Memory Lane Gehrig expectation vs reality

[calvindog]

You should probably not partake in Heritage auctions.

[Seven]

Originally Posted by calvindog

You should probably not partake in Heritage auctions.

I can't say I've done it a lot, but a while back I purchased a card from heritage, My 1952 Bowman Mickey Mantle, and the Scan was near identical to what I received. Granted that should always be the case, but still.

[Snowman]

Memory Lane got back to me. Apparently, these images are not sufficient for them to determine that the card was misrepresented.

I'm sorry you're not happy with your purchase. However, I can't agree with your scans without holding the cards to compare what the actual card looks like. Being this said, if you want me to further examine your position send the cards back to my attn.

[oldjudge]

Last year I was contemplating bidding on a high end card in HA. I called and asked about the condition and a little while later Joe Orlando called back. He completely described the card to me and could not have been any nicer. If you have questions about a card ask before you bid and definitely don’t call out an auction house before you give them an opportunity to respond to your issue.

[Leon]

+1

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Last year I was contemplating bidding on a high end card in HA. I called and asked about the condition and a little while later Joe Orlando called back. He completely described the card to me and could not have been any nicer. If you have questions about a card ask before you bid and definitely don’t call out an auction house before you give them an opportunity to respond to your issue.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Leon

+1

It's one thing to call and ask for specifics about a card's condition when no description is given. I do that with at least some degree of regularity. But in this case, there was no reason to ask questions about this card because they gave specifics about the card's condition in the description ("Soiling and wear are evident on the front, but nothing takes away from the pinstriped Gehrig central image. Clear verso."). To call them up and ask if they omitted something else significant (like a half dozen giant creases) would have been to assume that they were lying.

As far as calling them out, I disagree. This sort of behavior is rampant in this hobby and it's completely inexcusable. They did what they did, and bidders should be made aware of it. And this wasn't the only card they did it with either. I have another, much more expensive card that had an even more in-depth description, but which also omitted the fact that there were multiple creases on it. In fact, I would say that the description of the other card was so precise that it could be effectively interpreted as "there are no creases on this card". Yet it arrived with multiple hidden creases as well.

They have an opportunity to make this right. If they do, then I will certainly be sharing that information. People make mistakes. But when auction houses do wrong by their customers, that information needs to be shared with the community.

[irv]

Originally Posted by Snowman

It's one thing to call and ask for specifics about a card's condition when no description is given. I do that with at least some degree of regularity. But in this case, there was no reason to ask questions about this card because they gave specifics about the card's condition in the description ("Soiling and wear are evident on the front, but nothing takes away from the pinstriped Gehrig central image. Clear verso."). To call them up and ask if they omitted something else significant (like a half dozen giant creases) would have been to assume that they were lying.

As far as calling them out, I disagree. This sort of behavior is rampant in this hobby and it's completely inexcusable. They did what they did, and bidders should be made aware of it. And this wasn't the only card they did it with either. I have another, much more expensive card that had an even more in-depth description, but which also omitted the fact that there were multiple creases on it. In fact, I would say that the description of the other card was so precise that it could be effectively interpreted as "there are no creases on this card". Yet it arrived with multiple hidden creases as well.

They have an opportunity to make this right. If they do, then I will certainly be sharing that information. People make mistakes. But when auction houses do wrong by their customers, that information needs to be shared with the community.

Exactly! This is on the AH to get right, not on the potential buyer that is using and trusting them to be upfront and honest.

[Casey2296]

TIL; Auction Houses use PSA pix for some of their listings. I honestly didn't know that.

[Tyruscobb]

Originally Posted by Snowman

It's one thing to call and ask for specifics about a card's condition when no description is given. I do that with at least some degree of regularity. But in this case, there was no reason to ask questions about this card because they gave specifics about the card's condition in the description ("Soiling and wear are evident on the front, but nothing takes away from the pinstriped Gehrig central image. Clear verso."). To call them up and ask if they omitted something else significant (like a half dozen giant creases) would have been to assume that they were lying.

As far as calling them out, I disagree. This sort of behavior is rampant in this hobby and it's completely inexcusable. They did what they did, and bidders should be made aware of it. And this wasn't the only card they did it with either. I have another, much more expensive card that had an even more in-depth description, but which also omitted the fact that there were multiple creases on it. In fact, I would say that the description of the other card was so precise that it could be effectively interpreted as "there are no creases on this card". Yet it arrived with multiple hidden creases as well.

They have an opportunity to make this right. If they do, then I will certainly be sharing that information. People make mistakes. But when auction houses do wrong by their customers, that information needs to be shared with the community.

You reasonably relied on how the auction house advertised/described the card, and the scans that it provided. In my lay opinion, the description and scans do not reveal the card’s obvious and main patent defects. You have a valid complaint. Hopefully, you all can reach a compromise. Good luck, and keep us posted.

