Thoughts on Buying from Legendary

[calvindog]

I don't doubt that. But I also think that in any given auction, the incidence of shill bidding per lot might be greater than the incidence of altered cards offered.

And for argument's sake, if an altered card is in a numbered holder the owner of that card very well might be able to get his purchase price back upon resale; the same cannot be said for the buyer of a shilled card at auction. How many of you have sold cards on ebay and wondered why the hell you can't get back even close to your purchase price?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by calvindog

I don't doubt that. But I also think that in any given auction, the incidence of shill bidding per lot might be greater than the incidence of altered cards offered.

Depends who the consignors are. And I would go with altered cards, generally speaking.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Jeff for non-commodity cards, the conversion of one buyer to a seller can significantly affect the price. EDIT TO ADD Also ebay's increment structure inherently makes for lower prices. So shilling is not always the explanation.

[calvindog]

None of this is an exact science without a review of the bidding records of any auction. And we have learned from Mastro's destruction of bidding records that the crooks will do anything they can to avoid having to disclose them. Doug Allen probably still has his third grade baseball jersey squirreled away somewhere but bidding records? No, they had to go.

[botn]

Originally Posted by calvindog

How many of you have sold cards on ebay and wondered why the hell you can't get back even close to your purchase price?

Not a fair conclusion Jeff. eBay's 24/7 365 format makes it tough to get buyers' attention. An auction that takes place on a specific date with an accompanied catalog permits buyers to make the date in the calendar. Not everyone who buys cards can sit around scanning ebay every day.

Further I am quite certain that the number of altered cards in holders and bogus authenticated memorabilia far surpasses the incidents of shill bidding (even if you are counting number of individual shill bids placed). I am absolutely certain that if you were able to measure how much the card doctor/dealers have made over the years it would dwarf the total amount of bids which constitute shill bids over the same period. It is safe to say that the principals of auction houses are not making as much as individual dealers who trim up cards, and by whatever means available to them, get them into holders and then pass the worthless items off to collectors.

[Orioles1954]

What percentage of lots in a given Mastro Auction (or any other suspected auctions) do you all think were/have been shilled?

[calvindog]

Greg/Mike: I didn't mean to use ebay as a sole example for resale. Poor resale prices in consecutive auctions for the same cards is evident as well, the only difference being lack of fraud in the latter auctions.

And Greg, I appreciate your insight as to altered cards and would love to hear more. As you know, my belief that Mastro (and other auction houses) have been engaged in shill bidding for years was first sparked simply by looking at the anecdotal proof from the auctions themselves: bidding patterns, final prices, etc. I thought it was pretty obvious and I feel certain today that my beliefs were well-founded. I'm not an expert on altered cards but would appreciate learning more as to how the doctors work on alterations and, just as importantly, work with the auction house heads.

[botn]

Jeff,

I am in no way implying that shill bidding does not exist. Was just trying to point out that it is my opinion that card and memorabilia altering is a much larger business.

We are presented graded altered cards and, more often than not, the alteration is right in front of our face yet buyers will purchase the card anyway. My experience has demonstrated that many buyers prefer to just rely on the grade assigned to the card rather than making their own assessment of the quality of the card. Be it a desire to fill a hole in the collection or a lack of expertise, they will rely on the graded holder to tell them what they are getting, even if it is misleading. So it is not like there has been a precedent set by collectors to ever mitigate their damages.

Bids are placed in auction houses without the public knowing who they are bidding against. How can any of us, absent complete bidding records, say with certainty that we were shilled? Shouldn't we try to clean up the obvious before we start looking for things which are more uncertain and less quantifiable?

When a top all is placed, and if it is maxed out artificially, that is the price the buyer was willing to pay. Not implying that is what they should pay or how the system should work but how does that differ in form to a buyer deciding to plop down money for his encapsulated trimmed card in which he will be overpaying for that card whose true value is a very small percentage of what is being considered?

Don’t know about you but if I had to pick I would prefer to pay too much for an item which is exactly what it is deemed to be rather than to buy something which I can later find out to be a product of some card doctors efforts that never should have been graded.

