Announcing "Collectors Forensics Register" - Revolutionizing the Hobby

[Collectors Forensics Reg]

Originally Posted by Leon

I am sort of neutral about it and mostly fall into the "do I really need it?" camp. That being said I am also a bit concerned about Lloyd (he is the original poster) claiming over 100 yrs experience (collectively) in the hobby and having never heard of WIWAG, Operation Bullpen, CAC or GAI's issues. I am sort of wondering what hobby the experience is in unless they have 100 guys with 1 yr of experience each. I always applaud thinking of new things and outside of the box so I applaud them for the undertaking and wish them luck. Time will tell. best regards

Thanks for the post Leon. As we discussed the other day, fraud is fraud, no matter what flavor it comes in or what acronym that it's given (i.e. WIWAG). We record forensic properties of cards that are submitted to us for registration and facilitate their entry to the public record. Period. We take no position / make no judgement in grading company, quality or accuracy as stated previously. I'm sure that you understand why we can't come out and post about scandals. it's not our mission and nothing good can come from it. Apologies for the bluntness but this apparently needed to be clarified.

As for our experience in the hobby, the point was that we have been around a while and have seen a lot. We are simply responding to the issues as we best see fit. At the end of the day Leon, is providing an impartial forensic service and facilitating a central information register really congruent to the fact that the 1970 Donn Clendenon was my first baseball card ? :-)

[RobertGT]

I can see this service actually driving down the sale price of a graded card for several reasons:

- Most high-end graded card collectors are pretty picky about the condition/aesthetics of the TPG holder as well as the condition of the card itself. Attaching an ugly sticker to the reverse of the holder is a big turn-off, especially because it belongs to an anonymous start-up company that no one knows whether it will be around in one year from now.

- The company by its own admission will take no position on whether the card holder has been tampered with when they receive and evaluate it. It does nothing to eliminate fraud or detect bad holders, and perhaps may encourage scammers looking to add a layer of legitimacy to a fraudulent item. Service just takes a snapshot of whatever is submitted to them with no opinion whatsoever. It's laughable the service is touting fraud deterrence, when - as earlier posts indicate - the anonymous company officials are completely unaware of well-publicized scandals such as WIWAG, etc.

- Let's take a leap and say a few people use this service. I think most can agree its appeal is limited at best - perhaps for only some major high-end cards. So what about the rest of the mainstream collectors? When given a choice to buy a straight PSA 8 card that matches the rest of the cards in their set registry, or buy a PSA 8 card with some strange sticker on the back from an anonymous company that is only seen on 1 percent of all graded cards, which would they choose?

- For me, this is the equivalent of purchasing a 52 Topps Mantle RC in a PRO 8 holder.

[dstudeba]

Originally Posted by Collectors Forensics Reg

I'm sure that you understand why we can't come out and post about scandals. it's not our mission and nothing good can come from it. Apologies for the bluntness but this apparently needed to be clarified.

Please excuse my ignorance, but I don't understand why you can't comment on public, well documented scandals. For someone who has supposednly been in the hobby long enough to start a business involving the hobby I would think they would know about WIWAG whatever acronym was used. Also your whole company is based on the existence of fraud and scandals, if it didn't exist, there would be no need for forensics.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by dstudeba

Please excuse my ignorance, but I don't understand why you can't comment on public, well documented scandals. For someone who has supposednly been in the hobby long enough to start a business involving the hobby I would think they would know about WIWAG whatever acronym was used. Also your whole company is based on the existence of fraud and scandals, if it didn't exist, there would be no need for forensics.

Forget commenting. When Lloyd and I spoke on the phone he said he had NEVER heard about them. That was my issue....not the fact they will or won't comment, but they were ignorant of WIWAG, Operation Bullpen, CAC or any of the myriad issues with GAI. As I said...must be experience doing something else. It's certainly not in the hobby....or if it is, lets hear of this 100 yrs of experience. I will be glad to state my experience in the hobby, which isn't a ton but at least I know of those things mentioned above

[ChiefBenderForever]

The service might be good for a buyer but will cut into any sellers profits even more, this is going to be a very tough sell all around. I do wish you the best of luck, you have a long way to go, right now you are at the base of Niagara falls attempting to paddle up to the top, but atleast you are in a boat with a paddle.