Dave Grob and President Coolidge request your advice

[kingjammy24]

hi dave

this is in response to your recent post, found here: http://www.mearsonline.com/news/newsDetail.asp?id=568

let me preface everything by saying that disclosing a conflict of interest is a good thing, while entirely avoiding the conflict is a great thing. it's up to you whether you want to be good or great. as well, there's no doubt in my mind that being great costs more in time, effort, and money than being good. again, it's up to you.

"Folks, let’s face it and be honest about it… If you are running an auction house or selling items on E-Bay or at card show, your goal is to make money….Ouch…dirty as it may seem, it is the truth."

it's not the mere making of profit that folks see as "dirty" or the issue. it's how that profit is made that is the issue. REA, for example, racks up some very substantial auction totals. truly, i can't remember the last, or any, post on here deriding them. rob lifson is a straight-shooter who runs a fine house. noone could care less if he made $100 million a year. conversely, historic racks up paltry totals by comparison and is a constant source of criticism. clearly, folks don't have an issue with an auction house making profit, only with how that profit is made.

"if you expect it to have any impact on our decision making process, you should do more than just complain. Offer something well thought out and constructive. Take for example this golden nugget of knowledge:

“I think the whole authentication business is a scam....I agree with all that Mears is trying to set new levels of standards...but when you compare that level in this industry vs other industries in the REAL world, Mears' standards are still in the horse and buggy stage.”

What am I supposed to do with this? What are the other industries that we should be using as points of reference and what are “the lessons learned” and “best business practices” that we should consider or emulate? And yes, I am looking for specifics that would include some functional assessment as to the impact on both the internal and external operational environment.

Getting back to the sage commentary offered above, I clearly am not sure what the “REAL world” is."

while i don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, i think the "horse and buggy" and "real world" comments may have really referred to this hobby as a whole and it's complete lack of any real, formal oversight, regulations, governing authority, etc. any warm body off the street, with absolutely no training, credentials, or certifications, can open up an auction house for the cost of a business license, cram it full of nothing but ebay junk, authenticate it themselves, shill bid every single item, clear $30k from it, and there's absolutely nothing to oversee or regulate any of it. i'm sure you'd argue that such a house would quickly go out of business but if that were the case, then would lampson be the most prolific authenticator in the industry? it's outlandish that an auction industry that generates tens millions of dollars annually has absolutely no safeguards, standards, regulations or even commonly accepted practices. there aren't even regular, formal audits by an impartial authority for shill-bidding! it's a complete wild-west. having a hotdog cart on the streets of new york city requires more oversight and regulations. here in los angeles, the department of health regularly inspects the hygiene of restaurants and posts grades on the restaurant's front window and it's findings for each and every restaurant on a website. they'll do that for every hole-in-the-wall selling $3 bowls of ramen and generating $10k a year in revenue. conversely, you've got an auction house clearing $30 or $40 million a year and there is absolutely noone or nothing that verifies whether there's shill-bidding, whether the auction house owner is having his buddy, the authenticator, rubber stamp his own items, whether this authenticator intentionally downgrades items submitted to him so he can turn around and buy them cheaply to then stick into his buddies' auction and then jack the grade up and collect the kickbacks from his pal, or even if most of the descriptions are truthful and accurate. there's nothing or noone to mete out any penalties or fines. most other "real" industries don't and can't operate like that. for how many years did mastro tell prospective buyers that "they weren't dealers" and that other auction houses "offered items they owned", only to turn around and admit they consign their own items? how many times has doug allen altered an item, stuck it into his auctions, and not disclosed the alteration? it's lunacy. you know who's policing doug allen and lou lampson? doug allen and lou lampson. doug allen making policies to watch over doug allen. brilliant. it's like lou coming up with "lou's code 'o ethics" to protect folks from himself. doug was once a CPA and in order to obtain that title he had to pass a standard, formal exam (including an exam on ethics) as well as meet several formal, legal requirements in his state of licensure. had he not met those requirements, he wouldn't have been given the title. if doug had been found guilty of certain offenses, a formal, governing body had the authority and ability to yank his title away. dave, who's there to ensure that lou's work is of a satisfactory quality? the auction houses? the same ones that lou himself said "don't want to pay him if he turns an item down".

