MEARS Mumbo-Jumbo?

[Bravesfan]

aeneas01 vbmenu_register("postmenu_223509", true);
Senior Member
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 1,046


Re: MEARS Mumbo-Jumbo?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jags Fan Dan
I won a 1994 Packers jersey from Mears and the "style matches" they sent to me with the jersey were all from 1993 when the Packers wore their own franchise 75th anniversary patches, versus the NFL 75th patch on the 1994 jersey.

mears' has a history of claiming "stlye-matches" on their worksheets which are nothing of the sort - and they've blamed interns, new employees, and a lack of of proper training for these issues. nonetheless the problems continue and, unfortunately, it appears that mears continues to sign these worksheets which presumably means that he has reviewed and approved their content.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 33bird"
I could be wrong, but I highly doubt Dave Grob had anything to do with this Maravich jacket. I think he sticks to baseball. My guess is this is their other guys.

from what i understand, mears ended up purchasing the jacket for $4k.............



I guess it was $4000, according to this post. WOW

[aeneas01]

a few thoughts:

i believe this sitch is especially reprehensible given that it appears mears knew full well that the jacket they were purchasing was highly questionable to start with, yet they purchased it nonetheless confident in the knowledge that they could make it sellable, at an enormous profit, simply by deeming it "mears authenticate". mears has done this before (bart starr jersey for example) and they obviously did it again. and of course the way mears obtained the item, and what they paid for it, is equally reprehensible given that they tried to position it as a $20k+ item.

let's be clear here - mears is an outfit that has painted itself as a pillar of honestly, integrity, trust and fair deals. an outfit that claims no conflicts of interest exist in what they do because they adhere to a strict code of ethics. yet we see the same shenanigans from mears again and again.

the last time mears was caught with their hand in the cookie jar, dave bushing indignantly said that he would no longer authenticate and blamed collectors for publicly calling mears out:

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"...if you make a single error, regardles of how trivial... no matter what it is, it never seems to be enough for the self proclaimed so called authorities who wait at the computer for an auction catalog to come out merely for the purpose to rip it to shreads to show the world how much they know and how little others do. This behavior is no longer tolerable to me... I will concentrate soley on the for sale sight and will not grade nor authenticate my purchases and will leave that to the staff."

http://www.network54.com/Forum/42624...Authenticating

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for the record, Mears has also lectured collectors about the unethical habit of unscrupulous dealers who approach ebay sellers privately with low-ball offers:

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"Is it ethical to offer an unsuspecting ebay seller $400 for a game bat that should sell for ten times that? I understand that people see a great item... but a legitimate offer should be at least 50% of retail. Anything less is nothing less than fraudulent as you know the value but you choose to cheat the seller out of their just rewards... if you offer an unsuspecting ebay seller ten cents on the dollar, you are a cheat, plain and simple... it should be criminal to offer the unsuspecting seller a mere pitance of the true value (per the Roadshow Civil War Sword lawsuit, it is auctually criminal if the buyer is knowledgable and does not offer a fair price). Ebay sellers, get wise to these guys..."

http://www.network54.com/Forum/42624...t+early+offers

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beautiful. anyway, Mears clearly didn't offer the ebay seller $4k out of the blue for the jacket (which btw equates to less than 1/5 of the $20k+ mears' estimated its value to be - so much for the 50% mumbo jumbo). after all, the ebay jacket ended with a winning ebay bid of $200. no, the seller had other offers on the thing and mears had to cough up $4k to get it. one can only imagine how much mears would have picked it up for had the seller not received other offers which drove mears price up to $4k. $300? $500?

game used maravich items fetch solid prices, in fact a quick search comes up with the following prices for maravich items sold at auction: $108,000, $98,400, $50,788, $48,884, $44,200, $36,716, $33,000, $23,500, $21,600, $19,200, $18,000, $15,600, $14,340, $13,200, $10,800, $10,755.

given this, it's not too hard to understand why mears was so eager to try and float the jacket as a maravich gamer - they clearly stood to gain handsomely. which brings to something else: this isn't simply a case of an authenticator doing a shoddy/rushed job in order to collect his fees. nor is it a case of an auction house overstating the merits of a consignor's item in order to collect on buyer/seller fees. nope, these issues pale in comparison to what mears did with this jacket.

