PSA Cancels My GAI Auction

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Posted By: Mark McCleary

Apologies if this has been covered before, but I was in the process of selling my first major card on ebay. The ad read "1914 Cracker Jack Ty Cobb GAI Graded 1.5 (not PSA)."

I received an email today telling me that PSA, under penalty of perjury, has alleged that my listing misused their brand name or trademark. And therefore my listing was removed. Moreover, my account may be suspecded if I repeat the offense.

Is this common practice? Does PSA do this trick with SGC as well or only their nemisis? Does it misuse the PSA brand name or trademark my saying that my card was graded by GAI and not PSA?

Here is the response I received from PSA:

"Dear Mr. McCleary,

Your listing has been removed by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator) due to word spamming. This is the improper use of our name and/or likeness, etc. for commercial purposes. You used PSA on your listing for a non-PSA graded item. This is considered word spamming since a search using the keyword PSA will bring up your item though it not PSA graded. We simply ask that items be listed accurately."

What a bunch of heavy-handed jerks.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

Mark,

Did you happen to place the "not PSA" in the "item title" or "item description"? The reason I ask is because the "item title" area is relatively limited in what you can write. The point being is if you placed the word "PSA" in the item description section and stated that it will probably "cross over" to a PSA grade you might have been able to get around the issue.

I don't see anything wrong with using "not PSA" in the "item title" because it provides the item with a greater range for the search function but PSA probably feels differently about this (obviously).

Good luck with the auction!

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Posted By: Morrie

The prohibition on "keyword spamming" is an eBay policy. If PSA hadn't reported you, someone else might have when they got frustrated with your GAI CJ coming up in a search they set to find PSA CJ cards.

That's not to say that PSA couldn't have handled the situation better... but since when have customer service and public relations been their strong suits?

Best thing to do is just re-list it and not mention PSA anywhere.

Sorry you had to put up with this...

Morrie

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Posted By: Brian Engelhard

What PSA did was Crap! About the only thing you can do is encourage everyone you know to NOT USE PSA. We all know SGC's customer service is far better than PSA, and while I'm not a big fan of the GAI inserts, I will use them well before I crawl to PSA. My personal opionion is that SGC and GAI grade vintage cards more accurately than PSA.

I will continue to buy PSA graded cards (with careful scrutiny) but I refuse to submit a card to them.

A few months ago I had a software auction cancelled as a result of an "alleged" copyright compaint. I disagreed with the legal opionion of the copyright holder's corporate lawyer but never got anywhere with Ebay Customer Service or FBI cyber crimes. I imagine I was as angry at the time as you should be right now.


Brian Engelhard


Revision: I jumped on PSA pretty quick, I could take my words back but I will stand behind them. He broke the rules with "word spamming" however PSA could have handled the situation differently; PSA could have contacted him directly and request he change the auction.

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Posted By: will watson

you broke the rules, and PSA is the jerks? i think you might have it mixed up there.

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Posted By: jay behrens

what you did is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves. I cannot stand it when people put PSA in the title or description to try and get more search hits, or any other word that doesn't belong there. The scam artists get around it by putting a worthless PSA8 common from the past few years in the auction with their PRO10 or NASA09 auctions. You have no grounds for any sort of complaint. You violated eBay's keyword spamming rule, plain and simple.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: tbob

I have to agree with Jay. I get so tired of those cards on ebay in which the sellers say "Not PSA" just so their cards will get swept up in the "PSA" search.

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Posted By: cmoking

I had a BGS card I was auctioning, and I did the same as you...something along the lines of : BGS 9.5 (not PSA 10). Obviously I was trying to get more eyeballs on my auction by putting in PSA 10 in the item...I admit it.

PSA has the right to cancel auctions through ebay at their will. They are not the only ones, there's a whole slew of companies that have that right. Along with the email I received was a link to that list.

I'm sure what happens is that someone at PSA once in a while randomly searches for PSA to see if GAI, SGC or BGS cards are the true auctioned items. If it is, then they simply cancel it. When they do this, I bet they cancel 100+ auctions in one stretch. If I were them and that's what happens, I wouldn't bother with emailing each and every single one - why not? Because then I'd have to spend a similar amount of time in a day or so to check if the auctioneers actually canceled or changed their item descriptions. If I were ebay/PSA, I would just cancel the auctions.

