Heritage Hypocrisy

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by BigJJ

Keithsky, was writing as you posted. Agreed.
The houses ought to be hiring people who know a Ruth signature, a Gehrig signature, Ruths bat specs for 1923, the value of a Plank in PSA 5, authentication of pre 1970 jerseys, like the back of their hand. I knew more at age 10 than some of the turkeys gobbling around the houses. They ought to have people on staff at all the houses who, without having to reference, can double check on game used, autos, cards, etc. And especially the pre-war.

+100 - I couldn't agree more

[HRBAKER]

Originally Posted by Scott Garner

+100 - I couldn't agree more

The hobby's almost unfailing allegiance/acceptance of these LOAs and card grading has created a situation where the AHs get a "pass" from having to incur this additional expense. Why raise your overhead when your customers are telling you that you don't need to?

[chaddurbin]

imo a big reason why ah don't use in-house people is because they'd be on the hook financially if the item is bad. they have more to gain by going blindly with a tpa and passing the blame off. i ran into both scenarios recently, lelands re-imbursed me because they admitted they screwed up...legendary banned me because they don't play the "opinion game" and "that's what jsa is for" on a questionable piece.

alot less overhead, experts, and time invested just going with psa/dna or jsa, because if there's a problem then you bring the item back to jsa or psa with that cert.

[sports-rings]

They have never said a thank you to the people that saved there butts.

My experience with notifying auction houses about fake championship rings has been that about 2/3 of the auction houses appreciate my help, take my claims seriously, and remove the items from their auctions. If some want a second opinion that's fine, usually this results in the items being removed.

About a third of the auction houses go into denial, or refuse to do anything. I won't rat them out today, but I have in the past.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by sports-rings

My experience with notifying auction houses about fake championship rings has been that about 2/3 of the auction houses appreciate my help, take my claims seriously, and remove the items from their auctions. If some want a second opinion that's fine, usually this results in the items being removed.

About a third of the auction houses go into denial, or refuse to do anything. I won't rat them out today, but I have in the past.

I have only had one bad personal experience, and I'm still hoping it was an anomaly, but I think I'm in denial. My experience gave strong evidence of the following:

• they will placate the customer to a point
• they rely solely on the opinion of the authenticators
• the man behind the LOA does not care if the autograph is actually authentic - they are trying to write as many LOA's as possible, and if it will pass the consumer, they will authenticate it
• so the obvious conclusion is that the auction house also does not care if an autograph is authentic or not
• i.e-they are selling COA's, not collectibles

[RichardSimon]

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