Most of you are aware that I used to work as a catalog content writer for American Memorabilia a couple years before I started back at Sports Collectors Digest. I just thought I would chime in with some insight in order to clear up some misconceptions people have about auction houses.

From time to time I hear people voice their confusion about auction house certificate of authenticities. Keep in mind:

-    An authenticator is usually under a strict deadline to go through items for an auction. Ultimately, the decision whether to pass or reject a particular item is the auction house’s.

-    Many of the auction houses have a “no return” policy. That said, some of the auction houses will still give a refund if a catalog entry is incorrect, even though its policy states that they don’t do returns.

-    Auction workers are NOT experts in all aspects of the hobby. From time to time a bad item will find its way into an auction. So buyers should always do their homework. Usually the auction house workers are not trying to deceive anyone. However, when a bad item is called to the auction house workers’ attention, the responsible thing to do is research the item and if it is indeed no good, they should pull it from the sale.

-    Keep in mind that usually the auction house is responsible for the content written on a COA. That’s what I did when I was at AMI. I wrote most of the descriptions. This meant if I wrote a description, which was incorrect, the COA would have that incorrect information on it.
o    According to my experiences, the authenticator fills out a worksheet, which basically lets the writer know what the technical characteristics of what the lot consists of. The authenticator will sign the COA, but almost never write the content on an auction house certificate of authenticity.

I am going to send you guys into the weekend with some clips I found on Youtube.com.
Check these out. The new thing with card collectors are “video box breaks.”
This means that collectors will get an unopened box of cards, videotape themselves opening the product and then posting it on the Internet.

Check out this guy. Click here… I think you will find some of this very entertaining.

Have a good and safe weekend and I will be back Monday.