e90-1 Jackson on ebay, quote of the day

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2717337033&category=31719

Ghostmarcelle: "I can’t rule out the possibility of a slight trim (it may or may not be gradeable)"

I'm really glad he has decided not to rule out that possibility.

[Archive]

Posted By: Hankron

Is this the same ice-cream-on-the-nose Jackson (aka messy eater variation) that was auctioned a few weeks ago, or was that a different card?

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2715906164&category=31719

"Card measures ok but there is an uneven left border..."

[Archive]

Posted By: Andy Baran

This is definitely a different card. The owner (ghostmarcelle) has owned the card for quite some time.

[Archive]

Posted By: petecld

My opinion:

Card is visually misleading. It's width is only 1/32" too thin which isn't an outright negative but the left border is uneven and looks trimmed to me. The bottom looks trimmed as well.

The card is also not centered to the top. The bottom white area height is close to normal and only slightly too tall. The card is 3/16" too short. The top of the card was cut off. I doubt at the factory.

I'm not saying the seller trimmed it but most likely it was cut down years ago as was the practice with some collectors.

[Archive]

Posted By: Julie

..when the left border has been (carelessly, too) cut off?

[Archive]

Posted By: B C D

If you are the Seller-

it measures Up ! : )

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

Let's say you have been selling baseball cards for many years, so you have some experience looking at cards. You have a card that you believe is trimmed. Which one of the following would be in your auction description:

a) Card is trimmed, but still has great visual appeal
b) Card measures correctly but has a funny cut on the left
c) I can’t rule out the possibility of a slight trim
d) Card might be a proof
e) A monkey got loose and bumped the machine during cutting.

If you answered anything other than "a" or "e", then you might have been on Bill Clinton's legal defense team.

[Archive]

Posted By: Kal Bats

Don't forget Verkman! If a card is trimmed and it is NM, he knocks it all the way down to just VG. Forgetting to mention that the card is trimmed because it is accurately graded. I was at the table when I heard him tell a fellow board member this.

[Archive]

Posted By: TBob

and asked him for the exact measurements of the card. No reply. That's good enough for me to stay off it. Too bad for both of us, I could have used a lower condition Joe Jax...

[Archive]

Posted By: Ryan Christoff

Tbob,

He is in Colorado and snowed in today without access to his work e-mail address, which is where you likely sent the e-mail. Even better, e-mail me directly and I can give you his phone number if you'd prefer to call him.

He is an honest person who is being unfairly portrayed as some kind of criminal because the precise words he chose to describe an item on ebay with were not up to the standards some have decided are "correct" as far as how an item should be listed.

I know him personally and have done numerous transactions with him, all of them without the slightest problem whatsoever. And believe me, there are board members here that I have done one transaction with and been burned.

If he was certain the card was trimmed he would have said it was trimmed. If he thought it might be trimmed, but was unsure, he would describe it the way he described it. I believe he is the last person in the vintage card world that would rip anyone off and is without question a collector first, not a dealer. Money would not distort his integrity.

I am confident that he would make any situation right if a buyer was unhappy with a purchase they made from him.

He is not one of the bad guys. Since I have done business with him I felt it was important to say that.

-Ryan

[Archive]

Posted By: Andy Baran

There is no one on Ebay that you could trust more than this seller.

[Archive]

Posted By: Kenny Cole

Ryan and Andy are 100% correct. In my opinion, the seller is absolutely honest and has great integrity. I trust him enough that I would buy cards from him based on a telephone description without seeing a scan. I have never had anything but a positive experience with him.

[Archive]

Posted By: Bill Cornell

My one transaction with this seller was also extremely positive (thanks again, Andy) and I don't even have a Cuban card bias .

[Archive]

Posted By: TBob

Sometimes I forget that not everyone logs on to their computer several times a day so it's possible he could have missed my email which I sent 4 or 5 days ago, or maybe he felt it was just too much bother. Whatever. He may be a very honest person and I have no reason to doubt that he is not. I just tend to view unanswered questions about an item, by the seller, the same way a lot of people here look at private auctions, with askance. So, I'll take a pass and spend my money with Lipset instead. Nothing against the seller.

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

I'm glad that you are all personal friends with him. Also, he has stellar feedback. Put those two things together and he has every right to use misleading descriptions.

Ryan, Andy, etc.: He emailed me and told me he believes the card is trimmed. So why the heck couldn't he say that in his description.

Answer: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ $$$$$$$$$$

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

that you guys assume I was tossing Matt in the scrap-pile with the likes of Libertyforall and other legitimate crooks. Andy, Ryan, Bill, Kenny - you know that is BS. There is a big difference between misleading people to make a few extra bucks, and ripping people off by selling forgeries as real, paper scraps as cards, etc. I pointed out that Matt deceived through a knowingly misleading description, and I will stand behind my original post. You guys can come off your pedestal and re-read the original post - if you think his description of the Jackson is fine, than I feel sorry for all four of you.

[Archive]

Posted By: Ryan Christoff

Wow..runscott telling someone to get of THEIR pedestal? Once again you have adopted the role of the proverbial "Pot". I guess I will be the kettle. I needed a laugh in this thread, so thanks for that.