Was I pissed when they canceled my auction? YES!
After thinkin about it, do I agree with what they did? YES!

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Posted By: Mark

Yes I do think PSA are jerks for haing my auction pulled with threats of havingmy accout suspended.

First, PSA did not allege keyword spamming to ebay, they alleged copyright infringement through eBay's Verified Rights Owner program (VeRO). That is only permissible where PSA has "a good faith belief that a listing on eBay infringes [its] copyright, trademark, or other intellectual property rights." Ebay gives the following example of trademark infringement: "For example, if a seller unauthorized by or unaffiliated with Nike® sells sports clothes called 'Nikestuff,' the seller is probably infringing Nike’s trademark." Obviously, I did not say the card was "PAS-graded."

Second, although I now realize that "not PSA" may technically constitute keyword spamming (not the ground alleged to ebay by PSA), I think paying PSA employees to go after collectors/dealers for this violation is heavy-handed because my auction was not injuring PSA. I am going to relist the card, perhaps getting a few dollars less for it because one or two collectors may not find the auction. PSA is not going to benefit from that in any way. I would think most if not all PSA collectors looking for a 1914 Cobb would want to know there was a GAI-graded example available. So even if this is technically keyword spamming, it is not within teh spirit of teh rule in my opinion.

In my book, PSA are jerks for their paying employees to harass collectors/dealers (misalleging infringement no less), many of whom (including myself) are PSA members, over a triival issue cush as this. They should spend those resouces improving their customer service or hiring more competent graders. This is certainly (IMHO) not an effort on PSA's part to foster a fun and propserous trading card community.

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Posted By: will watson

mark, YOU BROKE THE RULES. writing "not PSA" in your auction title is ridiculous. the GAI description is a tipoff to most people that it isn't a PSA card being sold. so you basically used PSA's name (and their popularity) to get some free advertising for a competitors product....and you wonder why PSA shut your auction down? the PSA didn't report it, i or one of many other collectors would have.

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Posted By: Tony Conte

Using the words "not Psa" in your auction is silly. It
seems to me you were key word spamming and I can not blame
ebay from cancelling your auction. I wish they did as good
of job getting rid of shady auctions on ebay though.

aconte

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Posted By: Aaron

Mark wrote: "I am going to relist the card, perhaps getting a few dollars less for it because one or two collectors may not find the auction."

Mark, you are dead wrong in this instance and even admit to the very tactic that PSA is rightfully trying to shut down. You admit to using a tactic that is meant to intentionally mis-direct E-Bay buyers.

Shady dealers who list PRO "graded" and other sham grading services were (and still are) routinely listing their card as "not PSA" so that buyers looking for PSA graded cards would stumble on their trimmed or reprint cards.

Although GAI is a reputable and respected grader, that doesn't change the fact that you also tried to intentionally mis-direct buyers (for your own profit as you note), which both wasted buyers time, but also is potentially deceptive to more novice collectors and E-Bay users.

I think what PSA is doing is terrific. You were correctly called out for what essentially amounts to false advertising.

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Posted By: Peter Spaeth

Is against ebay policy, period. You have nothing to complain about.

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Posted By: Douglas

I think the "Not PSA" thing is keyword spamming, and I have no problem with PSA having the auction pulled, under whatever guise, VeRo or whatever. PSA's customer relations is irrelevant here. You broke an ebay rule, and got called on it. I also agree with Tony that ebay needs to do more with phony auctions. If PSA can do it, Ebay should be able to, too. Heck, just ask us here at the Net54 board.

Doug

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Posted By: Wesley

There are many dealers that get away with paper cutouts, doctored cards and reprints and other shady stuff on ebay everyday that gets overlooked.

This is not one of them.

I am sure Mark is just frustrated by the inconvenience of having to relist the card. Just as I am sure David was frustrated by having to relist fofty or so Yuengling cards two weeks ago. It is just horribly inconvenient and Mark is just venting as we all do from time to time. You would think that PSA would have better things to do than to police relatively benign auction violations like this.