plumbers, lawyers, architects, cab drivers, nurses, contractors, doctors, accountants, investment advisors, farmers, hot dog vendors, real estate agents, ad nauseum, all licensed and/or certified in some way, all overseen by authorities who regulate their quality of work. that's the "real world". basically, i can think of no other industry that permits the amount of screw-ups, ineptitude, and brazen deception that this industry does.

you asked for industries to examine. here's a good example: a few years ago, there was a big fiasco over investment bankers/analysts. in short, an investment bank has bankers who make their money in banking deals with companies (taking them public, etc), and stock analysts who issue "objective" recommendations. both sides work for the same company. can you already see the conflict? what company is going to sign with a bank whose analysts have been recommending against their stock? you've got Company X, who the analysts (authenticators) feel is a garbage buy (fake jersey) so they say "hey public, this is garbage, don't buy it". job done for them. then you've got the investment bankers (auction house owners) who want to make some substantial deals with this same Company X but Company X tells the bankers that the only way they'll give them a $60million deal is if their analysts upgrade their recommendations. oh oh! the bankers want to make money. the analysts are preventing it. who wins? gee whiz, the bankers pressure the analysts into making rubbish recommendations and money wins out. perfect auction house/authenticator scenario. the only difference? the SEC came down on these firms for their conflicts of interest, forced the firms to change, fined them heavily, and returned money to investors. if you're interested: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-54.htm

"OK then, what is the Cadillac (yes, I still have a thing about buying American) standard in very specific terms and how does MEARS get there?"

off the top of my head:

- a MEARS employee cannot have items, in which they have any ownership stake, evaluated by MEARS, disclosure or not. this includes all evaluations, including private and auction house.

- MEARS employees cannot consign items, in which they have any ownership stake, into MEARS' auctions.

- items submitted to MEARS' auction are evaluated by genuine third-party authenticators who have no interest in the items they've evaluated (read: not MEARS employees).

- lose the grading scale and revert to only 2 verdicts: "Likely to be Game-Used" or "Unlikely to be Game-Used". continue to include your worksheet and all relevant supporting documentation to show how you arrived at the conclusion.

- in it's auction house contracts, MEARS will not evaluate items owned, wholly or in part, by any auction house employees or family members.

- at it's new 15,000 sq ft facility, MEARS will construct wooden stocks for the purpose of humiliating shill-bidding auction house owners and dodgy authenticators. photos of said owners and authenticators with their heads and hands in the stocks will be available for sale on the MEARS website.

- MEARS will implement a "Where's Lou?" function to their website where collectors can report various Lampson sightings.

dave grob and myself would be interested to hear anyone else's suggestions towards improving MEARS.

rudy.

[trsent]

off the top of my head:

- a MEARS employee cannot have items, in which they have any ownership stake, evaluated by MEARS, disclosure or not. this includes all evaluations, including private and auction house.

- MEARS employees cannot consign items, in which they have any ownership stake, into MEARS' auctions.

- items submitted to MEARS' auction are evaluated by genuine third-party authenticators who have no interest in the items they've evaluated (read: not MEARS employees).

- lose the grading scale and revert to only 2 verdicts: "Likely to be Game-Used" or "Unlikely to be Game-Used". continue to include your worksheet and all relevant supporting documentation to show how you arrived at the conclusion.

- in it's auction house contracts, MEARS will not evaluate items owned, wholly or in part, by any auction house employees or family members.

- at it's new 15,000 sq ft facility, MEARS will construct wooden stocks for the purpose of humiliating shill-bidding auction house owners and dodgy authenticators. photos of said owners and authenticators with their heads and hands in the stocks will be available for sale on the MEARS website.

