Posted By:
Jeff LichtmanThe sky is not falling and Barry need not endeavor to learn of ways to earn a living through his Seinfeld trivia knowledge. However, if you're concerned about unfair auction practices and buying cards that are knowingly altered then Kevin and Jim are right. Obviously there needs to be a happy medium that each collector can live with. Mine is that I avoid 90% of the auction houses now and assume that I am still being victimized by shill bidding. Unfortunately, whether you buy from ebay or Mastro or Memory Lane the same issues may exist.
And for anyone that doubts my comments on the prevalence of shill bidding in auction houses, go ahead and buy 5 esoteric items from an auction house and resell them on ebay and let me know if you get back more than 50% of what you paid to that auction house.
Jim C, etc: how about we make an auction house challenge? We offer a large cash donation to the charity of the auction houses' choice if their top executives will agree to undergo a polygraph examination (and pass) with the following question presented: are you aware of any shill bidding practices in any of your auctions over the past 10 years?