[Brian]

That is one horrendous misrepresentation, and I agree that it should be overkill to ask for further details when a detailed description has been provided.

But then again, if it is over a certain price point, I will ask anyway, to be safe. This does not always work, however, as I found out with a pricey card a couple of years ago. In the end, the AH said they would take it back because they "missed" the wrinkle I asked about, but by then I was so fed up, I just kept the card. It was not nearly as egregious as this, however, or I would have demanded my money back for sure.....

[raulus]

Originally Posted by Snowman

As far as calling them out, I disagree. This sort of behavior is rampant in this hobby and it's completely inexcusable. They did what they did, and bidders should be made aware of it. And this wasn't the only card they did it with either. I have another, much more expensive card that had an even more in-depth description, but which also omitted the fact that there were multiple creases on it. In fact, I would say that the description of the other card was so precise that it could be effectively interpreted as "there are no creases on this card". Yet it arrived with multiple hidden creases as well.

They have an opportunity to make this right. If they do, then I will certainly be sharing that information. People make mistakes. But when auction houses do wrong by their customers, that information needs to be shared with the community.

I think there are often two competing concerns here.

One concern is that the auction house should have a chance to address this issue before it's made public. I think we can all agree that auction houses are generally great, but are also fallible, and sometimes will make mistakes. And when it happens, I suspect that the AH prefers not to be publicly embarrassed by a mistake. We all make mistakes, yet I suspect none of us is really excited about having those mistakes paraded around in public, even when they're true.

On the other side, if an AH makes a mistake, to what extent is it important for the broader collecting community to understand what happened so that we can be aware of the situation, and take appropriate precautions ourselves? Certainly we rightfully expect that AHs are experts on the pieces they are auctioning, the stuff is authentic, accurately represented and described. If the AH isn't meeting that standard, then it seems like the sort of thing that the full industry should care about, to make sure that we're able to protect ourselves against the same sort of situation in the future, but also as a means to help to police the AHs and keep them honest.

Not to make this about me, although I clearly can't help myself, but I had something similar happen to me a few years ago. I won an auction from a major AH (not ML) for a collection of items that all turned out to be fake. And not even good fakes, but very obvious and stupid fakes, as they were fantasy pieces with a number of the backs printed on kodak paper, with the kodak logo and everything. As luck would have it, the backs that were printed on kodak paper weren't shown in the pics on the AH listing.

Similar to Travis, I posted about it here, both because I thought the community should know, and because I wanted to push the AH to act on it. And the response to my post was somewhat similar: some thought I should have waited a while longer before posting to give the AH a chance to fix it before I went public, and others supported me and found the mistakes of the AH to be deeply troubling.

I'm not here to re-litigate my experience working through that process with that AH, although I'm happy to report that the AH addressed the issue and refunded my payment. I'm hopeful that Travis will have a similarly positive outcome.

[maniac_73]

Anyone who is backing the AH on this should be ashamed of themselves. This is clearly misrepresentation, and the fact that they doubled down after Travis contacted them is an absolute joke. Will be steering very clear of Memory Lane in the future

[ullmandds]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Last year I was contemplating bidding on a high end card in HA. I called and asked about the condition and a little while later Joe Orlando called back. He completely described the card to me and could not have been any nicer. If you have questions about a card ask before you bid and definitely don’t call out an auction house before you give them an opportunity to respond to your issue.

the way most auction houses offer extended bidding sessions where not all lots end at the same time. This is to maximize revenues/profits and to encourage more spirited impulse bidding. I am guilty of this as I'm sure many of y'all are.

The least an AH can do is not falsely represent the items they're trying to sell...esp if they're trying to get people too bid impulsivelt during extended bidding when it is unlikely to get a proper response from an AH at all hours of the night/morning.

[bigfish]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Last year I was contemplating bidding on a high end card in HA. I called and asked about the condition and a little while later Joe Orlando called back. He completely described the card to me and could not have been any nicer. If you have questions about a card ask before you bid and definitely don’t call out an auction house before you give them an opportunity to respond to your issue.

Very good point

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by bigfish

Very good point

Doesn't seem like this dude had any issues before the sale . . . .what are you supposed to do, call the AH and ask "Hey, is that scan in your catalog really accurate, or are you hiding creases?"

[Fred]

Originally Posted by calvindog

You should probably not partake in Heritage auctions.

Doesn't Heritage provide really high resolution pictures/scans that can be exploded to be HUGE on a computer screen? I've found many defects by exploding the picture. I can't remember how long Heritage has been using this format, but it has helped me recently. Now if it was similar to this case and the exploded Gehrig card picture/scan didn't show the creases/wrinkles, then that would be problematic.