Two hour interview with.... Bill Mastro

raulus · #1 10-21-2024, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

There are days I'm pretty pessimistic and have come close to abandoning this thinking, but overall, I think at least some substantial part of the hobby still views most stuff done to cards as something they would want to know about.

And yes, it's a slippery slope, and there's no perfect definition of what is material alteration and what isn't that will satisfy everyone, I get that. But that doesn't invalidate the overarching point. I can have a valid general principle even if I can't perfectly and consistently apply it in every case. And anyhow, disclosure is the perfect solution, let people decide for themselves if they care.

I definitely vote for your disclosure requirement.

At the same time, a couple of cautionary tales come to mind, where disclosure has become meaningless:

1) In the great state of CA, there are disclosures on just about everything about how it may cause cancer. They've grown so ubiquitous that they're meaningless. I could see a situation where just about every card includes some throwaway disclosure like, "This card may have been altered by a previous owner." Obviously, once it's everywhere, it starts to lose its potency, and buyers would probably no longer care.

2) As one of my accounting professors used to say, "If you want to hide something in your financial statements, put it in the footnotes, because no one ever reads them." While it's not a thing today, it's not inconceivable to have a long list of boilerplate for every item at auction. If the boilerplate is long enough, you could disclose just about anything in there, and no one would ever read it.

Just to be clear, I don't condone card doctoring. I don't doctor cards myself (except in industry-approved fashion, like trimming down a card that is intended to be hand cut, like a 71 Bazooka). And I do support disclosure of any work done to a card, because knowing is half the battle.

But sometimes I do like to poke the bear. And in this case, I do worry that disclosure might not lead to the outcomes we might hope to accomplish.

Peter_Spaeth · #2 10-21-2024, 05:32 PM

I think you're overcomplicating it. It's not going to bury collectors to add one line to an auction, I used Kurt's Card Care to clean some residue off this card, or, this card was stained and I used X to remove it.

G1911 · #3 10-21-2024, 05:40 PM

It takes me about 1 second to write "card is trimmed". It should take less than 1 second for the buyer to read that.

Honest disclosure is very, very easy and uncomplicated. The reasons people try to come up with to justify not telling the truth are usually pretty funny though.

Peter_Spaeth · #4 10-21-2024, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by G1911

It takes me about 1 second to write "card is trimmed". It should take less than 1 second for the buyer to read that.

Honest disclosure is very, very easy and uncomplicated. The reasons people try to come up with to justify not telling the truth are usually pretty funny though.

Right. We're talking about disclosing known alterations, not some bullshit list of risk factors.

G1911 · #5 10-21-2024, 06:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Right. We're talking about disclosing known alterations, not some bullshit list of risk factors.

I can't wait for the next dozen or so 'I'm not a scammer but here's why taking less than 5 seconds to just tell the truth might actually be bad' takes. I've settled into 25% disgust and 75% amusement at this crap we get anytime someones suggests just telling the honest truth. I have never experienced people having an issue with the concept of just telling the honest truth in any of my other hobbies.

raulus · #6 10-21-2024, 05:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I think you're overcomplicating it. It's not going to bury collectors to add one line to an auction, I used Kurt's Card Care to clean some residue off this card, or, this card was stained and I used X to remove it.

Fair enough. Just trying to think through this a bit more to consider whether there are unintended consequences to going there. I probably am overthinking it, which is standard for me.

Naturally, as much as we're in favor of disclosure, I don't see any rush by sellers to go there. Obviously (at least to my knowledge) there's nothing to disclose with the stuff that I'm selling. Conversely, the people who know they have stuff to disclose are the least motivated and least likely to disclose it, for all the obvious reasons.

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