Joseph M Pankiewicz, you are a disgrace to this hobby!

[doug.goodman]

Originally Posted by the 'stache

The problem as I see it, gentlemen, is widespread indifference within the hobby.

I agree.

Originally Posted by the 'stache

But whatever their intentions, whether or not there is any collusion, their apathy is greatly detrimental to the hobby.

I agree.

Originally Posted by the 'stache

Until these major players change their way of doing business, honest hobbyists will continue to suffer.

I respectfully disagree.

It's the honest hobbyists who need to change their ways. The major players who you speak of have no reason to change, because to them the "hobby" matters less than their bottom line.

If honest hobbyists were to stop paying money to the people who get paid for their opinions, many of the problems within the hobby would go away.

The advent of the "chase" card was the beginning of the end, that's when people started looking at packs of cards as lottery tickets, that's when prices started being paid based on the potential lottery winner in the pack.

Originally Posted by the 'stache

... they're not likely to invest in vintage or pre-war cards ... The hobby is saturated with the stench of greed, and crookedness. If we're ever going to see positive change, we need to band together, and exercise our buying power.

The fact that you use the word "invest" illustrates why the "stench of greed, and crookedness" will always be with us, unless we follow your suggestion to "band together, and exercise our buying power" to NOT BUY lottery ticket items, be them cards or numbers on pieces of plastic.

But that will never happen, so my advice is to enjoy the part of the hobby that you enjoy, and do your best to ignore the rest of it.

Obviously, with this rant, I am failing miserably on that last part.

Happy hobbying,
Doug "I pretty much stopped buying new product in 1992" Goodman

[ullmandds]

je me souviens!

[john.clowes]

The competitiveness of the set registries over the past few years is driving a lot of folks to bend (or break or ignore) the rules, in my opinion. Folks are sitting on slabs, or perhaps buy new ones, but yet they watch their holdings get passed by in the standings on the registries. Pressure builds to crack slabs and do things to improve their positions. If the registries went away, perhaps the collective pressure to get to mint at all costs would be reduced to a more manageable level. My 2 cents that you got for free.

[robw]

Like with graded memorabilia, put an invisible stamp/id# only visible under blacklight, to the card....plus, the TPG's should have a scanned copy of all cards in their internal database. If a card is resubmitted with a stamp, they now can cross reference to see if card has been altered. I would gladly pay a few bucks more per card.

Rob

[conor912]

The saddest part is that this will all soon fade from the front page and it will be back to business as usual for Joe and his cohorts.

[botn]

Originally Posted by conor912

The saddest part is that this will all soon fade from the front page and it will be back to business as usual for Joe and his cohorts.

Exactly. Joe really did not have to reply. I think it hurt him more than it helped him. Despite evidence having been gathered very quickly on just a few cards, obviously there are many others, law enforcement will not do anything with this information and the hobby has memory problems and a very high tolerance for crap like this. Before this even fades from the first page I can assure you most people who have read and/or posted on the threads have already moved on.

If you look at the thread created by Joe, I think there are more OT and humorous posts than posts attributed to the topic. So Joe, if you are reading this, do not lose sleep over this thing.

[ullmandds]

Maybe there should be a section in the archive on this site that discusses suspect sellers/auction houses. Maybe a timeline of hobby indescretions over the last decade up to present...naming names...so users of this message board will have such info to help with future transactions?

[D.P.Johnson]

Originally Posted by ullmandds

Maybe there should be a section in the archive on this site that discusses suspect sellers/auction houses. Maybe a timeline of hobby indescretions over the last decade up to present...naming names...so users of this message board will have such info to help with future transactions?

That's not a bad idea. A lot of message boards have a section in them where known scammers and/or suspect sellers are kept. The section would need to be closely moderated to avoid false and/or salicious allegations, but it could be done, and it's a good resource for buyers...