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Posted By: tbob

Yes, it takes a way from their spending time cancelling auctions because items are listed in the wrong categories, like books about pre-war baseball in the pre-war card section and they cancel the winning bid and nullify the auction even though many prewar card collectors have a real interest in reading about the guys who are on the cardboard. They turn their eye from the cheats, frauds and scum who fleece people with fake cards and scams, yet bother with this type of thing. They are idiots.

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Posted By: Howie

Ebay can only take action when violations are reported to them. If cutouts aren't in the right category or spammed keep reporting them. The sellers are warned. Report them again and they're warned again or auctions are ended. Report them again and again until the seller stops or gets kicked off. PRO sellers spamming PSA GAI SGC need to be reported over and over again until they're forced to stop.

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Posted By: Josh K.

Is there a difference b/t saying "not psa" in an auction and listing a card graded by SGC with the equivilent psa grade for example: "SGC 50 (PSA 4)" I have seen this too many times to count - and frankly, have done it myself. It doesnt seem any different, but I have never known anyone to have their auction pulled as a result.

For what its worth, I have no problem with what mark did. I could care less if I search for a psa card and some sgc cards come up as well - heck Ive found several cards that way I might not otherwise have found. If I dont want to look at the card that says gai or sgc, I just ignore it - no skin off my nose. Ebay should be more concerned about the forgers and scammers and not honest sellers simply trying to get bidders.

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Posted By: Tony Conte

Josh,

I have seen ebay cancelled auctions with titles done how
you describe. It is still key word spamming and if caught
your auctions could be killed.

aconte

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Posted By: will watson

the SGC 50 (PSA 4) is one of the few instances of keyword spamming that doesn't bother me- mainly because im not familiar enough with SGC's bizarre 1-100 scale. i'm sure to most novice collectors like me, SGC 50 could be construed as the same as an EX 5 from another company. perhaps it would be better to list it as "SGC 50 (VG-EX 4)" as opposed to mentioning a specific grading company

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Posted By: davidcycleback

It has long been a not-uncommon complaint from PSA collectors that when they do a 'PSA' search on eBay they end up looking at everything under the sun, including PRO, AAA and other graded cards. So likely the complaints against keywork spamming in general originates from normal collectors not company executives.

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Posted By: Mark McCleary

To answer my own question, there are 121 SGC cards on ebay right now that mention PSA in the title, and less than 10 GAI-graded cards that do the same. So it would seem to me that PSA is only going after those who deal with their former employees:

http://search.ebay.com/sgc-psa_Cards_W0QQcatrefZC12QQfromZR8QQfsooZ1QQfsopZ1Q QsacatZ212

If PSA had been targeting SGC as well, they would no doubt have reported the lisitings ending in 5 hours that say "not PSA."

As Josh indicated, this is a fairly common practice and frankly, I didn't know until this morning that it was any sort of rules violation (as I stated in my orginal post, this is my first major ebay sale).

I am surprised to learn that so many n54 members are annoyed at seeing GAI-graded cards when they search exclusively for PSA...has everyone here joined the PSA set registry?

I was also surprised to read that a fellow board member would have reported me directly to ebay himself had he noted my listing before it was removed.

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Posted By: Julie

Often, the nicest card you can find comes in a graded holder...i just got a PSA 5 Pattee (great card!), and I remember often seeing "SGC 60 (psa 5)" OR, JUST AS HELPFUL, (5) (without the PSA).--and none of them got wiped out (but someone said they could if eBay or PSA were so inclined). I find the extra listing helpful--not because SGC's grading is "bizarre,": but because it's numbers don't quite correspond to PSA's (a 60 is a 5, not a 6). In fact, it's nice to be reminded that you're dealing with an ex card instead of an Ex-mint.

It seems to me what PSA is doing is getting rid of SNEAKY uses of their numbers--this guy, they think, is going out of his way to say the card is not PSA graded, knowing full well that the use of "PSA" in a positive OR negative sense will get the listintg included in all of ours.

That is, if PSA is capable of such complex thinking, and seeing some of the cards they've graded, I'm not so sure...

