Quote:
Originally Posted by calvindog
Ryan -- I disagree on your conclusion on relative legal culpabilities but I applaud your sentiment. Kudos to you, you are to be admired for taking your stance.
Hank -- just because you have lots of great deals with people at shows for relatively minor dollars does not mean that the industry is mostly clean. It's not. There are millions of dollars of fraud committed by auction houses and other cretins in this hobby. Just because they don't advertise their fraud in neon lights doesn't mean it's not so. Maybe there will be a documentary about it someday and then you'll believe it.
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I'm going to take your word for it, Jeff, that there are "millions of dollars of fraud committed by auction houses and other cretins in the hobby." So stipulated. And I'm going to assume that you know a lot of things that haven't come to light yet, since as far as I know, even the Mastro /Legendary activities have only been investigated to this point. No indictments yet, right? And you are certainly correct that I've never been involved with auction houses for big money on the buying end, only selling, so maybe I've actually, and unwittingly, been the beneficiary of some of this.
So why are you big money guys still doing it? I wouldn't want to have anything to do with the sleazy morass you describe. And are any of the auction houses clean? Would you advise a total boycott of auctions? If not, how are the less well-informed going to proceed if you don't tell us who we can trust and who we can't?
I really do need the documentary because I live in another world altogether. And I still say, and maybe you will so stipulate, that if you take the dollar volume of all the honest dealings in the hobby (I'm talking web sites, eBay, shows, stores, private deals, honest auctions if there are any, etc.) it vastly outweighs the dollar volume of the scamming. What do you suppose the amount of sports memorabilia business on eBay is every day? Has to be in the millions, doesn't it? So maybe that volume equals the total of auction house fraud in a year? Does this bring our positions any closer together, then? Hopefully, at least the dialogue has improved, and that's progress.
Hank