Quote:
Originally Posted by bobbyw8469
Bingo!!! Someone who gets it!
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+1
If enough people got together to bring action against things like this, it would be very interesting to see how a TPG would answer in court when asked to explain how someone that they charged to perform a service could later be told that the work they had previously done was now no good anymore. In other words, the original service those people paid for is basically being deemed worthless by the very party that originally performed the service/work.
Would be interesting to then see these same customers now asking for their money back from the TPG, through the courts, since the TPG itself is apparently admitting their work and original assigned grades cannot be relied upon. Would love to see an impartial jury made up of mostly non-collectors weigh the basic issue of charging people for something that is basically not worth anything then. The snake-oil salesman aspect of TPGs, and what they actually do, would hopefully become even more apparent to the public at large, especially those in the hobby itself.
But unfortunately, this will likely never happen, at least not anytime soon. Too many people/players in the collecting industry, supported by their lawyers, have too much money and value tied up in TPG graded cards and the concept of grading to let this happen. But on the other end of the spectrum, not enough money and value is involved for any government to see a potential risk to our overall economy, and therefore be willing to step in to actually regulate and correct the issues we're seeing and experiencing in the collecting hobby today. Just look at what is happening in the crypto-currency realm today, and the number of people now being negatively affected (ie: the amounts they're losing), and how it is actually starting to impact some of our overall economy. And even so, the governments are still somewhat slow to start acting to do something about it, that they should have jumped on to do something about a while ago.
I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I actually have to applaud China and their central bank for refusing to accept or allow any transactions in digital currencies, and banning all digital tokens, such as Bitcoin, effectively making crypto-currencies illegal in China. Had the same previously been done in the U.S., there would probably be a lot more happy people around today, including the likes of Robert Kraft, Giselle Bundchen, and Tom Brady, along with countless others.
Having said all that, it seems the only real possibility for any true correction of abuses in our hobby can only now be achieved by those that are in the hobby (true hobby collectors) banding together to form an overriding group/organization to force the other players in the hobby industry to now abide by the rules that the collectors propose and set down, not the other way around like it has been for decades now. But again, as I said earlier in this post, that will never happen any time soon either as too many people have too much money/value tied up in their graded card collections to want to chance that being negatively affected by something like that. The parties that have stepped into the hobby industry to manipulate the people involved so as to make money, have at least done one very, very smart thing, whether it was intentional or just pure dumb luck on their part. They allowed enough of the profit being made from the manipulations and such in the hobby to also be passed on or pour over to many people that are actual true collectors in the hobby, and thus make them liable for personal losses if the hobby industry "players" were to suddenly become subject to rules and regulations they did not set for themselves. By sharing a little bit of the wealth, so to speak, they effectively protect and preserve their own way of doing things, and the control they have over it.