Others selling fakes of your cards... Do You care?

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Posted By: Tim Kindler

Tonight, just for kicks, I googled: old put cigars, just to see what came up. On the second page of entries under: FOSSIL WOOLY RHINOCEROUS HORN WWW.IOFFER.COM, there was an entry for an E98 Honus Wagner with an Old Put Back. I clicked on it and it took me to a site called IOFFER. (I have never heard of IOFFER till now) I scrolled down the page and there was my E98 Wagner with an Old Put back. It caught my attention, because I bought in 2007 in the REA auction, what is believed to be the only E98 Wagner with an OP stamped back. This seller with the name bigbadgodofwar1 is selling an obvious fake OP Wagner. I know it is a copy of mine because of the chip just above his head and the corner crease in the lower left corner which matches mine which is graded by SGC (20) and came from REA. If you look it up in REAs archives or on my SGC registered set, you can see it is clearly my card. He wants $2,500 for his fake. When you see other items for sale, by this seller, many of them are highly sought after and rare cards which are obvious fakes. Some of these may even be board member's cards. Looking at his feedback, he says on his negatives that there is no reprint stamp on them so they are authentic and you buy them as is. What a scumbag.

My questions to my fellow board members are these. #1: Should this bother me? I mean this is obviously wrong and immoral what this guy is doing to others, but should I/WE care? Do I look at it like James' thread of the Heartland/Starting Lineup figure where if someone is either stupid or nieve (SP?) enough to not know it is a fake, OR or just plain wants a fake even though it means paying through the roof for it, hey more power to the seller??

#2 Should I be upset that he uses the image of my card to make a profit, os should I just be flattered that I own a nice enough card that someone would want to copy it?

#3 Would you contact the bum or just let it go?

*** I'm not looking for conflict or "legal action" here, just curious what others thought.

Thanks,
Tim Kindler