My two-cents on "The Card"...boy did I enjoy it

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Posted By: Joann

If it were to come out that this card was altered, and worse yet that it was known to be altered when graded and during early sales, at what point does fraud come into play? And who would be on the hook for it?

There are now literally millions of dollars in play. For anyone in the chain of ownership, it seems clear that the best and only course is to defend authenticity to the end. The second anyone really admits that it's not as represented, a whole lot of financial dominoes will start falling. Crashing, actually.

Which buyer will be the first to allege fraud? None. Because that just messes up their resale and investment. So everyone in the chain is going to shut the heck up no matter what he believes. Maybe Alan Ray - who may be the only person that sold it without misrepresentation. He or Sevchuk (sp?). Everyone else has a keen interest in maintaining that it is a legit 8.

And no one else, only the buyers, can do anything legally because no one else has standing.

So ... to the legal beagles on the board, who would be on the hook for fraud? And who (subjectively) can or should bring that up?

Joann

PS - I've just started reading it, so it's too early to ring in with much of an opinion. But the writing style is fairly dramatic, as dull baseball card books go. One of the first things discussed is how nice Bill Mastro was to O'Keefe until the questions started. Then Mastro wouldn't return calls, and it seems pretty clear that there is some kind of grudge there. My early take? The guy genuinely and enthusiastically set out to investigate and write about a truly magnificent scam. But when he couldn't get all the pieces together - couldn't get people to go on record with what they knew - he put together a book anyways. With no before and after pictures, it's hard to imagine that it will get very far.

But so far I like it. After three years of reading almost nothing except law school casebooks, I am happy just to read something with large print, double spaced, and butt-simple flow. It don't take much with me these days!