- MEARS will implement a "Where's Lou?" function to their website where collectors can report various Lampson sightings.

dave grob and myself would be interested to hear anyone else's suggestions towards improving MEARS.

rudy.

Rudy, you criticize others business and their practices, but what do you offer to their business? Are you a customer of theirs? They are not going to listen to your concepts about not consigning their own items - It has been stated by others that every auction house consigns items they own - This is not a secret practice, just not everyone will admit if they own an item that is in an auction.

Personally, I believe your suggestions are selfish and your concepts would be perfect in a perfect world, but at the end of the day you have no finical stake in MEARS and I do not believe you are a customer of theirs so I assume they look at your rants as just a jealous consumer who has nothing better to do but time and time again put their concepts down.

From what I have been told MEARS will fully disclose ownership and authentication for all items in their auction and if you do not like it, do not bid and keep publicly attacking this company time and time again when they have a track record that stands above most track records in this industry.

Track record for integrity, honesty, availability and full disclosure.

They will discuss concerns of issues with the public, even the public that is not a customer of theirs such as yourself, Rudy. They are fully available to answer questions about items that they have authenticated. They may or may not change a grade but at least you will get a detailed answer about how they made their final grade and determination. They will let the public know items they own in their sales and if they authenticated the item.

They are not going to change their policy of selling their own items because Rudy doesn't approve. Rudy generally appears to be a loud mouth collector who picks and chooses who he doesn't approve of in this industry and time and time again he complains about their business practices. He has done a lot of good in photo-matching techniques but he also has time and time again attacked the honest in this industry.

Yes, I will state it again, and Rudy states that if we do not know who is doing it, nothing can be done, but I think that is a joke. Full ownership, authentication (or questionable 3rd party authentication of their owned items) disclosure is offered by MEARS. If every auction house owned up to this policy, people such as Rudy would not sleep well at night. It is going on all over the industry and a company steps forward with full disclosure of ownership and in-house authentication to be up-front and honest of their intentions and Rudy tells them they should only accept consignments.

Nice idea, if you saw Troy Kinunen's and Dave Bushing's personal inventories you would know you are wasting your fingers typing your concepts as they are setting up an auction house to compliment their for sale site to sell their own merchandise.

It is clear, you have time and time again attacked MEARS for honesty and integrity. You do not have to like the grades they assign, but there comes a point where it is not your business other than you do not like their full disclosure policy and you find it to be a conflict of interest.

Oh wait, we already know they openly admit this is a conflict of interest so they fully disclose such to make it clear their intentions are known.

Years ago, before MEARS, I used to sell items that I wrote a personal letter of authenticity for. I owned the items and I wrote a TRS Enterprises letter to guarantee the authenticity. This was a conflict of interest, and I never disclosed I owned the items I was selling (never thought of it) was it?

Now, why don't you waste more time point by point attacking my post and make rude, obnoxious, attempting to be humorous comments for each one instead of just admitting you are not going to win this one as MEARS will sell their own items at auction, just as every major auction house does, just in this auction, MEARS will let the bidders know which items they own and authenticate in house due to their full disclosure policy.

Some people never give up, and then attack those attempting to sell the right way, honest to their customers, while there is an industry full of people doing the thing and not disclosing diddley (Bo).

[lund6771]

Joel...

what line of work are you in?

[jdr3]

Good question. Joel comes on here with his holier than thou attitude like he is above reproach. When asked what he had done to help the hobby by identifying dealers who were, to say the least, suspect, he replied, "If I wanted to name any company I would have named them. If you look over the history of this discussion forum, a name may be clear to you." What great moral courage that took. Translation: I am too much of a yellow belly to put my money where my posts are. I long for the days when you honored your self imposed exile.

[3arod13]

Nobody's likes the truth! I'm sick of so many people sitting back and keeping their mouths shut, when they also agree. You know what goes on, yet you'd rather have guys like Rudy do the talking, so you don't put yourselves out there.