[calvindog]

Greg, shill bidding is provable without bidding records if the circumstantial evidence is there; proving it is also helped with co-conspirator or other witness testimony. As for the altered cards in our hobby, the first thing that I suppose has to happen is that the people who are doing it need to be outed as do the sellers of altered material. Some people have been willing to do it, others won't

Finally, if a top-all bid is placed, the fact that the bidder is willing to pay that amount does not in any way mitigate the fraud committed by a shill bidder who places a bid below that ceiling, nor does the top-all bid equate to what the card is properly valued. Only when there are legitimate bids placed in an auction can such a true figure be reached. Of course, if a collector makes an arms-length offer for such a card at that price then it's a different story, but we're not talking about that here.

[barrysloate]

Shill bidding is unquestionably bad, but if I were asked the one thing I am most concerned with, that would have the most deleterious effect on the hobby, it would be altered cards that have made their way into holders. I would view that as close to epidemic, and would put shill bidding a distant second with regard to what collectors should be worried about. I think the grading industry needs a complete overhaul. I don't like it.

And I'm not talking about the VG card that sells for $100. I'm talking about the cards that make it into the set registry collections. Oh Lordie....

[botn]

Jeff,

Think it is much easier to prove a graded card is trimmed or recolored, for example, and trace it back to the submitter than to prove shill bidding, even with a co-conspirator's testimony.

With the quantity of cards which have been graded that should not have been graded, I think we are talking about an enormous amount of money. I know of two cards which combined sold for over 3 million dollars that are not worth a small fraction of that. How many 1977 Topps set would have to be shilled to get to 3 million dollars?

[camlov2]

Originally Posted by calvindog

Greg/Mike: I didn't mean to use ebay as a sole example for resale. Poor resale prices in consecutive auctions for the same cards is evident as well, the only difference being lack of fraud in the latter auctions.

A lower price in a second auction doesn't mean that some type of fraud occured in the first. It is of course possible but not a given.

I would guess that many times two people bid against each other driving a price much higher then expected. Every so often the winner choses to resell quickly due to regret, need of money.....

With one of the two main bidders now out of the picture the same item is likely to sell for much less.

[Rich Klein]

Didn't you see my smiley face after my comment

But on certain cards; restoring them to 1-3 is actually an easier gig; for if you're a grading company and the card is like $1K and in bad condition; do you automatically question said card like you would a higher grade example.

And, in the 1980's, we had really good 1953 Topps Mantle fakes running around North Jersey, and the funny thing was those cards would be vg/ex and not better (I think there were some other cards as well). But the reason the fakes worked so well WAS that they were in vg/ex condition and if you were a store owner, would you think that such a card was faked?

Regards
Rich

[Exhibitman]

Good points, Kevin and Jeff.

Jeff, no surprise on the records destruction front. It is one of the gaping holes in the legal system, IMO. I'm sure you know that corporate counsel in fact create and implement record destruction policies for their companies. If done as part of a standard practice with no claims pending against them it is treated by the courts as acceptable conduct. The fact that it plays right into the hands of the crooks out there is brushed under the rug.

I did want to respond to one point about altered cards and third party graders (TPG). I can confirm one instance of TPG repurchases of bad cards: SGC bought back a bad ex-mt graded T206 Waddell portrait I owned. I had questions about the card once I got it and took it with me to the National, where I got Dave to take a look at it. He agreed it was erroneously encapsulated and immediately offered to buy it back. I understand PSA is a bitch to get any admission of error from--fortunately I've never had to go down that path personally--but I cannot even get them to fix errors in their boxing card registry checklists, and I wrote the catalog...

[E93]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Good points, Kevin and Jeff.

I understand PSA is a bitch to get any admission of error from--fortunately I've never had to go down that path personally...

The one time I had a problem, it was solved very quickly. I noticed a slight problem on the back of a $7000 high grade CJ card that, in my view, was the result of alteration. I e-mailed Joe Orlando about it and sent scans. He asked me to send the card in for re-evaluation. On their analysis, they agreed with my assessment. Within 24 hours of receiving the card and upon our discussion about how to rectify the situation, he sent me a check for $7000. I could not have asked for better customer service and problem solving.

JimB

[calvindog]

Originally Posted by camlov2

A lower price in a second auction doesn't mean that some type of fraud occured in the first. It is of course possible but not a given.

