Massive Set Composition Changes - Fair Or Foul?
Machodoc
Posts: 541 ✭
A large change to the Bench master set was recently announced that took effect immediately. This delighted some people but upset others. At what point in the year is it fair or not to implement such large changes? Thius debate is brewing in the Bench Master set thread posted here, and I thought the larger topic deserved its own thread. What follows is a reply I just posted:
Gents,
Scott has a point about the timing of the change.
For better of worse, PSA's practice of awarding certificates for the best sets as of October 31st has created a cycle that could be termed a "collecting year". This cycle has become very important to a lot of set owners as evidenced by the amount of October jockeying that goes on to claim the year-end certificate for a year's best set. Whether that's a good thing or not is not my concern here - the bottom line is that's simply the way it is.
Many people plan their acquisition and/or submittal strategies around this cycle, using the composition of a given set as their roadmap. Sure, we all know that set composition can be nipped and tucked during the course of a year, but a massive change late in the year can wipe out months of hard work and dollars that were fairly and in good faith determined by the makeup of the set up to that point.
I have no problem with the changes made to the Bench master set, my beef is with the timing. In this case, a massive change to a popular set was made nearly 2/3 of the way through the current "collecting year". This was wrong. What should have happened is that once the changes were agreed to, an effective date of November 1st should have been established. This would have allowed folks to go ahead and conclude the current year under the same or similar rules as they existed when the year began to avoid wiping out a lot of hard work and spending.
Finally, this gives rise to a final question, which is at what point in a collecting year could large changes to a set be made without taking effect that particular year? I have no good benchmark, except to propose that perhaps they should not take effect until the following year if made after April 30th (the halfway point) of the current year.
It's important to recognize that many people put hours of work and thousands of dollars into their sets and it's only fair to provide some continuity to the collecting process. I'll be the first to recognize that sweeping set changes are the exception and not the rule, but in this case it's my opinion that PSA should have simply announced that the Bench master set changes would take effectl November 1st so that eight months of hard work by others would not be flushed down the toilet.
My two cents.
Steve
Gents,
Scott has a point about the timing of the change.
For better of worse, PSA's practice of awarding certificates for the best sets as of October 31st has created a cycle that could be termed a "collecting year". This cycle has become very important to a lot of set owners as evidenced by the amount of October jockeying that goes on to claim the year-end certificate for a year's best set. Whether that's a good thing or not is not my concern here - the bottom line is that's simply the way it is.
Many people plan their acquisition and/or submittal strategies around this cycle, using the composition of a given set as their roadmap. Sure, we all know that set composition can be nipped and tucked during the course of a year, but a massive change late in the year can wipe out months of hard work and dollars that were fairly and in good faith determined by the makeup of the set up to that point.
I have no problem with the changes made to the Bench master set, my beef is with the timing. In this case, a massive change to a popular set was made nearly 2/3 of the way through the current "collecting year". This was wrong. What should have happened is that once the changes were agreed to, an effective date of November 1st should have been established. This would have allowed folks to go ahead and conclude the current year under the same or similar rules as they existed when the year began to avoid wiping out a lot of hard work and spending.
Finally, this gives rise to a final question, which is at what point in a collecting year could large changes to a set be made without taking effect that particular year? I have no good benchmark, except to propose that perhaps they should not take effect until the following year if made after April 30th (the halfway point) of the current year.
It's important to recognize that many people put hours of work and thousands of dollars into their sets and it's only fair to provide some continuity to the collecting process. I'll be the first to recognize that sweeping set changes are the exception and not the rule, but in this case it's my opinion that PSA should have simply announced that the Bench master set changes would take effectl November 1st so that eight months of hard work by others would not be flushed down the toilet.
My two cents.
Steve
0
Comments
There are significant tradeoffs for the way that player sets are currently administered. On the plus side, collectors wield an enormous amount of power in shaping the sets that they pursue--pretty much any grey area regarding set composition can be dictated by the requests of collectors. This is a good thing because it enables collector expertise and opinion to be the driving force of a lot of decision making. With this power comes the opportunity for conflict--not all collectors of a particular set may share the same vision for its composition, and thus may have to decide whether to collect according to a list not to their satisfaction, sacrifice completion percentage in exchange for collecting according to their own taste, etc. etc. Of course, if PSA chose to maintain the sets without collector input, there would still be dissatisfaction with set composition to one degree or another. As an aside, I suspect the tradeoff for sacrificing collector input would be consistency across all of the player sets in terms of composition--it wouldn't make sense to have a single organization setting composition rules that are different between sets as we currently have now.
Things as they stand now can't be too awful or people wouldn't keep registering player sets and the number of players who have player sets wouldn't keep growing. However, I think that there are a couple of things that collectors can do to help keep their sanity:
*If you want your voice heard regarding set composition, communicate as much as possible with other people who feel the same way. I realize this could be extremely challenging for high-profile players with lots of sets registered. However, from what I can tell even the most popular players have a pretty short list of people with a strong opinion/interest in the set composition. And there's no point in not having an open dialogue with them about set changes. I think frequent board readers have probably witnessed the benefits of this on a couple of threads (the Ryan set comes to mind). For lower-profile players, it's pretty simple--you may only have one or two people to swap e-mail with.
*Trust your guts. If all your guts really care about is that PSA certificate, set composition is on some level immaterial unless the dollar implications of the set decisions are really large. If your guts have a very concrete idea about what should be in a set and what shouldn't, you don't really need the help of PSA or your fellow collector to write your checklist for you. If your guts are amiable enough to find some happiness in both going after that certificate and in building a set that's to your taste and specifications, then it's probably going to work out OK no matter how the set registry checklist and your own checklist line up.
I am of course, glossing over some details and issues here, but that pretty much covers it for me.
Peter G.