new member introduction

[RobertGT]

I think Ken Goldin has stated his objective clearly and with good intentions, and should be given a chance to promote his new venture. Any auction house that is willing to say "no house bidding" on the record is already starting off with more credibility in my book than many of the multimillion-dollar auction houses already out there that refuse to talk about it, but secretly engage in this deceitful practice. Some other points:

- The Scoreboard name has always held weight in autograph collecting circles, even long after the company folded. The company was legit with autographs. That says something about Goldin. Their certs were easy to photocopy or use to accompany non-Scoreboard merchandise with fraudulent sigs. That's an important distinction.

- Yes Don West used to over-hype worthless stuff you didn't need. So does ever other TV huckster or Bill Mays-esque pitchman trying to sell a glorified blender for $149.99 today. That's what they do. When I used to work the night shift years ago, I came to appreciate the great comedy and energy to be found in the Don West sports shows and the crazy banter with Goldin. I'm sure some people took it seriously and bought this stuff, but to me it was great late-night comedy and nothing more. It really is buyer beware and do your research with any Shop At Home program.

Just my humble opinion.

[wonkaticket]

Originally Posted by RobertGT

I'm sure some people took it seriously and bought this stuff, but to me it was great late-night comedy and nothing more. It really is buyer beware and do your research with any Shop At Home program.

Yes that can be said of any purchase buyer beware. I wonder how many old ladies and folks viewed their purchases as comedy…later in life after being tweaked out of hard earned money.

Having someone who has made cash in the past from this line of work isn’t exactly the person I look to earmark significant funds to in my collecting. Just my two cents….

Cash For Gold
Get More: SOUTH
PARKEric Cartman,Grandpa Marsh,Stan Marsh,Leopold "Butters" Stotch,more...

[glchen]

I only came back to the hobby in early 2010 (after dropping out when I was a kid around 1990/91), so I don't know a lot of Ken's history. However, now and then the last couple of years, Ken has purchased a LOT of cards from me on ebay, so obviously I have a conflict of interest. Saying all of that, Ken has always been very professional and easy to deal with during our interactions. I would say that he deserves a chance to prove himself with his new auction house. If things don't go as he says, people can crucify him then. It looks like from his rules that he is attempting to be as ethical as possible. I do have some concerns with Steiner LOAs (since they have an especially bad rep), but it looks like these would only be for modern autos and not vintage/prewar ones. Good luck, Ken. This crowd is real tough on auction houses and their reps, but usually with only the best intentions.

[glynparson]

It was around 1999-2000. I received a phone call from a woman in the Lebanon PA area. Her husband has just passed away from cancer and all he left her was this very valuable baseball card collection. When I get to the house, I brought my father with me to help go through it, she takes us to the basement to see the collection. When I get there I am horrified. It is all very beat up ugly off centered new cards all in 10 holders. The woman then explains to us how her husband found out he was dying of cancer, he didn't tell anyone at first. they had little money and No life insurance. They did have good credit, and he eventually told his wife he was dying of cancer but he had provided for her and their daughter. He got several credit cards and maxed them out buying that overhyped crap off of TV from Mr Goldin and Solomon Cramer. It was so hard explaining to this woman that her sick desperate husband, who was trying to give his family a future, had actually wasted tens of thousands of dollars they did not have. The woman was crying hysterically she was telling us how she would lose her home because she needed money from these cards. He had spent 20000+ and I would not have given her $2000 for it all and I would have paid her more than it was worth to try and help her. So no, he will not get a second chance from me, I don't care if he gets every white whale on my want list. I hope is has turned a new leaf but until past since are acknowledge a little more honestly and openly, and attempted to be rectified when possible, I will avoid Goldin auctions and be openly critical of his past, and I also wish they would not be an advertiser and please don't send me any email blasts about upcoming auctions as I don't care.

