One idea, likely heavily flawed, for fixing some of the ills in our hobby

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Posted By: Noel

Daniel,

Your thinking is certainly in the right place and i commend you for the effort you put into this. I wish more people had your morale compass and code of ethics. However, there are so many intangibles that just do not make this feasible or even reasonable.
First you would have to start with people who care about the good of the hobby rather than how much money they can make. Once we understand that most everything (including this hobby) is predicated upon individuals making every last possible cent to be made, it isnt hard to envision the absurdity of this. Imagine some of (or any of the major auction houses) or grading companies agreeing to something like this (possibly downgrade cards for the betterment of the hobby). I dont care how many times i hear that auction houses run a great auction, i have no doubt but what they are personable people as long as they are cashing in on 15-20% of profits. I wish more of the hobby could be back in collectors hands. I do believe that grading has helped the hobby more than hurt but it is a shame that it has also opened up another can of worms. The most logical conclusion and possible ending that we can hope for is Bobby's reasoning which includes a database of serial numbers for the pop reports.

I couldnt wait to hear Franks comments when i first read this and must admit i am starting to see quite a lot of validity here. The inherent practice of sending in cards to be slabbed and reslabbed to companies who made the mistakes and are so unwilling to admit/fix such mistakes does seem to be quite absurd. To me it seems nothing more than an exercise in futility.