I would guess that many times two people bid against each other driving a price much higher then expected. Every so often the winner choses to resell quickly due to regret, need of money.....

With one of the two main bidders now out of the picture the same item is likely to sell for much less.

Theoretical possibilities can explain away most fraud; however, statistically when you need a 1 in 10 thing to occur 400 times in a row it becomes an impossibility. Welcome to the world of Mastro.

[onlychild]

But on certain cards; restoring them to 1-3 is actually an easier gig; for if you're a grading company and the card is like $1K and in bad condition; do you automatically question said card like you would a higher grade example.

Humm....Getting a 1-3 to a 4-5 is usually very easy, since the lower grade cards have more problems to work with and edges/corners are usually not a primary concern. Altering a card to the 7/8 range is much more difficult. It's tedious micro-type work, usually on the corners and edges, that has little room for error.

That being said IMHO there are more high grade altered cards in the auction houses because that's where the high grade cards are. I think the altered low to mid grades can be sold more efficiently on eBay. Of course, I'm referring only to graded cards. Raw cards are the wild west.

I would hope that grading companies question all cards equally and give a little extra attention to the top tier cards. I'm not really sure if that happens though.

[JamesGallo]

I will respond to this in sections.

I feel there are a handful of good auction houses out there that include but are not limited to
REA
B&L
Sloate
Old Judge
Huggins and Scott
Goodwin

I don't think I have heard anything bad about any of the above and I am sure there are a few others I can't think of right now.

That being said I will NOT bid in any Legendary auction and they have a nice group of cards for a set I am working on, but they won't get my money.

There are certain things that I being in the collectible selling business for 15+ years will never bend on and ethics are #1. If I sell something and it is not right I will make it right in whatever way is needed. Mastro/Ledgendary has made too many "mistakes". I wasn't active then nor did I bid in or consign, so I was not hurt directly, and yet still they will never get my money no matter what.

As a side note I don't know if there is anything one of a kind that I have to own, but I have passed on such items in my other collecting fields based on this same principle so if there was a card that fell into this category I have no doubt I would pass on it.

As for the shilling/card altering/restoration arguments, I am not sure which is worse, and I think it would depend on the issue at hand.

If you trim a $5 card to make it a $500, restore a card or otherwise work on it they all would impact the value. To me making something worthless into something of high value would be high on my list of worst offenses. Perhaps re-backing a card or doing some other type of alteration. The only time I have dealt with this was on a lot of high end 60's rookies cards that were trimmed in the 1990's. It is likely that they were VG or EX cards trimmed to NM. The cards still had value but there was a significant loss on funds.

I also wonder if the number of bad cards in holders is directly related to when they were graded. I know I will never buy an older PSA holder as I do feel they are better about catching alternations now then they were 10 years ago.

Shilling is something we as a bidder can't know about unless it is made public. If you are educated about something you are buying hopefully that will help you weed out potential problem cards. I looked at a card in a major auction and had doubts about one of the edges, I choose not to bid as a result and am much happier for not having to deal with potential problems. Maybe the card was ok, but I wasn't willing to take the chance and I wasn't confident enough to make a statement about the card to the auction house.

The system has a lot of problems but most areas of business do, and policing them is tough at best. I do find it insulting that Coaches Corner is still around. The FBI continues to make a big deal about fraud in this hobby yet they are still allowed to operate. To me that is a pick and choose, we are going to go after Mastro because more money is involved but CC is still allowed to operate. It's total BS and as with any crime IMO it comes down to money. If you defraud someone out of $10,000 it is not treated the same as if you got screwed out of $500,000. That isn't right but I don't ever see that changing.

I think the best thing we can hope for as far as auction house honesty is that a shake up occurs and that good people continue to deal with good houses, hopefully over time the good and stronger houses will survive and the Mastro's will fade away.

One last note is that I will give an auction house a chance to make up for their errors and mistakes, but much like life, if there are several issues or if the same issues continue, then I will no longer deal with them. At this point I have about 2-4 places I will not buy anything from and another couple that I look at with caution. Beyond that I feel that I am participating in an honest auction and until proven or even suggested otherwise I have no reason to worry.

James G

[barrysloate]

The Legendary Auction is an hour old and the Wagner is already past 100K. Don't understand that kind of bidding strategy.