A sincere Thank You for the hobby "negativists".

[siuwongkee]

When I saw Tiffany Cards shared his/her inbox messages, TBH, I was astonished. I do not follow a lot of people when I was still in the hobby. I heard from Dan he sometimes receives some very negative message. But the message Tiffany Cards received, to me, is pure BS. Let me try to put things in perspective. (Please forgive my poor English)

From my understanding, most collectibles (or alt investments), let's say coins, jewels, watches, paintings, handbags, there is always a war between REAL and counterfeit items. But as far as I know, the burden is NEVER on the laypeople. What do I mean, it is always the manfacturers, grading or authentic services providers or auction houses to share the burden. But for sports cards, not only it is the burden for laypeople, worse, these people are labeled as hobby negativists. Ok, what is even worse. (Yes worse and worse) Those claim themselves the gatekeepers of the hobby, really care nothing about the hobby. They are just zombies that blindly follows the money.

Imagine today, it is not Tiffany Cards, it is not Dan, it is not sports card radio that expressed how disgusting an undiclosed substance card cleaning is, it is Nat Tuner, it is Michael Rubin whom said that. Sorry, for a hasty conclusion, I am damn sure, all the KOL will come out and say something like, good job, this is the direction we need. Yes, time for some changes and so on and so forth.

So, thank you for the good work. People might not understand what and why you are doing this, and in reality things might not change a lot but THANK YOU for all the good works, thank you.

[mindcycle]

I agree. We definitely need people like Tiffany Cards, Dan the Card Man, SCR, etc..

Given "the hobby" is completely unregulated, often times those are the only avenues a lot of collectors have to opposing points of views. We've seen quite the dramatic shift from the days of the set/player collector being the primary focus of collectibles based companies, to now focusing almost entirely on the "gambler" or "hustler". The large scale push back around Kurt's Card Care makes all too much sense when everyone from the flipper to the collectibles companies themselves are essentially promoting that mentality.

I made a few YT videos on the recent card cleaning situation and pointed out that the only questions raised about shady behavior/practices seems to come from the average hobbyist. Almost no one else is doing anything. In the case of card cleaning it's the anti-cleaning crowd that has to identify and inform others about these cleaned cards. The cleaners aren't disclosing anything, nor are the grading companies taking any real action to identify this stuff. Tiffany Cards and others over on BO have been documenting doctored cards for years. I'd say most of what they've identified are still active certs at grading companies which is truly sad when you have the work being done for you.. But again, no regulation means that a company like PSA has essentially no obligation to do anything and will likely only take action when there's significant enough push back.

So i'll just copy/paste my fist sentence here, lol. We definitely need people like Tiffany Cards, Dan the Card Man, SCR, etc..