Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper
This is disturbing and we'll see how it plays out.
What is a little odd to me is that there is more anger directed at the "alphabet soup" companies than the forgers themselves. 
I am not qualified to be the judge of who is the absolute best Ruth authenticator, but I have to presume JSA and PSA are far better than your run-of-the-mill sports memorabilia dealer. Perhaps there are a handful better than PSA and JSA. But if the alegations are true, is it safe to presume these forgeries would also get by 95% of other dealers? |
The anger at the companies is because they potentially take a forgery and legitimize it! Before it was a forgery that might get by someone, might not.
Now it has been 'deemed authentic', and gets by everyone because there is a sticker on the cert, which has been signed by someone.
Now instead of consumers doing their own homework and vetting a ball by carefully inspecting it, getting multiple opinions, - they buy the ball because abc said it was good. If you say that consumers weren't doing that before, and getting stuck with bad balls, they are just doing the same thing now, only they feel better about it.
Never in history have people felt so good at buying potential forgeries. It's now backed up with a hologram! It's feel good authenticating, feel good buying, but what are they truly getting.
If there were no certs on these balls, people would be cautious and check them out, and maybe not pay 300000 dollars for something they dont know anything about, and buy it from anybody anywhere instead of a lifelong dealer who might back up the ball with a lifetime guarantee.
Instead they could buy it from joe blow's beanie baby show, and Joe blow just points to the certificate, and the buyer can be ignorant, the seller can be ignorant, because they trust the comapny. How about educated buyers and sellers and let the company certify coco crisp and milton bradley?
Instead some guy now has a ruth ball that he paid 20 grand for and now we see dozens of blazers all over the place over the last 10 years. Where were these balls 20, 30 years ago? They all come out of the woodwork now?
Where are the 7 dwarfs? because snow white is here!
You stated the problem perfectly.
"but I have to presume JSA and PSA are far better than your run-of-the-mill sports memorabilia dealer."
first of all , how do you know they are good? second, the problem is that now any run of the mill sports memorabilia dealer feels he can sell a ruth ball. just point to the cert.
I am really tired of the excuse. "they probably screw up less than the others so let's go with them."
let's demand competance, and if there is no one here right now, let's wait. Don't reward the best of the worst. Demand better, then you will get it. If you support the way it is being done right now, that's all you will ever get. You will never get anything better than this if this is a great system for you.
we have taken a scholarly pursuit and fastracked it. There is a picture of a jsa cert with a photo on the cert of a psa certed ruth STILL IN THE BALLCUBE! Why? did they not want to break the PSA seal? Is that authenticating, through the glass?
Please answer how that is the right thing to do? Why are these guys good? It's circular logic, the auction houses say they are good, so the collector believes them, they buy from the auction house with the abc cert. they are happy it has an abc cert, because they can resell later at an auction house, so someone else can buy it, and the seller, buyer, auction house, and the abc company all say ABC is good? The auction house makes money, abc makes money, the reseller makes money. Of course they think abc is good, everyones making money.
The problem is the person who will lose money is the guy who gets stuck with the bad autographs LAST! He is the loser. And if the company goes under or proves it is not up to snuff, like GAI, everyone who had a gai cert gets stuck and there are thousands upon thousands of losers. No one learned anything at all from GAI. Speeding into the sun and and future is so bright we gotta wear shades. But it's alright because we all have our pristine Babe Ruth signed baseballs at our side!