price of the next best card goes up, too.

I don't know, Matt. I feel like there's so many scams being run at the same time, it's making me dizzy. This isn't what the hobby is supposed to be.