I think the whole family is great, but I think they did themselves a disservice by not keeping up with the times.
The phone bids (with no online bidding option) hurt them as many bidders now would prefer just dealing online. Their consignment fees - which were normal 15+ years ago - were high in comparison now. And because of those factors, consignors got leery about having Halls auction high dollar items.
I don't think they were dishonest at all, but didn't evolve as grading standards evolved. I bought cards from their auction which I hadn't seen but only read the descriptions, only to get them and notice significant paper loss or other material issues with it. When I would mention it to them (and I was a 30 year customer), I would hear, "that's why it was graded VG-ex and not mint, so you should expect things like paper loss." Significant paper loss maybe was the case for a VG-ex card in 1980, but not so much now.
Anyways, I didn't start this to talk badly about Halls - just wanted to point out what I had noticed, and to thank them for many nice card-related memories as I was growing up.
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