lawsuit against psa for 10.5 million awarded to........

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Posted By: Larry

I have been pretty active as collector & dealer since early 1970's, I grew up with Rob Lifson, Don Lepore, Bill Mastro, Don Steinbach, Paul Gallagher, George Lyons, Barry Halper, TTS, SCD, Frank Nagy,Elliot Dock, Rob Bruce, Bill Heitman,Pat Quinn etc..all names from the past and some still around..

It was a great era, we all made money, we all had fun and we all loved cards.


The above threads touch many avenues that have evolved since the "early days" and the hobby was always filled with great moments and rude awakenings, as is still the case.

Even with the hypocrisy, it still is a great hobby and a good source of income for some, a good investment for others, and just plain fun for many. I myself have become a hybrid product of the old school and found the new school of grading important...we need them for all the good and bad... but as Bill Heitman stated, they make mistakes and it is subjective. As another poster stated, there was a time when some dealers felt a mint card was a card that was minted once but could be off center, have a small pen mark etc., that was a problem. Even in coins, I would buy a MS65 coin(they called it Gem BU) and would sell it back to same dealer and they would say it was AU(MS 55) coin so it became imperative to have some boundaries inn coins and cards so that collectors and dealers had reasonably common ground, all 3 major services do provide that service to some extent. I especially feel that slabbing is much better than Den Collectors Den sheets or screw downs, they protect the card longterm, add some preservation and keep card airtight for the most part.

The most important thing is that "old and new timers" should recognize that cards are a represenation of history that we all hopefully respect and admire, it should be noted that collectors and dealers like Bill Heitman, John Rumierz, Jay Barry, Fritsch, Lipset, Lifson, Mastro, etc., even a smaller extent myself, have YEARS behind us, experience teaches us and that does mean something...yet we are never too smart to learn more, I realized this last few years how much I did not know and hopefully became better for it..

The actual baseball cards do represent a great piece of historical significance, so does The Baseball Card Collecting and Dealing, for all its good, bad and the ugly.

The T206 Wagner mystery still does not rank with the JFK assasination but it still has the same intrigue....but the actual importance is that we are a stronger hobby if we respect the past and present and look hopefully toward the future.