Worthpoint removes 30 million sports card listings

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

Do you think that Worthpoint received a letter from a lawyer threatening legal action unless they took the listings down?

If it's a licensing issue, that's possible.

[griffon512]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

If it's a licensing issue, that's possible.

Thanks for the head's up on this. I cancelled my subscription and they are giving me a pro rated refund. As expected, the representative I talked to had no explanation for the change but said corporate was having a meeting about it today.

[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

If it's a licensing issue, that's possible.

No, that's not what I'm talking about. Imagine being in Brent's shoes here. A group of guys, who have nothing else to do, spend hours each day browsing through Worthpoint listings. They find so many altered cards, which you've sold, and now you have to refund everything, or most of them, from your own pocket. This is something that can go on forever, right? Are you not going to try and put a stop to this?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

No, that's not what I'm talking about. Imagine being in Brent's shoes here. A group of guys, who have nothing else to do, spend hours each day browsing through Worthpoint listings. They find so many altered cards, which you've sold, and now you have to refund everything, or most of them, from your own pocket. This is something that can go on forever, right? Are you not going to try and put a stop to this?

What basis would Brent have to demand that Worthpoint take down its listings? I mean we can speculate all we want but that doesn't make sense to me.

[swarmee]

Nat Turner, the new part-owner of Collector's Universe, would be a better bogeyman for the tin foil hat crowd. Obviously with PSA's liability in their Grade Guarantee and Turner's ability to buy companies at whim, it would at least be a more plausible conspiracy theory.

The same type of data is available for free through Brent's PWCC Marketplace with a free login for sports cards, maybe not every single listing that Worthpoint had, but a lion's share of it I'd guess.

It certainly seems bizarre that Worthpoint would go, "Man, we're getting a lot of people consistently searching for historical baseball cards and items! We should really clear them out!"

Another possibility is that eBay itself restricted the data feed, or tried to strong arm Worthpoint to remove it so eBay could charge more for its historical data. We know they're restricting sites like watchcount and 130point to run as many queries as they usually do.

Kind of reminds me of the VCP image quality "improvements" a couple of years ago where making lower fidelity images available was considered "optimization." Hopefully Worthpoint reverses their decision, because if PSA and PWCC are the only arbiters of historical images and pricing data, then the fox is guarding the henhouse again.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by swarmee

Nat Turner, the new part-owner of Collector's Universe, would be a better bogeyman for the tin foil hat crowd. Obviously with PSA's liability in their Grade Guarantee and Turner's ability to buy companies at whim, it would at least be a more plausible conspiracy theory.

The same type of data is available for free through Brent's PWCC Marketplace with a free login for sports cards, maybe not every single listing that Worthpoint had, but a lion's share of it I'd guess.

It certainly seems bizarre that Worthpoint would go, "Man, we're getting a lot of people consistently searching for historical baseball cards and items! We should really clear them out!"

Another possibility is that eBay itself restricted the data feed, or tried to strong arm Worthpoint to remove it so eBay could charge more for its historical data. We know they're restricting sites like watchcount and 130point to run as many queries as they usually do.

Kind of reminds me of the VCP image quality "improvements" a couple of years ago where making lower fidelity images available was considered "optimization." Hopefully Worthpoint reverses their decision, because if PSA and PWCC are the only arbiters of historical images and pricing data, then the fox is guarding the henhouse again.

Regarding the part in bold, I believe this (PSA) is a far greater possibility than Brent instigating this action. This theory makes complete sense, and is very suspicious. Think about it for just one second... If Worthpoint's objective really was to "optimize", then why would it only be done for sportscards? And why would they wipe out over 99% of the data for that one category?

That's completely ridiculous! Why leave all of the memorabilia, autographs, photos, jerseys, tickets, bobbleheads, and everything else in tact?

The fact that it's just sportscards says a lot about who instigated this. This decision is completely void of any logic, and wreaks of corruption (just when you thought you'd seen it all in this sleazy hobby).

[Bigdaddy]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

What basis would Brent have to demand that Worthpoint take down its listings? I mean we can speculate all we want but that doesn't make sense to me.

You wouldn't have to demand it, just pay them to do it.