Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

[CollectGU]

Re: Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

I think the answer is obvious. Take Lou out of the equation and the auction houses have less to sell. As long as they can say "Our authenticator is considered one of the foremost experts blah blah blah" and there's an All Sales Final policy, it's a good racket.

As we have seen, if they switched to mears it would cost the auction houses more, and in some cases the grades would be lower. As we have seen on the Vlad Guerrero jersey graded by both, a Mears A5 = a Lampson 6.5

http://www.gameuseduniverse.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=7722&highlight=battle

Eric

Eric,

I disagree with you on this one. MEARS and Grey Flannel know no more or less than Lou...I've become disgusted with all of them and have spent a majority of my free time becoming my own authenticator..If I see an item I like at auction, I'll research it on my own before a purchase...

Regards,
Dave

[Eric]

Re: Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

I'm not talking about knowledge. I'm talking about who gives the auction houses the free-est pass

[allstarsplus]

Re: Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

Eric,

I disagree with you on this one. MEARS and Grey Flannel know no more or less than Lou...I've become disgusted with all of them and have spent a majority of my free time becoming my own authenticator..If I see an item I like at auction, I'll research it on my own before a purchase...

Regards,
Dave

Dave - I guess everyone can agree to disagree, but your statement regarding MEARs vs. Lou probably can't be substantiated in factual comparison. Use January 1 2007 as your starting point and wipe the prior slate clean and tell us where MEARs was blatantly incorrect????? Can you give 5 examples? Then let the Forum do the same for Lou. We have all the recent 2007 auctions from VA & AM with questionable football jerseys that were discussed with Lou LOAs.

Maybe MEARs by giving a blanket A5 on these properly tagged light use jerseys gets a free pass by their neutrality on these LOAs, but at least the buyer can make their own decision and bid accordingly.

Andrew

[BoneRubbedBat]

Re: Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

MEARS and Grey Flannel know no more or less than Lou...

Out of the thousands of collectors out there, I think Lou would be the only one to agree with this statement.

[staindsox]

Re: Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

Rudy is right on the money. The other thing that concerns me is the no return policy. That's a red flag in my mind. Why wouldn't they issue a refund to the buyer if you went to another legit authenticator and it did not pass? If they truly have faith in their expert, why would they not stand behind his work? It seems like a take and money and run operation to me. Although Lou is a cancer, he wouldn't have a job if auction houses didn't give him work.

[otismalibu]

Re: Who is more responsible the authenticator or the auction house?

Why wouldn't they issue a refund to the buyer if you went to another legit authenticator and it did not pass? If they truly have faith in their expert, why would they not stand behind his work?

Instead of the seller/s or authenticator making the effort to "prove that it is", often, it seems to be an attitude of "why don't you try and prove that it's not". Pretty tough to do. One photo could give a pretty good indication that something was "good". How many would you need to conclusively prove that something is bogus? A photo from every game? Every half? Every period? Every quarter?