Poll: response to recent PWCC revelations

[Dpeck100]

I am starting to get the feeling that many of you don't go to EBAY frequently and see what has taken place over the past few years. There used to be a ton of sellers listing 99 cent auctions. Do a quick search and see what you find. You have Probstein that does some but many have extremely high opening bids, you have Greg Morris who has nearly 20,000 auctions running and only 175 of those are graded cards and loads of small time sellers with higher opening bids.

PWCC whether anyone likes it or not is the 800 pound gorilla and the number of listings they have in each monthly auctions has doubled in the last three years. While I think it is unlikely Brent goes to prison and his auction house folds in theory it could happen and if so you will see a lot of new sellers pop right back up and many of these same cards will be sold by them and the others will be sent to the two consignment dealers listed above and perhaps a new consignment seller will emerge.

I personally have never used any of them and have only sold my own cards. That said there are loads of collectors out there that like to move cards and find it easier to just send them off and let someone else do all of the work and pay a fee. I am in the brokerage business and many trade online for a few bucks while others think it is ridiculous to pay me in some cases four figures to process some trades. I choose to list my own cards because it is easy for me to do and I have carved out a name for myself in a little niche where I can get as high of price as anyone. Quite frankly PWCC gets in many cases much lower prices for the cards I collect because many items actually do better in a BIN scenario.

Regardless they take on all types of cards and have a beautiful listing format and are easy to deal with so for that they have many repeat buyers. They also happen to get the best material of anyone on EBAY. As I have stated before I have spent less than $1,000 in their auctions so I am not a big buyer of theirs but people are fooling themselves if they think that somehow they are insulating themselves by boycotting their auctions.

I get the concept of not wanting to do business with someone you feel is shady or unethical but I realize there are plenty that fit this profile in the trading card world and you are just trading one evil for another if that is your concern. If setting aside your desire to work on your collection and not do business with a specific seller is more important to you that is fine too but rest assured that if you have been buying graded cards for any length of time you have purchased some from someone that isn't entirely on the up and up.

The person I purchased a card from directly was the seller who went to a school in California and was looking for help on how to use a high powered cutting machine. I purchased the card from his auction and it is very possible the PSA graded card is trimmed. I could choose not to do business with him and I know exactly who is selling the card.

With PWCC you don't generally speaking. I keep track of many of the cards from the sets I collect so I knew when the 1982 Wrestling All Stars Series A PSA 10 Ric Flair was auctioned off it was Bob Evans or begsu. In most cases where there are higher population totals you won't know.

There are large numbers of collectors sending them material so in order for you to succeed you need these same collectors to quit doing it. As long as the process is smooth and the results are good I don't see this changing. In the mean time I will bid on cards in their auctions as they pop up and if something happens to them the cards will be sold elsewhere and I will bid on them there. This is a supply issue as I have stated and many will have to come to a crossroads in their collecting journey if they choose to not consider their offerings.

It is my understanding that this Gary Moser individual as been up to the same tricks for twenty years. Where did he sell those cards before PWCC? It has to be through some of the more popular auction houses I would think. Did he sell them at shows? Perhaps and once they are released into the collecting world they could turn up anywhere. There could be guys on the BST board who have unknowingly owned a card he has handled and had a great transaction with a board member. Did they do anything wrong? This stuff is out there.

On the modern side many of the cards were sold directly from one dealer to EBAY buyers and a direct website. Just imagine one of these collectors saying I want to sell this Lebron and creating an EBAY listing and selling it themselves. It has most likely happened so one avenue is thought of as totally fine and another is bad. It doesn't make any sense to me.