[JamesGallo]

I will respond to this in sections.

I feel there are a handful of good auction houses out there that include but are not limited to
REA
B&L
Sloate
Old Judge
Huggins and Scott
Goodwin

I don't think I have heard anything bad about any of the above and I am sure there are a few others I can't think of right now.

That being said I will NOT bid in any Legendary auction and they have a nice group of cards for a set I am working on, but they won't get my money.

There are certain things that I being in the collectible selling business for 15+ years will never bend on and ethics are #1. If I sell something and it is not right I will make it right in whatever way is needed. Mastro/Ledgendary has made too many "mistakes". I wasn't active then nor did I bid in or consign, so I was not hurt directly, and yet still they will never get my money no matter what.

As a side note I don't know if there is anything one of a kind that I have to own, but I have passed on such items in my other collecting fields based on this same principle so if there was a card that fell into this category I have no doubt I would pass on it.

As for the shilling/card altering/restoration arguments, I am not sure which is worse, and I think it would depend on the issue at hand.

If you trim a $5 card to make it a $500, restore a card or otherwise work on it they all would impact the value. To me making something worthless into something of high value would be high on my list of worst offenses. Perhaps re-backing a card or doing some other type of alteration. The only time I have dealt with this was on a lot of high end 60's rookies cards that were trimmed in the 1990's. It is likely that they were VG or EX cards trimmed to NM. The cards still had value but there was a significant loss on funds.

I also wonder if the number of bad cards in holders is directly related to when they were graded. I know I will never buy an older PSA holder as I do feel they are better about catching alternations now then they were 10 years ago.

Shilling is something we as a bidder can't know about unless it is made public. If you are educated about something you are buying hopefully that will help you weed out potential problem cards. I looked at a card in a major auction and had doubts about one of the edges, I choose not to bid as a result and am much happier for not having to deal with potential problems. Maybe the card was ok, but I wasn't willing to take the chance and I wasn't confident enough to make a statement about the card to the auction house.

The system has a lot of problems but most areas of business do, and policing them is tough at best. I do find it insulting that Coaches Corner is still around. The FBI continues to make a big deal about fraud in this hobby yet they are still allowed to operate. To me that is a pick and choose, we are going to go after Mastro because more money is involved but CC is still allowed to operate. It's total BS and as with any crime IMO it comes down to money. If you defraud someone out of $10,000 it is not treated the same as if you got screwed out of $500,000. That isn't right but I don't ever see that changing.

I think the best thing we can hope for as far as auction house honesty is that a shake up occurs and that good people continue to deal with good houses, hopefully over time the good and stronger houses will survive and the Mastro's will fade away.

One last note is that I will give an auction house a chance to make up for their errors and mistakes, but much like life, if there are several issues or if the same issues continue, then I will no longer deal with them. At this point I have about 2-4 places I will not buy anything from and another couple that I look at with caution. Beyond that I feel that I am participating in an honest auction and until proven or even suggested otherwise I have no reason to worry.

James G