We live in a society that is greedy and all about making money. No morales. No integrity. No honesty.

[RKGIBSON]

MEARS will find out soon that their is no money to be made buying good jerseys, at market prices, and auctioning them off. They will only make money when collectors submit their items and they charge the commission fees usually totaling to 30% when you count both sides. So come on everyone, send you good stuff in so they can make 30% and you can lose your ass.

Roger

[trsent]

Joel...

what line of work are you in?

Good question. Joel comes on here with his holier than thou attitude like he is above reproach. When asked what he had done to help the hobby by identifying dealers who were, to say the least, suspect, he replied, "If I wanted to name any company I would have named them. If you look over the history of this discussion forum, a name may be clear to you." What great moral courage that took. Translation: I am too much of a yellow belly to put my money where my posts are. I long for the days when you honored your self imposed exile.

I don't understand - Why the personal attacks?

By the way Jim Reed, I remember the quoted thread above, I was referring to Historic Auctions, but I didn't wish to name them by name at the time, but thanks for bringing it up again, like it has anything to do with the discussion at hand. Keep taking cheap shots at me, really mature. You call me a "yellow belly"? What does that mean? I am here, I voice my views, if you don't like them - Block my posts and live in your closed minded world.

I also sign all my posts with my email and my name - No hidden agenda here - I am real and I can be contacted over my views anytime.

As for the line of work I am in, what does that have to do with anything? Pete Peschel, please do not attack me again. Go back to your basement with your bricks and attack some football jerseys before you attack me. Nice to see the usual idiots attack my posts instead of debating the facts.

I SAY IT TIME AND TIME AGAIN - IF YOUR ARGUMENT IS WEAK - YOU ATTACK THE PERSON MAKING THE COMMENTS. THIS IS HOW WEAK PEOPLE ARGUE WHEN THEY CANNOT FACE FACTS.

[kingjammy24]

hi joel

two questions for you. don't worry, neither of them are funny.

1) clearly, you're an extremely fervent supporter of MEARS and by using the term "extremely fervent" i may be understating things. i haven't even seen troy or dave come to such zealous defense of their company as you manage to do. i'm curious if your constant, almost rabid, defense of MEARS has anything to do with the fact that you're a "MEARS Certified Dealer" (apparently a self-created term that even confused Troy when you first made it up) and all of the game-used items that you flip on Ebay come with MEARS certs? that is, do you fear that if folks begin to question or even lose faith in MEARS that your sales may be negatively impacted? do you feel that the louder you trumpet MEARS' greatness, the more profit you can realize on your MEARS-certed items on ebay?

2) what do you collect? in reading over 1500 of your posts, i've never been able to figure it out. i don't mean what do you sell on ebay. i mean what do you personally collect? where does your collecting niche lie?

rudy.

[trsent]

Nobody's likes the truth! I'm sick of so many people sitting back and keeping their mouths shut, when they also agree. You know what goes on, yet you'd rather have guys like Rudy do the talking, so you don't put yourselves out there.

We live in a society that is greedy and all about making money. No morales. No integrity. No honesty.

You know something funny, I receive emails, calls and people at shows tell me all the time that they love my posts but they do not wish to post on the forum because they are tired of being attacked for debating a subject.

Here is a real email I received earlier in the week, quoted word for word, just the name at the bottom was removed:

"Dear Joel,
I wanted to tell you that I always enjoyed reading your posts as I've found them to be well thought out and educational. I also admire the way you argue your points (as you are currently now) in an articulate and professional manner. As for me, I'm through with posting there. I've grown weary of the egotistical ramblings of the self proclaimed experts and the immature nature of their postings. Mostly the sarcastic personal attacks on members have soured me. Heaven forbid you disagree with them. My last post in the current MEARS thread shows this I believe. I've been collecting for over 15 years and I felt I had some knowledge to offer the forum. I have no desire to do so now. Lastly, please do not abandon your stance in the MEARS controversy or others, rather continue to post your views and not be bullied. I hope you don't mind me emailing you directly. Feel free to contact me when time permits if you like.
Respectfully,
Your friend"

What is too bad is too many people will not comment on this forum for whatever reason. I do not have to have fans or a following. I post what I believe. If my post appears to be an attack on Rudy, it is not. I just find it funny that post and post again is over the same topics, now he has suggested (as asked) for how MEARS can make Rudy happy and he gives suggestions which are not realistic.