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Posted By: jay behrens

It's not just the (not PSA) that is annoying, it's keyword spamming in general. How many times have you seen a beaten up t206 common mention the fact that it is from the set with the "famous" million dollar Wagner card, or adding the fact that other greats such as Cobb, Mathewson, etc are also in the set. All this being mentioned when it has almost nothing to do with the card being sold. It's just being done to add as many keywords as possible to get people to your aution, even though they aren't interested in that card. This is the sort of thing that pisses most of us off puts sellers like that a few notches away from the scam artists.

It may be harsh, but it's how I and many others feel.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: Julie

the "Mr. X" collection, and nobody seemed to notice that the top description line also said "Black Sox," when the player had NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BLASCK SOX, except that he played for the same team at a different time.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

You were key word spamming and admittedly using PSA's name to pull in more eyes. That is very close to if not within the scope of using their publicity rights for your business.

If you want to use PSA in a listing, although given their quality I cannot understand why, put it within the listing in an informational context, such as "graded by Global, which employs the former head grader from PSA" or something of that sort.

And yes, it does sound like PSA selectively targeted you, but that is no excuse for your wrongdoing. Or let me put it another way with an admittedly over the top hypothetical: Say I am a noted entertainer and I molest little boys and say another perv does the same thing to another little boy, I don't have a defense to my perv charge because the cops decide to arrest me for my crime but ignore his crime.

er, um, I meant hypothetically allegedly molest little boys...

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Posted By: Mark

Adam, nice analogy comparing my first ebay listing to molesting a small child. What class you employ.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

besides it is ALLEGED molestation.

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Posted By: Rick

I doubt PSA employees actually wrote ebay about this auction.

Most likely it was a regular ebayer who gave a complaint and you merely got a generic email.

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Posted By: ted

Many people do that, i consider myself the personal police on the "Black Sox" listings..i reported it and several others..... very annoying...you might as well call any jackie robinson card a Black Sox card since his number is retired by the white sox ...

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Posted By: Dave Yoken

reminds me of my college days when I would see signs around campus with the headline in large text: "SEX SEX SEX", and once you took a look at the postings, you would see "Now that we've got your attention...", and the postings would have nothing to do with the title. It certainly worked as a marketing ploy...

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Posted By: will watson

"I was also surprised to read that a fellow board member would have reported me directly to ebay himself had he noted my listing before it was removed."

Mark,

i assume you're referring to me, since i mentioned alerting ebay to keyword spamming. i wouldn't do it to spite you, i'd do it because it's a violation of ebay rules. if there were no bids, i'd actually contact you first and let you know about the violation. if there were bids, i'd contact ebay. the reason being, because if there are bids its a heckuva lot harder to change the auction title (to remove the keyword spam). ebay wouldn't kick you off, they'd warn you. and as you said, you honestly didn't know. in fact, i'm pretty sure they refund your listing and insertion fees so you can relist it with the correct title. you lose nothing, except for the time it takes you to relist the item.

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Posted By: John J. Grillo

I agree with having the auction pulled. This was a clear-case of keyword spamming in the auction title. A "CJ GAI" in the title already implies it isn't PSA graded card.

"2001 Ford F-150 Pickup Truck for Sale, (Not Chevy Silverado)." Now how silly does that sound to you.

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Posted By: Anson

This stuff happens all the time with tons of different items. Heck, even my wife's kiddie clothing auction got the same response when she mentioned "like gymboree" in the title.

It wouldn't be so bad if Ebay didn't charge you through the Wazoo to list in seperate categories.

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Posted By: JimCrandell

I would like to add my voice to those who are against using PSA in the title while trying to sell the card of another grading service. One of the most aggravating things in bidding on cards is doing a search for psa 8s and have sellers listing GAI SGC or PRO cards and putting not PSA. I am glad someone is cracking down on this.

Dav

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Posted By: tbob

Another "clever" way to keyword spam. Wonder if ebay will catch this one. Not too obvious, duh!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=86841&item=5210040329&rd=1

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Posted By: Anson

So when would it not be PSA SGC GAI ready? Did it have to go through some special preparations or be sworn in? Does McGraw put on a flight jacket and give the thumbs up?

