American Greed-CNBC

[Leon]

Originally Posted by Corporal Lance Boil

Forgive me for what I about to say. Most people won't care, anyway.

What a boring episode of American Greed. I set the DVR and was excited, et al, and literally had to pinch myself to stay awake.

Not only did I not learn anything new about the scandal, but that was just bad television.

CLB

With over 8500 registered members there is going to be every different opinion under the sun. My wife and I watched it. I asked her today at lunch if she thought it was good. She said "yeap". Personally I thought it was great. It was well put together, polished and professional. I just wish the episode was 3-4 hours instead of 1.

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[ElCabron]

I thought they did an excellent job with the show, especially since there was really 3 or 4 hours of material to cover and only 1 hour to do it in. That’s the reason it seems like more should have been covered. There simply wasn’t time. I would have liked to have seen a little more focus on Doug Allen, for example. Mark Theotikos literally wasn’t even mentioned. Nothing about John Rogers, either. They also could have talked about how several former Mastro employees who were involved in shady practices there now work for major auction houses. Or the shill bidding list, which outs several board members as shill bidders. So when there’s an entire thread about whether or not PSA got a free pass, I just don’t see it. There simply wasn’t enough time. PSA would have been low on my list of what I wanted to see covered, behind all of the people I just mentioned.

I thought Jeff Lichtman did a great job and I hope more of his detractors will take Hank’s classy lead and give him the credit he deserves. You can still think he’s an asshole, but he deserves a lot of credit for his role in all of this.

Brian Brusokas (FBI) was excellent, but I wish we’d gotten to hear more from him. Many of you will remember him from the National when he spoke at the Net54 dinner. Brian is far too humble to ever acknowledge it, but he was the driving force behind this entire investigation, and without him, Bill Mastro and Doug Allen would still be ripping people off to this very day. The entire hobby owes him a HUGE debt of gratitude for everything he did and continues to do for us. His impact on this hobby has been quietly and anonymously enormous, and all of it for the greater good. Oh, also, he was the only one on the show to pronounce “Honus” correctly. Respect.

I don’t know that Evers guy, but it’s weird to me that everyone is so focused on him. I think he rubbed everyone the wrong way when he bragged about his $500 garage sale score than he “only” got $49,000 for. It was a bad look. Personally, he lost me the minute he said “La-jwahhhhhh” and then said it was the second rarest card in the hobby. It was clear that he’s not one of us. He was just a guy that got a deal on some cards at a garage sale and then tried to sell them with Mastro. But I have no problem with his $500 deal. He didn’t rip the seller off. The seller agreed to sell. That’s how garage sales work. It could have easily been a box of fakes and he'd have been out $500. It shouldn’t matter what he paid, the cards are still the cards, and he still got burned by Mastro. Although, I’m not sure about the Goudey Ruth and how that went down, because it’s not impossible that someone bought it the first time, got it into a PSA holder and then re-consigned it. But I think he was probably right that Mastro kept it in house and re-listed it in the new holder. In a perfect world, the time spent covering that would have gone to more Doug Allen coverage or some of the other things I mentioned earlier. But there’s no 1-hour show that was going to please everybody. I thought it was produced well and really enjoyed it.

I think a lot of people might have missed what I thought was the funniest part of the whole show when Peter Nash made a brief cameo. A classic, perhaps unintentional, easter egg.

Sorry there weren’t enough Siberian tigers and murders to prevent your narcolepsy from taking over. It’s not every day there’s an entire hour of television specifically about our hobby. I guess that’s not entertaining enough for everyone, though.

-Ryan

[aconte]

Originally Posted by ElCabron

Sorry there weren’t enough Siberian tigers and murders to prevent your narcolepsy from taking over. It’s not every day there’s an entire hour of television specifically about our hobby. I guess that’s not entertaining enough for everyone, though.

-Ryan

No narcolepsy here. Maybe I needed to see the 1975 Dave McNally card
being flipped through the card boxes a few more times if they weren't
going to have Siberian tigers or strippers on the poles.

I am glad with the outcome of FBI investigation though!

Tony

[Huck]

Last night, I sat down and watched the episode. If you are not in the hobby that show had to be boring as heck. I agree with others in that there are so many other threads to the episode that given time could have been explored.

I could careless about the garage sale man being purportedly ripped off by Mastro. Who in their right mind would leave a potential gold mine of cards without a full inventory of said box?

Question, do members here believe Mastro made the hobby what it is today?

I think one of the best bits of wisdom on the show was from the reporter:

"There is a greed factor here too, where all of a sudden the cards that my mom put in the basement 35 years ago are suddenly going to allow me to retire and buy an island in the caribbean, and it just doesn't make sense.. right, because at the end of the day these cards are just pieces of cardboard. "