Mastro and FBI

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Posted By: Corey R. Shanus

While the purpose of this post is not to defend Mastro's actions, I'm trying to see the distinction between their actions here and the actions of shopping a card around among the different grading companies and failing to disclose if the card had ever been rejected as altered (or if not altered been given a lower grade). My understanding is that this kind of "card shopping without disclosure" is routinely done by the great majority of auction houses, and I dare say with the full blessing of their consignors. I'm also struggling to see the ethical distinction between what happened with the Jordan shirt and the actions of collectors/dealers/auction houses to consign or sell slabbed cards from certain issues (e.g., T206s) that have not been re-examined, knowing full well that a number of the cards are altered and will be acquired by good faith purchasers who will not be getting what they paid for. Just seems to me that there is a lot of hypocrisy at play here and maybe the best thing to come from this incident is to highlight the need to impose a duty on all auction houses and other sellers to disclose all opinions rendered by reputable grading/certification companies regarding for auction/sale items. Perhaps in the alternative the grading companies could compile a data bank of rejected cards, which would show an image of the card, the date of submission, the basis for rejection and (assuming any privacy issues can be overcome) by whom the card was submitted.