A Chat With Russek, Grey Flannel Prez...

[mvandor]

Re: A Chat With Russek, Grey Flannel Prez...

therein lies the problem. you'll never get consumer to agree with auction house about what constitutes proof.

I have "proven" to auction houses that a game worn shirt was a scoreboard shirt and "proven" that an item had been modified and they were both sold anyway with the excuses "we trust our authenticator" and "have you seen every photo of ______) How can you argue those things?

You can't but you can publicize the hell out of it here, and never buy there again.

A reckoning is on the horizon, just takes a serious collector getting elected to Congress and kicking some ass.

[aeneas01]

Re: A Chat With Russek, Grey Flannel Prez...

therein lies the problem. you'll never get consumer to agree with auction house about what constitutes proof.

I have "proven" to auction houses that a game worn shirt was a scoreboard shirt and "proven" that an item had been modified and they were both sold anyway with the excuses "we trust our authenticator" and "have you seen every photo of ______) How can you argue those things?

i don't agree - i think an honest auction house could make such a policy work and, by extension, be willing to consider and accept compelling evidence. but would a consignor want to deal with a such an auction house? knowing that their item could be subjected to additional shipping, physical handling, rejection and exposure? i think most consignors would tend to favor an "all sales are final" policy. unless, of course, the auction houses that adopted a 100% satisfaction policy began to attract the most bidders...

[cohibasmoker]

Re: A Chat With Russek, Grey Flannel Prez...

Let's say a buyer gets an item for $1000.00 that turns out to be bogus. What options does the buyer have? Unless the auction house offers them their money back, it's, "Oh well".

From the auction house point of view, the question may be, is the buyer going to take us to court and spend thousands of dollars to get their money back? The answer is, "probably not" so once again its, "Oh well".

Another question that may face an auction house is, does a few "unhappy" or "trouble" bidders make a difference to the auction house? With hundreds of buyers on their mailing list, probably not.

Now that this forum is available for everyone to discuss items that were offered in the past as well as items currently being offered, the forum is definately upsetting the apple-cart.

My comments are not directed at any auction house or person (s) in general. It just my opinion on how I think the hobby has been and is currently being run.

Jim

[mr.miracle]

Re: A Chat With Russek, Grey Flannel Prez...

Rudy makes several excellent points about this topic. In a nutshell here is the problem and I am not sure how it can be fixed.

1. There are simply not enough qualified authenticators out there to
handle the onslaught of items to be professionally authenticated. This
industry has gotten so big over the past five, ten plus years and with
all the auction houses running auctions what amounts to twelve
months a year now, it is simply impossible for anyone to do this job
right. That is not to excuse what is happening, in fact, what should
happen is that we simply have the authenticators turn down what they
cannot resonably authenticate properly given the time constraints
placed upon them. We all know this will never happen, as sadly, the
almight dollar speaks volumes and they will never turn down business
even at the risk of continuing to push garbage into the collecting
community.

2. We need more qualified authenticators. Where they are to come from
I am not sure. It may be time for specialists to be hired to do
authenticating. Some of the niche experts on this very forum would
be great. Given the mass push in items, there is no way, as many
forum members have pointed out before, for anyone to be an expert
in baseball, football, basketball, hockey and then additionally be an
expert on each team, each era for bats, jersey's, helmets, cleats,
gloves, etc. etc.

3. Rudy is dead on in his analysis in another thread when he mentioned
there there is too much money to be made even if it means
authenticating garbage. This business has become too lucrative and
sadly, many of these authenticators and the auction houses that
support them are too far gone for their ever to be real change unless
of course they are raided by the FBI or something to that extreme.
It is an quite simply an old boys network that will continue as always
because these people are making money hand over fist at collectors
expenses but to them, who cares, they are laughing all the way to the
bank.