As far as the he-said-she-said quote you say Matt e-mailed you about how he thinks the card is trimmed, maybe he looked at it closer than before, perhaps with a loupe, and now believes it is trimmed. He might not have examined it as closely as you would have, or you believe he should have. I don't know. Even if he just flat out changed his mind, is he not allowed to do that?

I agree though, it would be nice if we all kept our word 100% of the time and never changed our mind. For instance, a few months ago when you said:


"After looking at Elliot's latest attempts at becoming board dictator, I'm done with this crappy board.

And don't any of you start whining about what a great job Elliot has done here, because he hasn't. All he has done is deleted anything that puts a negative light on his board or the gestapo that runs it.

If you have a comment to add here to insult me, don't bother - cause this piece of garbage is no longer on bookmarked."


Yes, if only we all kept our word...

-Ryan

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

So after reading my post Matt finally put his multi-thousand dollar JOE JACKSON ROOKIE under a 10x and realized it was trimmed? Ahh, about time - glad my post had some value. Did Matt whisper this explanation in your ear, or did you come up with it on your own?

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

now there's some good ole cat fightin'

[Archive]

Posted By: MW

Runscott is right. What dealer takes a Joe Jackson rookie card, puts it on eBay in a Mary Poppinesque sort of way and then offers bidders a couple "spoonfuls of honey" to help the transaction go down?

But since the seller wrote, "it may or may not be gradeable" in his description, I guess he's completely off the hook. Certainly, there are some grading companies that would be overjoyed to encapsulate this card between two halfs of a screwdown and fasten a few black rivets on the corners....

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

The master debaters of this board can always claim that if a seller doesn't actually see his card being trimmed, then he can not be absolutely certain that it really was trimmed.

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

No reason to instigate a fight by bringing up a very old spat we had.....now you can go back to taking up for ebayers that are obviously trying to make the most out of their sales.....regards all

[Archive]

Posted By: Kenny Cole

Runscott,

I guess we just have different perspectives. When I read Matt's description, I didn't feel misled or deceived. I knew that the card had some issues, knew that it might be trimmed, and knew that it might not grade. Of course, since I'm not big on graded cards, I don't care about that. Hell, sometimes trimmed cards get graded and untrimmed cards don't. We've all seen examples of that.

In any event, since Matt gave me enough information to make a decision, and since I am confident that he would provide additional information if I asked for it, his description of the card doesn't cause me too much heartburn. You obviously feel different about the description. That's fine too. You are entitled to voice your opinion and I respect the fact that you did. However, at the risk of creating an even bigger tempest in a teapot than already exists, I simply disagree with it.

By the way, I never accused you of lumpting Matt in the same category with some of the piece of s**t sellers on ebay. I simply said that Matt was honest and had integrity. That opinion hasn't changed so I'll stand by it.

Kenny

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

I have always gotten along well with you, Andy and Bill, and I certainly respect you for defending your friend's integrity.

[Archive]

Posted By: jay berhens

Kenny, take a look at your last post. You say you are comfortable with his description of the card, yet you felt it neccessary to ask for more information about the card. Shouldn't a description that makes you feel 'comfortable' be one that leaves no questions in your mind? Especially something as important as a card possibly being trimmed?

Jay

[Archive]

Posted By: Kenny Cole

Jay,

I think you misread my last post. I didn't say that I asked for more information about the card because I didn't. I already have an E90-1 Jackson and don't need to own two, especially when there are so many other cards on my want list out there.

What I said was that I knew I could ask Matt for additional information about the card and was confident that I would receive it. Card size, for instance. The measurements aren't in Matt's description, but if I called him, I have no hesitation at all in saying that he would tell me what they were. He's done exactly that before on some Cuban cards I was interested in. Having dealt with him many times, I know that Matt is absolutely above-board.

Matt's description said that the card might be trimmed. When someone says that, I assume that it probably is. Maybe its just me, but nothing he said caused me to be confused about the card's condition. Then, of course, he also provided a pretty good scan.

If you feel differently, so be it. However, I personally think it rather unlikely that a seller who puts up a decent scan and directs you to the slightly uneven bottom edge of a possibly trimmed card is really trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

Kenny

[Archive]

Posted By: jay behrens

I am not knocking this in particular, he jsut happens to be the topis, but if you are going to make the claim that card is possibly trimmed, a scan is not gonna cut it. You also need to provide exact measurements. This just common sense and is what I do so that I don't have to answer the barage of emails asking how it measures.

I don't care how reputable a dealer/seller you are, these sorry one and two line description that tell you almost nothing about the card is a waste of a buyer's time becuase you end up having to ask a lot of questions that should have to be asked in the first place if the seller did his job.

Jay

[Archive]

Posted By: Kenny Cole

Matt's description of the card was much more than a sorry one or two line description. Having said that, I would be willing to bet he now wishes that he had expanded it even further, and also put in the card's exact measurements. Live and learn I guess.

Kenny

[Archive]

Posted By: MW

Kenny,

Did you get a chance to read Elliot's post on the new eBay guidelines for authenticity?

