THE MARKEL REPORT: Are Graded Baseball Cards Being “Juiced” (Aesthetically Enhanced)?

[Sean_C]

To respond to Rich's post:

I was and still am a moderator over on the Beckett boards. We do have a much more aggressive policing policy that Leon has here, but far less restrictive than the ones over on the CU boards (the post over there referencing this thread has been poofed already). We would not delete the threads about questionable BGS cards (those in the hobby that know me know that I've been complaining about altered cards in all TPG holders, and specifically BGS grading sheet-cut cards for years), and in fact, I posted multiple times when the thread about the altered Brady card was first posted.

I can't and won't post our guidelines for deleting threads or suspending users, other than to say that reposts of deleted threads would obviously be deleted, and ones that contained personal / private information and conversations) would be edited or removed if editing would destroy the point of the thread (similar to what Dan did removing some of the contact details in his posting of his communication with Scott, although we would have probably removed all of the back and forth communications with Scott as well and left the rest of the post). There may have been very specific reasons why a thread would be deleted, and if it were done by the actual staff of Beckett and not the moderators, it was likely due to a complaint by one of the people mentioned in the thread (IE: Scott contacting Leon or Dan and making threats because of the content of this thread).

Posting a well documented, thoroughly explained example of an altered card like the Brady would not get the post deleted on it's own. Someone coming along and making accusations as to how/why the card was graded ("person on the inside", payoffs, collusion, etc.) that were not not substantiated by demonstrated facts would probably get the individual post deleted, the poster banned and possibly cause the thread to get locked if it got out of hand.

Beckett certainly didn't kill "their board on purpose cause they saw more and more of those..." . No business ever intends to drive away customers (well, except maybe eBay... ). The changes to the board and site were intended to attract more posters / customers, not drive them away. Sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. What I can say though is that I do see a lot more direct interaction now between Beckett staff members, writers, etc. and the posters on the board now than we had in old days; not from any type of moderating / supervisory type role, but in generally just talking about the hobby and interacting with collectors, which I see as a positive.

Originally Posted by Rich Klein

The Beckett message boards still exists; however; many of the old threads disappeared when the "new" website was created. This included good and bad threads. Since the ownership that created the whole problem with the BMB are no longer running the company -- I don't want to speak ill of those no longer there. But note a couple of things

1) I said almost no thread was ever taken off. Sean C used to be a moderator (he still may be for all I know) and can talk about his hands-off policy (or his hands-on if there was one)

2) Like I said the BMB went through some changes last year when the new web site came up; I like much of the new web site; but frankly, I'm in the minority there and many of the posters have disappeared.

3) I usually did not read the football message board; so I can not specifically talk about the Brady card and what happenend. However; I do remember that the seller of that card (I think was Kevin Burge) has been the subject of many threads on BMB and almost none of them were eliminated

4) I stand by what I said

Regards
Rich