Edit: Jeff if you would see some of the garbage they were calling gem mint on modern stuff it seems a little beyond puffery in my opinion.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Jeff did you change your mind overnight? Previously you said "Of course, I agree with the criticism that's been laid out here."

To your point that something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, philosophically I would like to agree with that free market view, but as Glyn's story illustrates, in some instances it just doesn't comport with reality or take into account just how easy it is to take advantage of vulnerable and uninformed people. I think what SAH did is well over the line ethically.

[barrysloate]

Jeff didn't change his mind Peter, he just likes to rag on me.

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Jeff did you change your mind overnight? Previously you said "Of course, I agree with the criticism that's been laid out here."

Peter, no, didn't change my mind at all -- I do agree with the criticism, the videos are ridiculous. But I'm just surprised at the venom on this thread compared to how Mastro and Doug Allen (and others) were dealt with who either have been indicted for fraud or whose empirical auction results are patently, consistently absurd.

And Barry, you need to relax, maybe you're working too hard.

[barrysloate]

delete

[hammer]

If you are all happy with Hucksters in this hobby do not complain if you get burned by them. A Carnival atmosphere is not what I was hopeing this hobby would turn out to be. With that said when you sweep up the floor and put the dirt under the rug pretty soon you will have to throw it out after so much dirt.

[travrosty]

it was more than puffery, the cat was already out of the bag that the new stuff was way overproduced and collectors were leaving the market, and new collectors werent coming in and that the market was way oversaturated.


The people who didnt know this - the casual non-collector or weekend investor, got taken in.

The question that people need to ask is "did ken know it?", yes i believe he did, and did he sell it anyway pumping it up as the investment of the century.
"yes"

[teetwoohsix]

Originally Posted by glynparson

It was around 1999-2000. I received a phone call from a woman in the Lebanon PA area. Her husband has just passed away from cancer and all he left her was this very valuable baseball card collection. When I get to the house, I brought my father with me to help go through it, she takes us to the basement to see the collection. When I get there I am horrified. It is all very beat up ugly off centered new cards all in 10 holders. The woman then explains to us how her husband found out he was dying of cancer, he didn't tell anyone at first. they had little money and No life insurance. They did have good credit, and he eventually told his wife he was dying of cancer but he had provided for her and their daughter. He got several credit cards and maxed them out buying that overhyped crap off of TV from Mr Goldin and Solomon Cramer. It was so hard explaining to this woman that her sick desperate husband, who was trying to give his family a future, had actually wasted tens of thousands of dollars they did not have. The woman was crying hysterically she was telling us how she would lose her home because she needed money from these cards. He had spent 20000+ and I would not have given her $2000 for it all and I would have paid her more than it was worth to try and help her. So no, he will not get a second chance from me, I don't care if he gets every white whale on my want list. I hope is has turned a new leaf but until past since are acknowledge a little more honestly and openly, and attempted to be rectified when possible, I will avoid Goldin auctions and be openly critical of his past, and I also wish they would not be an advertiser and please don't send me any email blasts about upcoming auctions as I don't care.

Edit: Jeff if you would see some of the garbage they were calling gem mint on modern stuff it seems a little beyond puffery in my opinion.

This is a horrible story, it made me sad to read it.

Did anyone ever get the real T206 Wagner (that was hyped in the video)?

Sincerely, Clayton

[glchen]

First, the disclaimer, as in my last post on this thread, I have sold cards to Ken before, so I am not a completely unbiased poster. I have always felt that our dealings were very fair and professional. However, take this and my opinions on this as it is.

That story from Glyn is pretty bad. I'm not saying that I'm unsympathetic to the man and his wife. It's a horrible story. You don't wish that on anybody. However, did Ken know that the man was dying of cancer and was spending his life savings on cards when this was going down? I assume he did not. He was just a face on TV, doing his job of trying to sell cards. A lot of dealers sell over-priced cards. It could be on TV (like Ken did), it could be at card shows like the National, and it could be on ebay with overpriced BINs. If the same person spent his money on seriously over-priced BIN's from Levi and 707 after watching news on his TV about the Black Swamp find, would it be Levi's fault on what happened to his family? Some people are justifiable shocked at Levi's high prices, but others counter that he is a nice guy and ships quickly with good service. OKAY...