While I think it is fairly obvious that this card is authentic, can't we apply the same logic to the dimensions and shape? Really, how tough is it to make a definitive statement so that prospective buyers can bid accordingly? Either the card is trimmed or it's not. Maybe, perhaps, might be or even possibly just don't cut it. This isn't a first time newbie selling a card so let's not act like the requests and opinions expressed by some here aren't reasonable. If the seller wasn't sure about something, a five-minute phone call or a casual email with an attached image could have cleared up any guesswork quite quickly.

[Archive]

Posted By: Kenny Cole

MW,

Thank you for that deeply insightful and illuminating post. Until you brought it to my attention, I had never given due consideration to the obvious truism that "either a card is trimmed or it is not." WOW!!! Your statement says so much, yet, at the same time, so very little. How typical.

So, let me ask you, the self-professed expert, this question: If a card is submitted to a grading company, lets say SGC, and it comes back "trimmed," and it is then re-submitted and comes back a 60, is it trimmed or is it a 60? It obviously can't be both. In fact, once having gotten an opinion that it was trimmed, I suppose it is probably deceitful and dishonest even to re-submit the card for a second look. After all, according to you, there is no room for reasonable dispute on such black and white matters. In that regard, what "5 minute" phone call do the experts make when they disagree?

If I recall correctly, a while back, you sold a graded card that you THOUGHT had actually been trimmed. You said that in your description. At the time, I thought that was very admirable. However, if I understand the tenor of your current post correctly, I should actually have been quite critical. You did not take the proverbial "5 minutes," which is all that it supposedly would have taken, to determine whether the card you were selling was trimmed or not. Instead, you made an educated guess.

Having been given the benefit of your deeply incisive post on the issue, we all now know that "maybe, perhaps, might be or even possibly just don't cut it." After all, "either a card is trimmed or it is not." True?

By guessing, you violated the rule you profess to live by. If I am following the rationale of this post correctly, I guess that makes you both a liar and a hypocrite. Who'da thunk it?

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

that won't incite a response.....there goes the (neighborhood- by Joe Walsh) or this thread ....by the board members......sheesh....

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

- he knows it and we know it. He should have listed it as "trimmed and measures short", but he didn't. Your parsing of MW's posts for debatable material and Ryan's dredging up of old posts of mine in an attempt to deflect attention away from a post he was too assinine to respond to intelligently, doesn't change this fact.

Hopefully you and I will continue to have friendly debates as we have in the past, and Ryan will continue to bury his head in Cuban cards and concentrate on looking for "cultural insensitivity" in our posts (that we can ignore) as he has in the past.

And everyone else can simply try to tighten that grey area where integrity seems to get lost, which was the original intention of this thread.

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

If you did not see the cutting done or did not do the cutting yourself, you cannot competently testify that the card was trimmed. You don't have firsthand knowledge. What you can do is offer opinion testimony that the card has been trimmed, based on your experience in prior observations of other cards from the same set as the card in question.

I have sold cards that I considered to be trimmed. Since I did not do the trimming, I state that "in my opinion the card has been trimmed". I usually then state that I have priced the card as such and that there are no returns on the card because I am selling the card as damaged goods. That is the only fair way to deal with trimming suspicions.

As far as a card service goes, they too are merely offering an expert opinion. It carries exactly as much weight as you want it to carry. If two people agree that SGC's expert opinion will control the issue of alterations, they have invested SGC with the power to resolve the issue. Just because SGC says it is trimmed, however, does not mean that it is trimmed. It means that their opinion on that given day is that the card is trimmed. I have had a number of cards that in my expert opinion were unaltered come back from SGC as "trimmed", only to be authenticated by SGC afterwards in a new submission. I also have at least one high grade T206 in my collection that I believe is trimmed but that SGC has authenticated. I also have formulated the opinion that a card is trimmed and had SGC back my opinion.

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

None of us actually know who our fathers are either, since none of us were present during conception. So if anyone asks, we can simply say that "I think my father is...". Most of us can find documents, but since we didn't actually see them filled out, we can't be sure.

[Archive]

Posted By: Kenny Cole

Scott,

If you talked to Matt about the card, you would know better than I do about whether or not he thinks it is trimmed. I assumed that it was trimmed from the first. That's kind of the point. I was never under any misapprehension about its condition. Were you? I doubt it. As I said earlier, I find it rather difficult to believe that anyone else was either. Moreover, as far as parcing for debatable material goes, that is what started this thread in the first place (I'd do one of those smiley faces here if I knew how). Let's figure out something else to fight about.

Kenny

[Archive]

Posted By: warshawlaw

Besides, what man would voluntarily cop to 18 years of child support if it wasn't true?

Of course, although speaking each of us was there at the time of conception (yeah, I believe life starts at conception; although my Hebraic brethren often state that it does not start until the kids leave home and the dog dies), you're right, we usually don't remember the event and couldn't testify to it.

[Archive]

Posted By: runscott

I spoke with Leon earlier today and he warned me that you might come back with "dna" - doh!

[Archive]

Posted By: leon

LMAO