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Posted By: Lee Behrens

I am also against the keyword spamming. To me it is very annoying. Why can't you sell the card for what it is, if you want to sell it with the PSA designation, cross the card over. I really do not think that you receive extra bids because of this practice. Heck if I am looking for an SGC card I put SGC in the search minus PRO,PSA, and GAI. That eliminates all these non-SGC cards that I have no interest in. I do and have bid on GAI and PSA cards but I actually bid less on them than I would for a SGC card.

Bottom line to me is sell for card for what it is and for what it is not. The cards sell themselves, it just makes the seller a bit questionable in my eyes.

Lee

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I had one item of mine pulled by eBay-- Carl Yastremski's signed 1970 tax form. The document contained no sensitive information (no social security #, for example). I did not have a problem eBay pulling it, as I understood the reasoning behind keeping tax forms of living people off eBay. Some time later I offered the signed tax form of a decades deceased baseball player and eBay did not object ... I have offered a good number of living player contracts and agreements that contained their social security numbers and have scribbled out the numbers with my pen.

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Posted By: Miguel

I agree with those that find the practice of keyword spamming to be very annoying and bothersome. I think PSA is within its rights. I hate it when I'm searching for PSA and people have obviously put the word PSA in their title merely to get included in a search for PSA.

PSA is protecting its trademark, which it has invested in, and which is associated with its services. When I search for PSA on eBay I expect to get PSA graded cards. People who use the PSA trademark in order to have their auctions apppear when I am looking only for PSA cards are attempting to confuse the public and free ride off of PSA's trademark. This is the definition of trademark infringement.

The only argument you can make is that by saying "NOT PSA" you're not trying to convince anyone your card is a PSA card. However, the damage, I think, is done when I've searched for PSA and now am looking at your non-PSA card. If you intended to fairly use the PSA trademark for some other purpose than to benefit from those who have heard of PSA and are searching for cards graded with their service, then we can talk. But I think 99.9% of people who use PSA in their auction titles and don't have PSA graded cards are in fact trying to get their auctions displayed when people search for PSA.

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Posted By: Jerry

I hate keyword spamming, too. The worst is the PRO 9-PSA 10???? type of garbage, but you ARE being misleading with your title. Obviously every card in the world except those in PSA holders aren't "PSA graded" and it's annoying to search for certain cards and having to wade through listings like this that are of no interest to me, thus the keyword screen/search.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

Ebay has a graded card section (within the Pre-1930 category) which is subdivided into PSA, GAI, SGC and other graders. I would be willing to bet that if you went to the PSA category and searched it for CRACKER JACKS (or what ever) you probably wouldn't find too many SGC, GAI or PRO graded cards. However, if you do the search on all Pre-1930 cards then you might come up with the different graders cards in the search because of keyword spamming. If appropriately placed in the PSA graded category then I would be willing to guess that people could find what they were looking for (in that category) with a minimal amount of those extra cards that shouldn't come up because of keyword spamming.

I suppose if you globally search the Pre-1930 category for PSA material you may become inundated with stuff you don't care to locate.

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Posted By: jay behrens

The only problem with just searching the proper catagory is that you will miss the stuff that people don't list properly. When eBay changes catagories, they update Turbo Lister, but they do change the catagory in any templates you have. I had a number of auctions in the wrong catagory becuase of this. eBay does not do a good job of informing people that they are changing catagories.

Jay

My place is full of valuable, worthless junk.

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Posted By: dan mckee

This happens with lots of brand names and all sorts of items. The companies use a spy program to catch the listings. I sold a kit car Ferrari and was blasted by Ferrari and ebay with threatening emails. I didn't realize it was against policy but it is and I can understand the company's point of view. PSA doesn't want their name used to enhance the search for a competitor's card. I have to agree with PSA here, sorry guys. Dan.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

you may have gotten caught in a slap-fight between PSA and GAI with PSA deciding to attack GAI auctions where PSA is mentioned.

Adam

You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons.

