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I first want to apologize to the forum members forbacking MEARS on a prior thread that questioned their practices.
I sent a couple items to MEARS to be authenticated andthen sold in their auction that is open at this time (2/22-3/2). One of these items was a Kobe Bryantjersey. When I purchased the Bryant itcame with an opinion of being game issued. I contacted Troy at MEARS and discussed my items prior to sending andasked about the Bryant being gone over by their “experts†and decided on if itwas game issued or game worn since the letter I have is from no one I had heardof. The jersey does have the inventorytag from the NBA but does not show in the Meigray database sine it wasn’t purchasedfrom them. I sent in my items and waitedto hear the outcome on the Bryant jersey but heard nothing. I exchanged a couple emails with Troy in thedays leading up to the auction but still nothing on the jersey. When the auction opened the Bryant was listedas GAME WORN and gave a description of the jersey. The auction had gone 8 days of the 10 whenout of the blue the description of the jersey was changed to GAME ISSUED. When I saw this today I called MEARS to findout what was going on – I was told by the lady in sales she didn’t know why thelisting was changed but its MEARS policy to contact the consignee if anyquestions or changes come up or are going to be made – I was not contacted.
Troy emailed me saying that he found more info on thehistory of the jersey and changed the listing. This “new info†was not shared with me and since its not in the Meigraydatabase outside of Kobe Bryant calling what info trumps the “extensive researchâ€that MEARS does and wouldn’t anythingoutside of Meigray and Bryant be nothing but opinion? Now if the jersey would have been found asgame issued from the beginning I wouldn’t have any issue but it was listed ontheir auction for 8 days of a 10 day auction before the change was made.
Here is the kicker – in an email from Troy after I calledMEARS Troy says that whether the jersey shows light use or not the jersey isstill issued to Bryant and – GET THIS – he doesn’t feel that the change inlisting description will affect the closing value!!?? WHAT?? He’s saying there is not value difference between game used and gameissued?? Not to mention that the jerseywas STILL listed in the GAME USED section.
To me this is very shady and I feel that the only tworeasons this was done was –
First – whatever their “experts†found when they didtheir extensive research was questioned and instead of contacting me to say heywe didn’t do our job and ask me what I wanted to do with the listing they werehoping I wouldn’t notice and the jersey would sell still and they would make15% off something.
Second – this goes along a little with the other threadabout them. They knew from the beginningthat it was only found to be issued but knew that a game worn Kobe Bryantjersey would bring people to the site. After 8 days of running it as GAME WORN they changed the listing to GAMEISSUED with only 2 days left. Thisallowed the traffic to be brought in and to cover themselves they changed itwith 48 hours left and hoped that someone would still bid up the price and theymake 15% of something. The jersey hadbids on it until the change.
Either way its VERY shady on their part and no one willgive me a genuine answer on why this happened or what this “history†they foundis. I had the jersey pulled from theauction and not following the advice of Troy and his thoughts of it selling forthe same amount it would have when listed as GAME WORN..
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