If You Started An Auction House Today...

[drcy]

An auction house should do serious and honest diligence on alteration detection, consideration and information dissemination. However, the graded cards are in plastic, and the grading companies should be ultimately responsible, including financially if there are issues. That's their stated policy.

Selling raw cards is an interesting possibility. I would imagine places like REA and Mile High would be good at examing raw cards, and I would trust REA's and some other folks' opinions over grading companies. Just as seasoned autograph collectors prefer who is the seller over what LOA an autograph comes from.

Would be kind of interesting if a future auction house sold raw cards with not only big clear photos, but UV and IR photos of the cards.

[perezfan]

I would support (and consign to) an auction house that featured only raw cards. As long as they could properly and accurately describe the cards in question.

And they must be able to disclose any flaws such as surface wrinkles, instead of a randomly assigned “4” or something that really tells you nothing about the card itself. I’d much prefer detailed descriptions to an arbitrarily assigned number that the corrupt entities love to hide behind.

[drcy]

I think high quality images would help with selling raw. I assume you can see all the flaws, including wrinkles in high grade images.

[perezfan]

Originally Posted by drcy

I think high quality images would help with selling raw. I assume you can see all the flaws, including wrinkles in high grade images.

Wrinkles and creases quite often do not show up, even under magnification. So high quality images, accompanied by decent descriptions would be ideal.

[conor912]

I agree that a raw-only AH with detailed descriptions and hi-res scans would be great.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by conor912

I agree that a raw-only AH with detailed descriptions and hi-res scans would be great.

But collectors have grown accustomed to only high end in slabs. In order to get high dollar cards an AH has to sell slabs unfortunately.
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[Aquarian Sports Cards]

I do sell a lot of raw, but I just don't think I'd survive if I went raw only. Look at it this way. I'd be excluding the opportunity to auction what 90% of all cards over $1,000?

I am listening to the thoughts shared here though!