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Posted By: Dave Yoken

in the wrong here. It is not copyright infringement to employ the term "PSA" on your title in order to get more eyeballs on your auctions. The term "PSA" is as much copyrighted by Professional Sports Authenticators as the same acronym is copyrighted by many other companies and organizations. How would all of these companies and organizations feel if they knew PSA was brow-beating everyone over the use of three letters: the companies "Passenger Shipping Association" and "Production Services Associates", the organizations "Pro Snowboarders Association", "Pacific Science Association", or even the "Prostate Specific Antigen" test?? (I know, sorry to bring that last one up...hehe)

Just because PSA is the acronym used by these many different organizations and companies, should PSA send them a cease-and-decist order and shut down their websites?

Look, I understand why people would be upset about the confusion and the keyword spamming, but the anger is misplaced. I would be pretty miffed if someone posted an auction with false information about the product they were hawking, but that wasn't the case here. Mark did not describe this card as a PSA-graded card. If an honest seller is just trying to bring more attention to his auction (as is normal, and standard practice, in most businesses), then I don't see a problem with it.

Additionally, the way in which PSA acted in shutting down the auction sounds pretty fascist to me. Couldn't they have as easily contacted the seller and civilly requested he remove the listing with the warning that it would be shut down otherwise than to just kill it and remove any trace of the description, bidders, etc. without warning?

Honestly, PSA should have nothing to worry about because they've pretty much cornered the market for all post-war sports cards and memorabilia grading. I think they should be concentrating their efforts on fixing the PSA/DNA scandal rather than wasting their time attacking the little guy. If I were a shareholder, I'd get rid of all my P.S.A. holdings (Professional Sports Authenticators, that is)...

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Posted By: will watson

you're kidding, right?

it is a violation of ebay's rules. PSA never alleged copyright infringement, they alleged that he misused their brand name, which he did.

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Posted By: Mark

"Not PSA" is keyword spamming, however, Dae's point was that it is not a VERO violation as PSA reported for both Dave's and my auctions. Technically, yes keyword spamming is a violation of ebay's rules. The purpose of the rule (per ebay) is to prevent buyer confusion. "Not PSA" does not confuse buyers, particularly when there is a photo of a GAI-graded card (as there was in my auction).

The real reason that PSA reports these auctions is because they want cards from GAI, SGC, BVG, etc. to finish at lower prices than PSA-graded cards. To my knowlege, the other grading companies do not employ this tactic. It is a smart business strategy on PSA's part assuming the benefit of the increased submissions (due to auctions finishing higher) outweighs the lost business of the sellers they upset.

Will, reporting fellow board members' auctions is not a classy move.

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Posted By: will watson

keyword spamming, in part, is to prevent people from having to sift through items they didn't intend to search for. you're right, putting "Not PSA" doesn't confuse buyers, but what's the point? listing it as a GAI card in the description, and having a scan of a GAI card, is more than enough to allow people to figure out what you're selling. using "Not PSA" is merely free advertising, something PSA doesn't want for their competitors (complain about it all you like, but would you want someone using your business name to advertise for your competitor? didn't think so).



"The real reason that PSA reports these auctions is because they want cards from GAI, SGC, BVG, etc. to finish at lower prices than PSA-graded cards. To my knowlege, the other grading companies do not employ this tactic."

so in effect, you're saying that the only way cards from other companies can finish at prices equal to PSA, is if the PSA name is advertised in the auction description? makes sense, considering PSA graded cards regularly sell for more than their competition. whether it's the Registry aspect, or something else, its the truth. and other grading companies don't employ this tactic because they don't need to- i see very few, if any, auctions for PSA graded cards that use competitors names to garner more interest.



"Will, reporting fellow board members' auctions is not a classy move."

ok? this is a public board. i realize that many of you guys are friends or whatever, but i don't know any of you (other than a few guys who post on a private board). i'm just a collector like everyone else. that, and the fact that we both post on N54, are the only things we have in common. i'm not part of the cameraderie (sure i butchered the spelling). furthermore, i already explained my position in the previous post- if there were no bids, i would probably contact you and explain your violation, and let you fix the problem without having to relist. otherwise, i would contact ebay so they could alert you of the problem. if you know the rules, and you break the rules, you have no one to blame but yourself. if i was keyword spamming, and one of my friends reported me, i would blame myself as well. if that makes me classless, then so be it.