So, I received the following email after my post, again, I will remove the name but I will copy it word for word as it is interesting:

"Good points Joel on the GUF. I notice you are winning the battle and gaining more support, not just for your views, but for you as a contributor. If Rudy wants a real crusade, he should start a post asking:

Question to Lou Lampson: Since 2004 (date MEARS was created) Have you consigned items to auction houses that you authenticated? Do you have a disclosure policy when consigning items to auction. Which auction houses have you consigned to? Have you consigned to AMI or Heritage, authenticated your items, and offere disclosure?

John Taube: same question

Mastro Auctions (because you use Lou) Have you accepted consignments from Lou Lampson, John Taube without disclosure

AMI : Have you accepted consignments from Lou Lampson, John taube without disclosure

Heritage: same question

Vintage authentics: same question

If you have, how come only Dave Bushing is criticized. Answer, nobody knows because they don't disclose."

Interesting read. I wish these people would post for them self, but I appreciate the emails with support for my posts and concepts that are ignored because MEARS has a honest, integrity filled policy: They offer full disclosure.

In fact as Tony has found out in the past week, if you have a question about a MEARS letter (or a SCD Authentic letter) you can post on here and you can email and even talk to MEARS about your concerns and they will address them as they take their business very seriously. I challenge any other 3rd party authenticator to show so much attention to detail and customer concerns.

[trsent]

hi joel

two questions for you. don't worry, neither of them are funny.

1) clearly, you're an extremely fervent supporter of MEARS and by using the term "extremely fervent" i may be understating things. i haven't even seen troy or dave come to such zealous defense of their company as you manage to do. i'm curious if your constant, almost rabid, defense of MEARS has anything to do with the fact that you're a "MEARS Certified Dealer" (apparently a self-created term that even confused Troy when you first made it up) and all of the game-used items that you flip on Ebay come with MEARS certs? that is, do you fear that if folks begin to question or even lose faith in MEARS that your sales may be negatively impacted? do you feel that the louder you trumpet MEARS' greatness, the more profit you can realize on your MEARS-certed items on ebay?

2) what do you collect? in reading over 1500 of your posts, i've never been able to figure it out. i don't mean what do you sell on ebay. i mean what do you personally collect? where does your collecting niche lie?

rudy.

Rudy, I have not been selling anything major on eBay recently, what is your point? What do I collect? Why? What does it have to do with the discussion? Nothing? I do not believe I have sold an item with a MEARS letter on eBay for over six months now. Just my decisions not to sell many items on eBay at this time, I am tired of the trends of poor sales on eBay of this type of merchandise.

The MEARS Certified title was something Troy and I agreed to in his office a few years ago, but if you look at my posts now on The MEARS Forum, I sign them "Un-Certified MEARS Certified Dealer". What does this have to do with anything? You are losing your side of the debate so put me down because you have nothing positive to add.

I like your new signature - You attack people and concepts on this forum and though much of your work has been positive, it appears your vendetta against Dave Bushing has reached a new low - You have to attack me because you are losing your side of the argument.

You are losing your debate, so personally attack me.

I SAY IT TIME AND TIME AGAIN - IF YOUR ARGUMENT IS WEAK - YOU ATTACK THE PERSON MAKING THE COMMENTS. THIS IS HOW WEAK PEOPLE ARGUE WHEN THEY CANNOT FACE FACTS.

In other news, I do not believe you have to be a collector to post on this forum. I do have a large collection of checks that people bounced on me over the years. As for my other collection niches, what does it have to do with our conversation, again?