Send lawyers, guns and money

[barrysloate]

Joe- I agree with your thinking and I will tell you that when I ran auctions I owned many of the lots. But here was my predicament: as a small auction house it was becoming increasingly difficult to get consignments, especially high end ones. The only way to round out my auctions and give them some pizzazz was to put in my own material. If I relied entirely on consignments, I was basically done. A big auction house doesn't have to worry about that, but I did. It was sink or swim.

As it turned out, I sank, but that's a story for another day.

[bijoem]

Barry - the hobby misses your auctions for sure.


To be truthful -

I don't have any problem with an auction house owning lots - but I do believe those auction houses should disclose the ownership in their catalog.

I also don't have a problem with employees of a grading company owning cards. I would just like for there to be checks and balances to be in place to ensure that the graders don't know who the submitters are.


Lets face it....
you have to trust the employees in any auction house / or any grading company. If insiders are looking to defraud people - they sure have easy access to the ways to do so (no matter what rules are in place).