The argument will be that Levi did not hype his cards like Ken did or promise huge returns. I think Ken already addressed some of this in his earlier 4 posts, which basically came down to this is how Shop At Home operates for all of the things they sell. However, the point I want to bring up here is that you have to be knowledgeable about this hobby if you buy anything of considerable worth. This is why this forum has been so great, because there are a lot of people on this board who are very knowledgeable with many, many years in the hobby and are very willing to dispense it. You have to have an idea of what you are doing, or else there is a very good chance that you are going to get creamed. Knowledge is absolutely vital in this hobby whether it is which TPG's are reputable, how to tell if a raw card is authentic, use VCP and past sales for your pricing data rather than SMR or Beckett, and so forth. Again for some people, this is only a hobby and they do not care what their returns are or if they get any money back at all. However, if you have or are planning to put any significant sums of money into this hobby, you better try to learn as much as possible.

Being knowledgeable brings me up to another story about jewelry, which is also often sold on TV. My mother-in-law is an avid fan of the jewelry channel to my chagrin. This brings me to a story about buying diamonds. When I was looking into purchasing an engagement ring for my soon-to-be wife, I really researched it. I bought a book on how to buy diamonds, and read many, many articles with helpful advice about it on the internet. Therefore, when I finally purchased the ring, I felt that I really knew what I was doing and bought the best ring and diamond for the price I could afford. This is what knowledge can give you. When my mother-in-law showed me a small diamond ring (~1 carat) that she purchased, I was shocked at the price that she spent on such a poor quality diamond. The color, clarity, and cut were all bad, and the dealer smoked her because she was so focused on the size of the diamond for the price. You can't really say it all the dealer's fault. When you walk into a jewelry store at your mall, this is what you see every day. People paying too much for poor quality diamonds.

People just need to use their own knowledge and their own judgment on things that they buy. I personally think some of the prices that people paid for the Dimtiri Young PSA 10's are absolutely nuts. Did those people get duped? Did the people who bought the hype of the Strasburg and Jeremy Lin cards get duped? Buying during the 80s-90s bubble? Insert cards? As did many others, I got killed buying cards during that 80s-90s bubble and became very disillusioned for a time and dropped out of the hobby. However, who knew these guys were printing so many cards? I guess all of during that era should have known, but were just deceiving ourselves as we were dreaming about our retirement savings already. At some point, you really have to decide for yourself if the card is really worth the price the dealer is selling it for. There was a thread in the Memorabilia section about the crazy prices people were paying for items from Heritage's recent Live auction such as the 1969 Topps Basketball set. However, other posters defended the prices as some people had the means to pay the prices, so that meant the prices were fair. If anyone was investing their life savings, I really hope that they knew what they were doing.

I believed Ken already addressed the card slabbing issue by saying he wasn't involved in that aspect of it. If I'm wrong, please correct me. However, if he had just sold the cards raw, but said they were gem mint like many raw dealers do, would that have made a difference?

Again, it is not like Ken is someone like Brian Dwyer with a "sterling" reputation. He has some work to do, and I think he's admitted this already. Let's just see how his first auction runs and go from there. Besides having stuff I want, the biggest thing that I want from an auction house is no shilling, including house bids or safety bids. That is, I want real auctions where the true market price of the item is set. I would like to see reasonable shipping charges and that my winnings are shipped fairly quickly after payment. Accepting paypal or credit cards would be very nice also, along with reasonable buyer's fee. I would also want reasonable recourse if the item when delivered did not match the auction description. Good luck, Ken.

