Memorabilia and the law

[Eric]

Hey everyone

I saw something which caught my interest last night on the local news. They had one of those consumer reports on Fox 5 WNYW where a baseball card collector bought two Mickey Mantle rookies from a dealer in New Jersey.

The cards were sent for authentication to SGC and they were deemed to be counterfeit.

The collector went back to the dealer and asked for a refund and the dealer said he didn't have the money.

Arnold Diaz (known as the Shame On You guy here in New York) busted in with a camera and confronted the dealer who said he had nothing to hide.

The dealer gave many excuses like "I was selling the cards for someone else and she has the money." and "How do I know these are the same cards I sold him?" (a comparison of the cards and the photos emailed to the collector by the dealer showed they were the same cards)

What I thought was interesting was, the collector is taking the dealer to court and the judge said there was enough of a case against the dealer for this to go forward.

This sheds light on an important topic. If the dealer truly was a middleman in the situation- then there is a legitimate case to be made against said middleman.

These were doctored cards sold to an unsuspecting buyer. Does that suggest that auction houses are responsible in cases like this if a jersey is found to have been doctored?

Interested in people's opinions on this. Is there anyone with a legal background who wants to chime in?

Here's a link to the story (my favorite detail- the dealer is wearing an XFL hat)

http://www.myfoxny.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=2606580&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=VSTY&pageId=3.1.1

Eric

[allstarsplus]

Re: Memorabilia and the law

These were doctored cards sold to an unsuspecting buyer. Does that suggest that auction houses are responsible in cases like this if a jersey is found to have been doctored?

Interested in people's opinions on this.

Eric

Eric - First of all, I believe the card store owner was charged with a criminal offense of theft by deception which in my opinion may be far worse for the store owner then the way most people go in the civil lawsuits route in just trying to recover the monetary damages.

I applaud the card buyers fortitude to move forward with this and the local police for charging the store owner.

If you hear any more on this, let us know!

Andrew

[metsbats]

Re: Memorabilia and the law

I thought it was interesting he threw "the girl" under the bus as a last response. Personally if this was the real case my first response would have been to go after the person i was selling the card for instead of beating around the bush.

It's a shame that it took Arnold Diaz and a negative publicity spot on Shame On You to expose this case. This dealer has lost alot more by not coming clean initially and now has to deal with the damage of the negative publicity so i think he lost more by not fessing up initially.

David

[Eric]

Re: Memorabilia and the law

It doesn't surprise me that the dealer would take that attitude. How many times have you dealt with someone like this or been in that situation.

I have heard the argument "I was selling them for someone else. i don't have the money" and "How do I know it's the same jersey?"

In fact, I have heard both in the past two months!!!

Eric

[allstarsplus]

Re: Memorabilia and the law

Luckily for the buyer he had the pictures of the cards in the email from the seller.

If he didn't have those pics, then the famous seller's retort of --- "How do I know these are the same cards I sold him?" may have sunk the case for the buyer.

That is a great lesson to be learned on both sides to keep good photos of the item in case this ever happens. There sometimes is the reverse of this case where the buyer does switch out a real item to a fake and then tries to return it.

The other interesting twist in this case will be if there really is this mystery woman who "consigned" the cards.