[Aquarian Sports Cards]

As a guy who worked in live theatre for 20 years before getting into the auction business I can avow that Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. At various points in this narrative I have been close to jumping in with accusations and wild uninformed opinions. Basically this story is too convoluted NOT to believe (plus you can check out many of the details in the auction listing) I've never dealt with Al or Frank so I have no skin in the game, no favorite, or buddy I'm protecting, in fact it'd probably behoove me to shit all over Al and LOTG, but I actually believe at this point that the parties to the story (including the two ancillary parties) have all been honest and reasonable.

I said it earlier, we all hate to make mistakes and we really hate when mistakes are made at our expense, but how we deal with those is what shows our character.

I'll leave this thread with a little story. There's an auction house by me that conducts local auctions via internet. Not a card auction, estates, general, closeouts etc... My wife had been looking for a large desk for her office. They had one at an estate closeout that I won for a ridiculously low price. The auction listing read "Desk and contents." I went to pick up the desk and was taking it apart to get it in my van. A lady came in and asked me what I was doing. Apparently she had won an auction for just the contents of the desk. Yep the auction house had listed it twice. The lady in question stormed off to get an employee while I continued to take pieces of the desk to my van (leaving the disputed drawers) The employee came running out to my car and said she discovered their mistake and did I care very much about the contents. I told her "no" and she graciously offered me a 50% refund. I took it as I was "wronged" but it made me very appreciative of their efforts to correct what could've been an ugly situation.

Shit happens. Al screwed up, more than once. If I can read between the lines correctly, he feels like hell about it. Frank got screwed, he was pissed, he got mostly unscrewed and wants to be done with this. He should take the $100 and his cards and evaluate whether or not he thinks it was sufficient recompense for the hassles and if he'll do business with LOTG going forward, but he does seem to accept the story.

If anyone has a conspiracy theory which differs from the narrative offered I'd love to hear it, but it better be pretty damn compelling. As someone who works in the auction world and as a card dealer I am in the middle of granting someone a refund. It happens. I'll go on record as wagering that LOTG doesn't have anything like this go down again for a LOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGG time.


EDIT: Post was written right after Al's explanation. Kudos to Frank for his gesture. I know animal shelters are a big topic on the site from time to time, love my rescued dog, just my 2¢.