Same SGC 7 Mantle Sold 4 times in 15 months

[CardPadre]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

How do you know?

Yeah, valid question. Here’s a card that I was following a few weeks ago that “sold” and is represented as such currently in their history. Now it is live again on their weekly. Does seem like it almost went certainly unpaid for, unless someone just loves the thrill of the flip gamble.

ETA: Maybe they clean these things up eventually.

[Fred]

I'm still trying to understand why anybody would want to keep their cards in a "vault" unless they plan to resell it (and probably quickly). If you're a hobbyist/collector, why would you not want to have your cardboard in your hands?

What happens if the business that maintains possession of the card(s) loses the card? I realize that would be the last thing a business wants because then everyone would be scrambling to get their stuff out of the vault. Have there been many high profile cases of a vault company losing a card?

It seems this type of business model would be great for a flipper. But there also seems to be a lot of potential for monkey business.

How many vault businesses are there? The way I see it, if fleabay (I believe they have a vault service) drops out of the vault business, then it means there's a legitimate sustainability issue for the business model because they are a publicly traded company with potential for a lot of blow back if any monkey business is found out for them.

When I see fleabay get out of the vault business, then that will tell me the business model is probably flawed and that the other businesses are potentially/possibly/probably involved in some shady practices. For now I'm of the opinion that this vault venture is like anything else, you get the wrong element in it and you have recipe for fraud and abuse.

[BioCRN]

Originally Posted by Fred

I'm still trying to understand why anybody would want to keep their cards in a "vault" unless they plan to resell it (and probably quickly). If you're a hobbyist/collector, why would you not want to have your cardboard in your hands?

Almost everyone I know that uses vault services are either flippers, engaging in tax avoidance, or they're bidding low on a bunch of stuff they don't really want and vaulting them to flip later...not as many on the 3rd point as the first 2.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by CardPadre

Yeah, valid question. Here’s a card that I was following a few weeks ago that “sold” and is represented as such currently in their history. Now it is live again on their weekly. Does seem like it almost went certainly unpaid for, unless someone just loves the thrill of the flip gamble.

ETA: Maybe they clean these things up eventually.

Something that happens quite regularly in this hobby is people looking for arbitrage opportunities. Vintage cards in BVG holders are often sold to someone hoping to cross it over to PSA or SGC and then flip it for a profit. I see this regularly on social media platforms, guys (often modern collectors) trying to move over to vintage land and attempting to bring their "flip game" with them. Most end collectors avoid cards in BVG slabs. At least in general. Surely there are some exceptions. But when I see a vintage BVG card being bought and resold shortly after, it does not raise any red flags to me, as that is easily explained by someone hoping to cross it over to PSA and PSA subsequently rejecting it. After which, they just try to cut their losses and resell it.