Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark17
Hypothetical: A collector's prize card is a rare Old Judge, of a player who was his great-grandfather, that's almost never seen. An upcoming auction has an example of the same card, but in much better condition. The collector, to raise needed funds, sells his example, figuring that'll cover part of his anticipated upgrade.
The auction ends, the collector is thrilled because he's won and upgraded his prized card, but then the AH sends him and email, and SURPRISE!
"We didn't actually have the card we just auctioned and pretended to sell to you. We did it because we, for our own purposes, just wanted to see how high you would bid..."
But, hey, the collector is no worse off than before the auction, right? Except he no longer has his best, prized card.
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But this is not what happened. Also, there is a real expectation that the cards will be found and they will have the cards. Finally, regarding your hypo, what if the guy sold the card in anticipation of winning the other but was outbid and did not win it. Nobody made the guy sell his existing card BEFORE he wins the other card. That's on him.
I fully agree with Leon: "there are unintended victims. As a business, or a person with a conscious, you do the best thing at the time. The auction was handled correctly given all of the circumstances."
The situation blows. Plain and simple. There are no winners. You do the best you can under the circumstances, and, as any smart business would do, you follow the advice of counsel, the insurance company, and the police investing the case, all of whom (from what I have been told) said to run the auction.
Its a good question as to why the cards were not held at Fedex, but instead delivered to the hotel. My gut is that its because valuable cards have been sent to their end destinations a zillion times without incident, so there was no reason (until now), to change the practice. I bet going forward, AHs will send cards (if at all) to be held by FedEx/UPS for employee pickup. But there is no reason to change the way something has always been done until a reason presents to change.