The Opportunity

[steve B]

Originally Posted by chalupacollects

Who is going to decide who the top dealers are? Not all of them are squeaky clean...

What this hobby needs is an association of dues paying dealers that are vetted by a panel of long time reputable dealers that can provide an endorsement without playing politics...there would need to be pre-requisites for membership for both old time and new dealers and a periodic re-vetting of members to eliminate folks who may have "strayed off the path."

Then the dealer would have the right to issue an "association approved" LOA with security features and a unique number that can be tracked through the associations website...to start with...

This sort of set-up could work...

In stamps that's sort of the setup. There are a couple national organizations, US philatelic society, and the American Stamp Dealer Association. The first is more like a national club, and offers authentication, as well as a code of conduct, running a research library, publishing a magazine and probably a few other functions. The second is a dealer organization that also has a code of conduct, and publicizes shows etc as well as having a magazine with articles.
There are also two other authenticators who also grade The Philatelic foundation, and PSE (No relation to collectors universe, but they did try slabbing stamps, which didn't really gain much acceptance)

None of that means that all the members are reliable or even honest, but it does filter out some of the worse ones.
TPG/authentication in that hobby has tiered pricing, but not tiered turnaround times. It takes them as long as it takes to be sure something is what it's claimed to be.

PF did have a scandal in the 1980's, where someone inside with access to the computer system let bad stuff get certificates for a couple dealer he was friends with. They dealt with it decisively, but it took a while to earn back some respect.

There have been a few tries at starting a national card organization, but none have gained much traction.