This is a fake cap, ain't it?

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Posted By: Aaron M.

"2. With respects to "undisclosed conflict of interest", this is not the case with MEARS or our authenticators. Since October 20th, 2005, we have voluntarily disclosed which items we own that we have also provided an opinion on when consigning an item to an auction house. These items were posted on the section prominently displayed as "our items at auction". This feature was free to any interested party and we did not make this a portion of our members section. Although some may feel this is still a "conflict of interest", it cannot be categorized as an "undisclosed conflict of interest."

Sorry, Troy but it absolutely 100% is an undisclosed conflict of interest. If the prospective buyer isn't informed of the conflict anywhere in the auction itself (catalog, item description, etc.) and the buyer has to go check another web-site which he may not even know exists (similarly there is no mention of the MEARS wesbite in the auction), then it's an undisclosed conflict of interest. \

This kind of self-serving spin does little to enhance collector trust that MEARS is aware of a problem and is doing something about it.

You'd have been better off stating that while this practice has occurred in the past and we have tried to overcome auction house disclosure restrictions by prominently noting our items on our own web-site, as an additional step and to ensure that no potential bidder is left uninformed, we have decide to no longer consign to auction houses that do not disclose in an item's description if MEARS both owns and authenticated the particular item.

That's more accurate, but also paints you in a positive light. Maybe you should hire a PR guy.

"I think that by titling the section of the for sale site as "Bushing & Kinunen MEARS for Sale" we have done about as much broadcasting of our for sale site as possible while telling everybody who owned the items."

Again, this assumes the buyer actually knows about your web-site and that MEARS sells direct. If the buyer is already at your web-site, then of course he knows about MEARS practice of authenticating its own items. But if the buyer doesn't know that MEARS does this and doesn't know about the MEARS web-site, then he's in the dark about the whole issue.

"But, with a MEARS items for sale, you will know exactly who owned it and how it was described and graded."

Uh, OK, then why create the new policy of only authenticating for auctions that actually do disclose your conflict of interest? So far REA is the only house that has signed up. That implies that if any other auction house carried your items, it did so without disclosing your conflict of interest.

"If you like the item, please make your purchase. If you do not like the policy, you cannot say that you did not know it was owned by Bushing or Kinunen."

Again, that's true if someone is buying from your web-site. Not if they are buying one of your consignments to an auction house (unless it's REA).