April 13, the day autographs stand still !!!!

[mighty bombjack]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

There is a difference between presenting arguments over specific facts--like the bad Marciano glove recently outed here--and simply attacking everything about TPAs regardless of whether there is any ascertainable issue with any specific item. If you listen to Travis [something I will not do any longer given the "ignore" function--thanks for the heads up on that one], everything a TPA ever does is wrong and everything they touch is tainted. That is simply not accurate or fair, and it is tedious, negative and unpleasant to read through. Hammer away at TPAs when they mess up and I'll be your biggest supporter, but to go after everything they say or do so indiscriminately reeks of a vendetta. It reminds me of a friend's mother who lived in occupied France as a teenage girl and who could never say or hear the word "German" without adding "bastards" and spitting on the ground.

I know nothing I am saying here is going to change things; I don't expect it to. I merely want to voice my view that these continual screeds against TPAs make this section of the board unpleasant to read. It is damaging to the community and it turns this section of the board into small echo chamber of narrow views. I know that every time I read one, I lose interest in the forum. That doesn't make me a person who is not interested in authenticity or in righting errors made by TPAs, BTW, just a person who prefers not to spend his leisure time in an indiscriminately negative, hostile environment.

OK, sharing time is over, back to bashing JSA, PSA and whoever else.

Yes! Thank you for typing out most of what I wanted to say.

I would only add that there can be a respectful tone when a collector who is new to the board mentions using an alphabet. I think that those collectors are sometimes spoken down to and even belittled. You cannot educate people that way, you can only alienate them away from a mostly excellent community that exists here.