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Authenticity is Everything
Ridiculous Prices for GFA-Certed Items-Sellers Aware of What They Are Selling?
I cannot believe the stupidity. This seller had 10 of these!!! 10! $199 or best offer for a photo "signed" by Dimaggio, Ford, Martin, and Mantle???? Come on, please. At least price it so that it is not obvious that you KNOW you are selling crap.
So how much is a GFA certification? $100 bucks? Doesn't leave much profit for someone to buy an authentic signed photo of ANY of these players. What? These are machine signed? oh, ok, that explains it.
How much longer will this be tolerated by Ebay?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on
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Ebay is well-aware of the forgeries being listed and sold on their site.
For them, it's only about the money.
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Permalink Reply by TradeGeek on
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I agree.
I'm sure they have very good in house counsel. As long as they feel they don't have any legal liability or risk much in the way of bad publicity (to a level that would impact their business), I don't think they care. They are like any other huge company.
"No, don't be silly. Oxycontin isn't addictive. Please continue to prescribe it without concern". Nameless Pharmaceutical Rep
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Permalink Reply by terrier8HOF on
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would ebay have to explain why they got rid of the only program they had to weed out forgeries? that in itself, would lead one to believe that they had other motives.
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Would they explain it in a way that we would accept? No. We would be pragmatic and logical. The world of litigation is neither pragmatic or logical.
You'd essentially have to prove they absolutely knew that these items were forgeries and allowed them to be sold anyway. Which would be very hard to prove. It's not good enough to use logic. if they had a program that really did weed out forgeries, that might actually create liability by indicating they knew it was a problem.
If there isn't an outcry, and most of these people buying this garbage leave positive feedback (happy naive customers), what interest would eBay have in weeding the forgeries out? Their conscience?
They have lots of plausible deniability. The morons buying this trash are actually satisfied in their ignorance. And eBay is making lots of money. Sound business model, unfortunately.
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Permalink Reply by Steve on
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They should have to show that they have something in place to help protect their customer base. But, they won't make the first move until someone forces their hand.
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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on
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I'm sure they have very good in house counsel. As long as they feel they don't have any legal liability...
In my opinion, eBay has probably taken no action at the advice of legal counsel.
They already have one "approved authenticator" that is completely crooked. They can't take any action on it because an admission that an "approved authenticator" is bad could open them up to massive liability. How many people could claim they purchased bad items based on eBay's "approval?"
It's probably the same line of thinking regarding legal liability that keeps them from taking any action to further approve or ban anyone.
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It would be very difficult to prove that any given autograph is not authentic. Again, you'll end up with dueling experts. But I can't imagine if law enforcement executed search warrants and/or subpoenas...
1 - I agree. Any professional can make a mistake, but when you have a huge body of evidence that shows mistakes are ALWAYS made in favor of a certain result, it would seem to be an easy case of willful negligence and possibly collusion / conspiracy.
2 - In my opinion, many of the items in question could be proven bad because they are high resolution inkjet prints that were not available (or at least not widely used for photo printing) in the lifetime of Billy Martin or Mickey Mantle. (I have examined a few in hand and under a scope... they were NOT lab produced photographs.)
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It would be very simple to prove a signature to be a forgery. Go directly to the person who's signature it is supposed to be. Bobby Orr, Jim Brown, Gale Sayers, Joe Namath, Brett Favre, Barry Sanders, Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Wayne Gretzky, Clint Eastwood, etc. I'm sure their management/agent would easily show these signed items to the celebrity in question and get the definitive answer.
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In the case of ink jet printing, that would certainly make it easier. Again, I think that would apply to the authenticator. They are the supposed expert and they supposedly examined the item in person. They should be uniquely qualified to catch items that could not possibly be real, regardless of how convincing the forgery. That scenario could definitely be useful in a criminal case.
eBay, on the other hand, has no means to identify what manufacturing process was used to produce a photograph. And it would be difficult to suggest they should.
Collusion and conspiracy are difficult to prove. Parties with a common interest don't have to directly conspire or collude. They can just continue to act in their own respective interests. The result is de facto collusion, with no hard evidence.
We all know what is going on. We all know how this works. As others have said, nobody believes people are paying $100 for a GA certificate/opinion. I don't believe any "authenticator" ever looked at any of these. They sell stickers and post cards and enter things into a database for X amount of money (volume discount). Everybody knows or suspects they are forgeries, including eBay. But they are all making money. And only a handful of people are making any noise. And it's not coming from the buyers. These garbage dealer often have great feedback.
Until law enforcement really looks at the authenticators/forgery rings or, in the alternative, eBay starts getting allot of bad press (enough to harm their business) nothing will change.
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EBay should at very least add a disclaimer stating that it is the responsibility of the bidder to research the signature, have a pre-authentication sought, and to have it examined by a reputable third party if so desired. I think many bidders assume that if it is allowed by eBay, then it must be ok. At very least alert them to the possibility that the item they are considering may not be authentic.
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It's unfortunate, but things will probably never change.
Ebay has been profiting from the sales of forgeries for the last twenty years.
Even after Operation Bullpen, they got off scot-free.
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Ebay would never do that, Steve, they would lose too much money.
Let's say they had PSA or JSA do that; 99% of the Mantle, DiMaggio and Williams forgeries on Ebay are so obvious, they can be easily opined from a photo.
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