mears came across an item that they clearly knew had serious issues - but because it was maravich related, mears thought that they could gain handsomely by picking it up on the cheap and then validating it with a mears grade. unethically, mears contacted the ebay seller privately to arrange the deal even though that meant that ebay's fees would be circumvented and that the rightful ebay winner would be robbed of his item. additionally, mears low-balled the ebay seller given mears' clear knowledge of what authenticated maravich items fetch at sports memorabilia auctions. just shameful.

the only bright spot in this whole mess is that it's clear dave grob had nothing to do with it. in fact, given dave's recent post to the the mears board, he finds mears' hand in this as indefensible as everyone here.

btw here's another chuckle: in order to maximize the value of the "maravich jacket", mears had to attribute it to the jazz's inaugural season. given that they knew photos existed of jazz players wearing jackets during the second half of the 1974/75 season, they claimed that the this jacket was from the first half of the 1974/75 season and that the tagging confirmed it, that the tagging was unique to 1974.

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"Per the MEARS tagging database, this style of tag, with the medalist gold medal to the right of the Sand Knit wording, was most consistently last used during the 1974 season. Starting in 1975, examples are found with the gold medal at the bottom of the tag. Thus, the design is most consistent with 1974."

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what utter bs. tag "a" below is what's on the "maravich" jacket, which mears claims is a 1974 tag. tag "b" is what mears claims to be a 1975 tag. however tag "c" is from a 1975/76 game used maravich jersey (from the jazz's second year), and it matches tag "a", with the medal logo to the right of sand-knit. this jersey is in the mears database. whatever it takes to make a buck i guess.....








....

[cohibasmoker]

Since MEARS owned the jacket, I wonder if the winning bidder was still charged a "Buyer's Premium"?

Imagine selling an item on eBay and then telling the winning bidder they had to add another 20% to their final price.

Just an opinion

Jim

[trsent]

You make a lot of negative statements, bringing up 2-3 items from the past that you don't like the work MEARS did but you fail to mention the thousands of items MEARS did a find job writing up over the years.

The handling of the Maravich jacket has raised many questions. It appears that Dave Grob is stepping down as policy director over this item, at least that is how I read his post on the MEARS forum. I just don't understand how you can go from raising questions to making assumptions about this situation without having solid proof.

MEARS should be ashamed of their interference with an eBay sale, if this is true, and the handling of this item in general. Making assumptions of the daily history is not how to go about making your point.

Does the consensus feel this jacket should have been labeled as either prototype or single game used jacket with no photographic evidence to back up use at this time? At least they would have covered both extremes if they went this direction.

[trsent]

Since MEARS owned the jacket, I wonder if the winning bidder was still charged a "Buyer's Premium"?

Imagine selling an item on eBay and then telling the winning bidder they had to add another 20% to their final price.

Just an opinion

Jim

MEARS charges 15% on all items to the buyer. They own most of the items in their auction I believe and they charge this premium on all items.

Most all independent auction houses charge a buyer's premium, MEARS is more reasonable than most. eBay is a special operation that it is illegal to charge premiums on, unless I believe, you are working with eBay Live which I do not know if they still even exist.

Comparing eBay to any other auction house in the memorabilia business is not realistic. I personally would love to see the memorabilia auction houses work on lowering buyer's premiums since it is a tool that has taken advantage of the public for years and years but I don't see it going away.

The original concept of the premium was for the auction houses to cover costs since most items were to be consignments. Too many auction houses now own their own items and still charge the premium which defeats the purpose, but good luck getting this to change.

[aeneas01]

Once again, I find Dave Grob a person I'd feel completely comfortable doing business with. Ken
earlywynnfan5@hotmail.com

i agree 100% ken.

A bit more mumbo jumbo with the hand in the cookie jar, but it's nice to see Mears take some responsibility for the jacket. That post doesn't address what happened in the Mears auction, however, notably whether an unaffiliated party purchased it (and presumably had the sale canceled) or Mears threw in the high bid.

did mears take some responsibility for the jacket? i don't think so. seems to me that grob, mears' policy guy, simply felt that he had to say something about this mess, which was that it's indefensible, but the guys that run mears have said nothing. as far as mears' auction is concerned, did mears win the jacket back? if they i don't know how they could admit as much given they've said numerous times that they don't bid in their own auctions.

