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Posted By: Kenny Cole

Richard,

I don't think that anyone is yelling at you, per se. You are, however, the messenger. And the message is that GAI is willing to fix what it should never have screwed up for a fee.

It is not your fault that GAI responded in that fashion, and I, for one, think that you went out of your way to try and get them to do something approaching the right thing. I applaud your efforts, and believe that, had you not done what you did, GAI wouldn't even have made what I view as a token effort to make things right. At least from my perspective, your efforts to make things right aren't even an issue. The issue is GAI's piss-poor response to a problem which it created in the first place. Being the messenger is sometimes hard, but I don't think you should probably take the comments personally, because they by and large aren't directed at you.

Gary B,

I'm not sure when you started collecting, but many of us on this board began before collecting was cool, a good investment, or otherwise neat. Yes, many people who post here have nice collections. However, some of the people with "Bentleys" have them because they were relatively cheap at the time they bought them.

In any event, I agree with you to some degree about the grading bitch. I personally hate grading and have never sent in even one card because I think it's a bunch of hype and crap. My thought about that is the cards in my collection are in no worse condition for not having been graded than they were before grading became a fad. Since I bought them for my pleasure, not to re-sell or show off to others, I don't care what some guy I don't know thinks about them.

Others disagree, and that's fine too. However, notwithstanding my huge distaste for the whole grading scam, my other basic thought about the matter is that if a business offers a service, be it grading Bentleys, Pintos, cards or packs, they ought to be up to doing it right before they begin. If they're not, that's their fault, and they shouldn't charge the car, card or pack owner an additional fee to fix their screw-up. Just my two cents.

Kenny Cole