The SCDA trip

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Posted By: Aaron

"Can anyone name an auction house that does not have there own authenticators? is this not a conflict of interest? How many of you that question these auction houses purchase from them?"

This one's easy: Like most collectors, I suspect, I had absolutely no idea that SCDA and its individual authenticators were authenticating items and then consigning those same items to auction houses.

Then this information became public last month.

Now that I know that this kind of undisclosed conflict of interest takes place, you better believe I'm going to be extremely cautious about it the next auction. I just feel bad for all the potential bidders who don't know that this kind of practice actually takes place.

Again, personally, this is such a blatant conflict of interest it wouldn't even have occurred to me to ask about it, so I suspect most collectors won't even know that the burden of discovering conflict of interest at auction houses rests on them and not the authenticators and auction houses themselves (who will continue to conceal their conflict of interest unless asked directly).

Anyway, I plan on putting my newfound knowledge to the test in Mastro's April auction. Once the auction is up, I'm going to ask Mastro for a list of all items in the auction which have been authenticated and consigned by SCDA and/or any of its individual authenticators.

If Mastro is as forthcoming as they claim they will be, then I'll post the list here on this message site and we can all review the items and get a better idea what percentage of game-used items in the auction have been consigned by SCDA and/or its authenticators (assuming Mastro is honest) and then discuss whether we agree with their findings or if we think a financial motivation might be involved.

All in all I think that could be very informative to collectors and help make better judgments when deciding to bid on items or not.