"imo auction houses suffer when they drop the ball and their mistakes are rehashed in the public domain"

my point wasn't that their reps don't suffer per se but rather that, if all else is good, then their reps don't suffer long-term effects. i agree that any entity will suffer an immediate, short-term hit when they drop the ball. relatively speaking though, a short-term hit is negligible. people forgive and forget. for proof of that all you need to do is consider the fact that everyone has made errors yet many reps have remained stellar. clearly the errors they made didn't have long-term repercussions. the real, long-term
effects, i believe, only come when the mistakes are constant and egregious.

"why would chris nerat feel compelled to state that lou discovered problems with the helmet that i "didn't even catch" given that i clearly didn't share my other findings with the forum?"

robert, in your post you explicitly stated that you had found a myriad of other issues but given the profundity of the 2 main ones, it was pointless to discuss the others. when i read chris nerat's post that lou had found issues that you hadn't, i naturally assumed that you privately conveyed to him the totality of issues you had found and that's what enabled him to know that lou had found issues you hadn't. after all, if chris didn't know all of the issues you found, then how could he possibly know that lou had found ones you hadn't? are you saying you had no such conversation with chris nerat?

personally, i found nerat's calls of "walking the walk" and discussions of what's bad for the hobby to be the height of hypocrisy. how is it he has time to lambast members of this forum yet he apparently has no time to ever write about any of lampson's or coachs corner's massive errors? if someone wants to be a sycophant or is too gutless to bite the hand that feeds them, that's fine and understandable but don't then come out talking about "walking the walk" and pointing the finger at what's bad for the hobby as if you're unbiased or haven't made your name by turning a blind eye to the hobby's biggest ills. you'd have a hard time showing that anyone on this forum has singlehandedly caused more damage than lampson so i find nerat's choice of targets ludicrous.

"he's in a tough position". i can't imagine that column pays the bills so he's free to walk. doesn't seem so tough to me. either play the shill and live with it or walk away but don't intentionally fail to report about any of lampson's egregious errors and then turn around and lecture people about what's bad for the hobby. michael o'keeffe's column has bigger balls but maybe it's because o'keeffe doesn't waste his efforts trying misdirect blame away from friends and advertisers. SCD doesn't seem to have many fans and i can't help but think it's articles like that that are partially responsible. reading nerat's article was like listening to spitzer talk about how prostitution rings should be shut down. of lampson, he writes that the "knowledge that this guy has in his head, some of you would never be able to comprehend." lampson has been incomprehensible for some time now. personally, i couldn't be more tired of hearing the same old line that gets trotted out by lampson's sycophants: "but he's a football genius!"
then tell him to stick to football! unfortunately for the hobby, this football genius sticks his paws into everything from baseball to ladies undergarments (i'm sure it has nothing to do with trying to cash in as much as possible regardless of expertise) and every time he does, it results in a mess.

rudy.