[Ladder7]

Hey, lay off Barry. He wasn't giving an endorsement.

Incidentally, Im not buying any of his epiphany BS. But, no doubt, there will be a "Show your Goldin winnings" thread... Yep Net54, we'll get this hobby cleaned up yet!

[Buythatcard]

Originally Posted by glchen

First, the disclaimer, as in my last post on this thread, I have sold cards to Ken before, so I am not a completely unbiased poster. I have always felt that our dealings were very fair and professional. However, take this and my opinions on this as it is.

That story from Glyn is pretty bad. I'm not saying that I'm unsympathetic to the man and his wife. It's a horrible story. You don't wish that on anybody. However, did Ken know that the man was dying of cancer and was spending his life savings on cards when this was going down? I assume he did not. He was just a face on TV, doing his job of trying to sell cards. A lot of dealers sell over-priced cards. It could be on TV (like Ken did), it could be at card shows like the National, and it could be on ebay with overpriced BINs. If the same person spent his money on seriously over-priced BIN's from Levi and 707 after watching news on his TV about the Black Swamp find, would it be Levi's fault on what happened to his family? Some people are justifiable shocked at Levi's high prices, but others counter that he is a nice guy and ships quickly with good service. OKAY...

The argument will be that Levi did not hype his cards like Ken did or promise huge returns. I think Ken already addressed some of this in his earlier 4 posts, which basically came down to this is how Shop At Home operates for all of the things they sell. However, the point I want to bring up here is that you have to be knowledgeable about this hobby if you buy anything of considerable worth. This is why this forum has been so great, because there are a lot of people on this board who are very knowledgeable with many, many years in the hobby and are very willing to dispense it. You have to have an idea of what you are doing, or else there is a very good chance that you are going to get creamed. Knowledge is absolutely vital in this hobby whether it is which TPG's are reputable, how to tell if a raw card is authentic, use VCP and past sales for your pricing data rather than SMR or Beckett, and so forth. Again for some people, this is only a hobby and they do not care what their returns are or if they get any money back at all. However, if you have or are planning to put any significant sums of money into this hobby, you better try to learn as much as possible.

Being knowledgeable brings me up to another story about jewelry, which is also often sold on TV. My mother-in-law is an avid fan of the jewelry channel to my chagrin. This brings me to a story about buying diamonds. When I was looking into purchasing an engagement ring for my soon-to-be wife, I really researched it. I bought a book on how to buy diamonds, and read many, many articles with helpful advice about it on the internet. Therefore, when I finally purchased the ring, I felt that I really knew what I was doing and bought the best ring and diamond for the price I could afford. This is what knowledge can give you. When my mother-in-law showed me a small diamond ring (~1 carat) that she purchased, I was shocked at the price that she spent on such a poor quality diamond. The color, clarity, and cut were all bad, and the dealer smoked her because she was so focused on the size of the diamond for the price. You can't really say it all the dealer's fault. When you walk into a jewelry store at your mall, this is what you see every day. People paying too much for poor quality diamonds.

People just need to use their own knowledge and their own judgment on things that they buy. I personally think some of the prices that people paid for the Dimtiri Young PSA 10's are absolutely nuts. Did those people get duped? Did the people who bought the hype of the Strasburg and Jeremy Lin cards get duped? Buying during the 80s-90s bubble? Insert cards? As did many others, I got killed buying cards during that 80s-90s bubble and became very disillusioned for a time and dropped out of the hobby. However, who knew these guys were printing so many cards? I guess all of during that era should have known, but were just deceiving ourselves as we were dreaming about our retirement savings already. At some point, you really have to decide for yourself if the card is really worth the price the dealer is selling it for. There was a thread in the Memorabilia section about the crazy prices people were paying for items from Heritage's recent Live auction such as the 1969 Topps Basketball set. However, other posters defended the prices as some people had the means to pay the prices, so that meant the prices were fair. If anyone was investing their life savings, I really hope that they knew what they were doing.