None of these five points guarantee that this is a prototype. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that in my opinion, this item favors being a prototype. Isn't that the most likely choice? Instead of making the leap of faith that this style was actually worn by the team -- with no real evidence to prove it -- can't we make the more logical assumption that this was one style that was considered, but ultimately not chosen?

i think a prototype makes sense, but so do many other possibilities including it simply being a vintage warm-up jacket that someone made into a maravich/jazz jacket. heck, the green in the jacket doesn't even match the green in the jazz's uniform (perhaps it's faded?). whatever the case, i don't know how anyone could conclusively determine that it was a prototype, let alone authenticate it as a prototype, without any sort of supporting info...

so i'm wondering, did maravich even sport a jersey or warm-up with "maravich" on the back during his first year with the jazz? does mears even have proof of this?



...

[aeneas01]

for the record, while mears did indeed purchase the ebay jersey, dave bushing has contacted me to say that he was not involved in the transaction - as such i've asked chris cavalier to remove dave's name from my posts and replace it with mears.

...

[ChrisCavalier]

Dave Bushing did contact GUU as well stating he had no involvement whatsoever with the Maravich jersey. As such, as per GUU protocol, his name was removed from the posts right after he contacted us.

If there is anything else Dave Bushing or anyone else at mears feels is incorrect, they can feel free to contact us and GUU will remove or edit anything that might be inaccurate.

-Chris

[LWMM]

Dave Bushing did contact GUU as well stating he had no involvement whatsoever with the Maravich jersey. As such, as per GUU protocol, his name was removed from the posts right after he contacted us.

If there is anything else Dave Bushing or anyone else at mears feels is incorrect, they can feel free to contact us and GUU will remove or edit anything that might be inaccurate.

-Chris

Chris,

What protocol is this? Does this mean that Lou Lampson, for example, can get in contact with you and have all threads discussing his authentications removed by claiming that they are inaccurate? I don't know what the purpose is of a forum like this if it can't objectively vet items or the involvement with them that entities have (such involvement making their claims inherently subjective).

Awaiting your response, I'll refrain from voicing judegement concerning your move.

[ChrisCavalier]

Chris,

What protocol is this? Does this mean that Lou Lampson, for example, can get in contact with you and have all threads discussing his authentications removed by claiming that they are inaccurate? I don't know what the purpose is of a forum like this if it can't objectively vet items or the involvement with them that entities have (such involvement making their claims inherently subjective).

Awaiting your response, I'll refrain from voicing judegement concerning your move.

Hello Luc,

Thank you for your post and I will be happy to clarify. We have created rules for the forum which can be found here:

http://www.gameuseduniverse.com/vb_f...hread.php?t=99

Rule #16 states:

In instances where a forum member is identifying an item in the hobby they believe to have issues, the poster should clearly state their findings in the form of an opinion and provide adequate rationale for why they believe there is an issue. When possible, we recommend that the poster questioning an item attempt to contact the seller of the item and allow at least 24 hours for the seller to reply before posting. This will prevent postings that may be generated based on misunderstandings of an item. In addition, while this forum is designed to help educate collectors, we will not allow comments that accuse entities in the hobby of participating in any form of criminal wrong-doing. Any posts suggesting criminal wrong-doing should be brought to the attention of the moderators immediately.

While GUU certainly cannot know everything concerning claims that are made on the site, nor are we mediators, if there is something posted that is clearly inaccurate, we will do what we can to remove or edit the posts to remove inaccuracies. In this instance, we were contacted and told by Dave Bushing that he had no involvement whatsoever with the transaction. While we were not privy to the transaction, we find no reason to doubt his word. As such, that part of the post was removed. If evidence can be presented otherwise that would be something to consider. Absent that, it is consistent with policy to remove his name. This is not the first time this has been done. There have been many other instances where posts have been deleted or edited to remove claims that lacked substantiation.

Again, while we are not privy to everything that happens in the hobby and there is often no way for us to know one way or another what really happened, we will act on any posts where we are contacted by someone feels they have been inaccurately represented unless proof can be provided otherwise. Further, in this instance, as noted in the thread, the original poster agreed to remove Dave's name from the post.

Please let me know if that answers your question.

-Chris