Again, sorry about the delayed response as we have been conducting our daily business operations and we don’t make our living posting on message boards.
This will be our last posting going forward and for the sake of transparency and I would ask that if anyone sees anything else posted to refer them here if they want a direct answer from our company. We would hope that petty posts or trolling from anonymous users will not be considered as a valid argument or evidence on this message board. There are obviously some users here who have ulterior motives that are beyond just “looking out for those in the hobby.”
Please note, going forward if you want to contact us directly about these matters and do not want to provide your actual first and last name along with a reasonable reference or an active eBay ID, we will not bother with having an open discussion with you. Anonymous user ID’s simply allow anyone, anywhere, at any time to post whatever they want without any truth, context, or immediate responsibility. Unlike some on here, we would most certainly not post up your direct contact information as that would open us up to liabilities that go far and beyond this message board thread.
As of this morning, the anonymous Blowout user superdan49 has identified about 9 cards that were in our inventory that either have sold or that we ended ourselves after they were identified as having possibly been altered in some way. Again, we have to rely on the expertise of BGS and PSA catching these things when we are buying cards that are in holders. We then did the right thing and took those cards off of eBay so we could investigate further into the matter and to prevent those cards from being sold to someone until we can verify everything that has happened with those. That is a major step that other users on here absolutely refused to do and I want to make that a BIG point here. Instead of just shrugging our shoulders and trodding on, we did the right thing despite being cheap-shotted, blindsided, and basically had it inferred that we altered the cards or are actively doing so.
The anonymous user superdan49 has yet to let us know who he is or who provided him with the "anonymous tip" he was given. As such, his true intentions can never be known until he and they actually identify themselves. The claim of “cleaning up the industry” simply does not hold water given how he has handled this situation with us and the other people he’s attempted to go after. If that were the truth, he would have contacted us directly, identified himself, and then inquired about the items in question. Had we not responded at all, THEN he would have been somewhat justified in making the kind of post he made. However, that is not what occurred and he merely sent us a PM late in the evening AFTER having posted this thread and we had literally no opportunity to do any kind of inventory research or come up with an appropriate response. I think others on here have also shared those same sentiments we have in terms of how this all was handled.
Based on the number of cards we have sold in just the last month alone, the cards he has identified and/or ones we have already ended come to an exceptionally low percentage of our total items. If you go expand it out into a 120 day total, it would be an even smaller percentage. Anyone who understands the mathematics of the situation at this point would start questioning the actual intentions of a user that's basing all of this from information from “anonymous tip-line” E-Mail account. I am sure that if anyone put forth the same effort that the anonymous user superdan49 has in this thread, and in others, they would probably end up finding significantly higher percentages and with much higher value examples in many other places.
I am sure if you consider the total graded pieces that we shipped last year, which I would put it at around 25k+ items, our current live inventory of 25k+ items, vs. with what the anonymous user superdan49 and his extensive search found - only 9 items in 50,000 had any issues. One would think that many more than just that would be needed to justify the labels being placed on our company on these boards. We would argue that given the number of various sources we obtain cards through, be it online auctions, card shows, or individual deals, that’s an outstanding percentage and given the nature of what we’ve all seen occur in the market and considering every card we have for sale on our eBay ID MARKETPLACESSI is in-fact graded. I would challenge anyone to review 50k random graded cards either sold or live on eBay that they might suspect of having been trimmed/altered to see if they get lower percentages. I have an extremely strong sense that it would not happen.
As for our current live inventory going forward, we will obviously be much more diligent in double-checking the history of our cards and sources that we buy from. Again, we’ll be more than happy to discuss anything that someone might have a question on as long as they contact us directly and in a non-accusatory manner. Acting in any other way simply doesn’t do either party any good at all and we want everyone to feel comfortable purchasing from us and other vendors alike.
We are doing our own extensive research and also removing anything we have found in our inventory that might have an issue all the way down to as low as the $100.00 price point in the short term. We will do what we can to make sure that moving forward we keep the absolute best inventory available like we have been doing the past 30+ years.
Our own internal investigation has identified more cards that could have potential issues, but had not been listed yet and we are making sure that those do not get listed until we are 100% sure there are no potential issues with them. Again, we are taking steps others prior to us refused to do.
We will continue to have a presence in the industry as we have had from day one when we started doing this to provide ourselves with a livelihood and are happy to discuss anything in a mature and adult nature with any of our potential or current customers. We do not and will not hide behind anonymous user ID’s and burner E-Mail accounts like others on here have and are currently doing.
If anyone has any specific questions or concerns, please contact us directly as we will no longer be actively responding here on this message thread and hope those that want this to be cleaner and better community will contact us directly.
As anyone who knows us personally or has dealt with us directly, they can vouch for our honesty and openness. Defending our reputation on a message board meant to drive traffic to a retail website store is not a daily occurrence for us.
Thanks,
Bill Sliheet
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