The field of authentication has greatly matured in the last decade alone. As I mentioned in a different post, I just bought a gamer with a Lou Lampson LOA. I was amazed at the detail in the description and I believe the detailed analysis is a very nice compliment to the jersey and makes me sleep better at night having confidence in his assessment. I am sure that pretty soon, an auction winner will receive a video CD along with a game used jersey that shows the authenticator handling your jersey and verbally and visually pointing out on the jersey the characteristics that are usually just words on todays paper LOA'S that come with items. Hummmmmmm............

Here is a collector giving a shout out to authenticator. Thanks Lou Lampson, I appreciate the detailed LOA!

The jersey I bought had a PSA/DNA and James Spence letter for the authenticity for the autograph on the jersey(which I really was not interested in) but for some odd reason it was the only jersey I could find in the auction that did not include the Lou Lampson's LOA for the authenticity of the jersey itself. I called the auction house and they verified that Lou's letters were with ALL jerseys and that was an oversight. They made a mistake in the lot description but quickly addressed it and followed through by sending the Lampson letter with the jersey. Interestingly, they did fail to send the PSA/DNA and Spence letters with the jersey but those were not paramount in my eyes anyway.


As far as message boards, it seems that many people have a tendency to dump out their complaints first and foremost and mistakes in game used items can be very costly mistakes. When people get burned financially, they get angry and vent. There is some bad information out there on message boards but I am sure that even the authenticators even learn something occasionally from them. After venting or complaining, hopefully people can pull back and then generate a rationale, healthy discussion/debate with other members. Message boards are like panning for gold, the occasional valuable nugget pops up in the strainer but you have to be patient.

Should an authenticator or auction house makes a mistake, I would think that they would want to aggressively correct the situation for the customer. Like Chris alluded to, mistakes should be dealt head on and quickly. If I made a mistake, I would think I want to get that jersey back off the market because (#1) my name is attached to it and (#2) the jersey can be waved as a banner to other collectors as an example of a mistake. Then, move on. If a collector or auction house does not try to work out a fair solution on a problem item, that just compounds the original mistake.

Pencils were created with an eraser for a reason, humans use them.

Mistakes are becoming more rare from the Big Boy authenticators in the hobby, that tells me they are learning from mistakes and that is exactly what you would hope would happen. You cannot eliminate mistakes but you can minimize them.

How a business deals with a mistake speaks volumes about that business and is often a barometer for me as to whether I would do business with them again. Collectors have great respect for a business that "does the right thing".

I am not quite sure about the statement that an auction house's profits are lessened by hiring MEARS.

Troy, I believe the auction houses see and identify your team's expertise as a "valuable addition" to their auctions and use your services to ultimately increase profits. This plays out with more people bidding in current auctions and satisfied customers coming back in future auctions. The bottom line is that the auction house is in the business to maximize profits.

It is clear from Troy's post that MEARS takes their work seriously and pays attention to detail, we appreciate him chipping in. Troy's obvious passion for the work bodes well for MEARS ongoing success.