Reasonable request?

[clutch]

I have an autographed baseball for sale right now on Ebay. It is an unauthenticated ball. A potential buyer e-mailed me asking if it did not pass 3rd party authentication, would I refund the cost of the ball, to and from postage and the authentication fees along with authentication postage.

I have no problem refunding the price of the ball, but I think my liability should end there. I have absolutely no doubts that the signature is authentic or else I would not have bought it. I would have it authenticated myself, but it is not an extremely valuable ball and the cost of the ball, fees and postage would pretty much make it not worth it to resell.

I took on risk buying it with no COA. Should that risk now be passed on to the next buyer as far as authentication fees are concerned? I bought a collection of autographed baseballs to resell and I am concerned that this might come up again in the future.

I thought I'd ask some experienced people how they would handle this. Thanks!!

[mighty bombjack]

Hell no you won't (shouldn't) do that. It is the buyer's choice to use (or not) these TPAs. You are doing ebough by offering a refund if they think it's not real. For that kind of money, you could send it in yourself and potentially add to the sale price. You put your word behind the items that you sell, and in so doing you only back the price that it sells for.

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by mighty bombjack

Hell no you won't (shouldn't) do that. It is the buyer's choice to use (or not) these TPAs. You are doing ebough by offering a refund if they think it's not real. For that kind of money, you could send it in yourself and potentially add to the sale price. You put your word behind the items that you sell, and in so doing you only back the price that it sells for.

+1

[jgmp123]

Completely agree...I would offer refund on ball and that's it. End of story.

[GrayGhost]

Originally Posted by jgmp123

Completely agree...I would offer refund on ball and that's it. End of story.

yes

[yanksfan09]

I agree, that's asking too much. It's not like the authentication companies are 100% accurate anyway. You could end up paying more for their error.

[thecatspajamas]

I agree that your liability should only be for the cost of the ball (and if sold on eBay, that will extend to the cost of shipping as well if they file a claim).

One thing to be aware of though: Some potential buyers will use a statement like that as a sort of backwards way of suggesting you take another look at the signature and be sure yourself that it's authentic.

Personally, I would rather they just come right out and say, "are you sure it's authentic, because I don't think it is, and here's why" than to give a laundry list of fees they could stack up to prove its not authentic and expect you to reimburse them for, presumably to scare you into taking another look at it. Some feel that the indirect approach gets better results though.

Whatever the case, talk it through with the buyer. Actually engaging in conversation with them will ease their minds more than a terse response, and you may find that they are simply reacting to some other situation where they got burned.

[glchen]

I would refund the cost of the ball + the shipping cost to the buyer, but nothing more than that (and none of the shipping costs to the TPG). I would probably advise potential buyers if they are unsure of the auto, they can go to PSA for a quick opinion that is just a fraction of the cost of the cert, so that they can obtain some initial assurance that the auto is genuine.

BTW, when I was selling photos on ebay that I was pretty sure were Type I (because they had the newspaper clippings and date stamps on back), here is what I put in my listing. You might want to do something similar:

"Although I am nothing close to a photo expert, I guarantee that the photo would be a Type I, and if you send it to PSA/DNA for verification within 45 days, I will offer a full return policy if it does not come back as Type I. (However, I will not refund grading fees.)"