I believed Ken already addressed the card slabbing issue by saying he wasn't involved in that aspect of it. If I'm wrong, please correct me. However, if he had just sold the cards raw, but said they were gem mint like many raw dealers do, would that have made a difference?

Again, it is not like Ken is someone like Brian Dwyer with a "sterling" reputation. He has some work to do, and I think he's admitted this already. Let's just see how his first auction runs and go from there. Besides having stuff I want, the biggest thing that I want from an auction house is no shilling, including house bids or safety bids. That is, I want real auctions where the true market price of the item is set. I would like to see reasonable shipping charges and that my winnings are shipped fairly quickly after payment. Accepting paypal or credit cards would be very nice also, along with reasonable buyer's fee. I would also want reasonable recourse if the item when delivered did not match the auction description. Good luck, Ken.

+1
I agree with Gary.

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by glynparson

Edit: Jeff if you would see some of the garbage they were calling gem mint on modern stuff it seems a little beyond puffery in my opinion.

Glyn, I can't disagree with that. Kind of hard to rationalize this in any other way. I think I'm just so used to seeing so much fraud in the hobby that boorish selling and borderline behavior just needs to get to the back of the line of problems, unfortunately. But there's no good excuse for it, you're right.

[wonkaticket]

Originally Posted by glynparson

It was around 1999-2000. I received a phone call from a woman in the Lebanon PA area. Her husband has just passed away from cancer and all he left her was this very valuable baseball card collection. When I get to the house, I brought my father with me to help go through it, she takes us to the basement to see the collection. When I get there I am horrified. It is all very beat up ugly off centered new cards all in 10 holders. The woman then explains to us how her husband found out he was dying of cancer, he didn't tell anyone at first. they had little money and No life insurance. They did have good credit, and he eventually told his wife he was dying of cancer but he had provided for her and their daughter. He got several credit cards and maxed them out buying that overhyped crap off of TV from Mr Goldin and Solomon Cramer. It was so hard explaining to this woman that her sick desperate husband, who was trying to give his family a future, had actually wasted tens of thousands of dollars they did not have. The woman was crying hysterically she was telling us how she would lose her home because she needed money from these cards. He had spent 20000+ and I would not have given her $2000 for it all and I would have paid her more than it was worth to try and help her. So no, he will not get a second chance from me, I don't care if he gets every white whale on my want list. I hope is has turned a new leaf but until past since are acknowledge a little more honestly and openly, and attempted to be rectified when possible, I will avoid Goldin auctions and be openly critical of his past, and I also wish they would not be an advertiser and please don't send me any email blasts about upcoming auctions as I don't care.

Edit: Jeff if you would see some of the garbage they were calling gem mint on modern stuff it seems a little beyond puffery in my opinion.

Classy guy cant wait to sign up and bid.

So you're saying what was purchased by this dying man acting off the info given to him by so called trusted experts on TV wasn't?

“Simply put this is the greatest baseball card trading product ever put out in the history of mankind!” Ken Goldin

If so I'm just shocked.

Jeff I think all these guys who screw us are equally jack wagons Mastro, Allen & Nash any of them who get caught taking advantage of us. I also agree we should be blasting the Allen’s, Mastro’s and Nash's or anyone who is implicated or caught doing ill will in whatever shape or form in the hobby. It’s garbage and doesn’t deserve a pass.

I agree it’s a bit short sided to beat on the nickel dime con while the crime king pin lives up the street and we all go over for dinner and compliment his furniture.

However this this jack wagon has announced he would like to move his way up the ladder to be a king pin and more respected. Since most all know his past tactics and sales angles he’s taking his beating…and part me wonders did he think it was going to be different.

Banner ads and announcements aside if it walks like a duck and…well you know the rest.

Bottom line you can come down with a cold or the flu, but you don’t all of sudden come down with a case of ethics and respectability.