My Last thread for a while...
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Posts: 1,094 ✭✭✭
This will be my final thread here for a while. I’m only posting it because I do like the forums, and out of respect for the group as a whole and some people I’ve met here in particular, I’m going to answer a few questions one last time. Spare me the “you don’t really respect the forum based on all the things you’ve done” nonsense. None of you here know me personally, so you have no basis to make that judgment. If you don’t agree with what I have to say or think, that’s fine - you’re entitled to your opinion but it doesn’t mean you’re right (and doesn’t mean I am either, it’s just the explanation).
Here goes…
Yes, I know Tom. I met him on this board (and on another), we shared tables at a show in Houston last year. It’s cheaper per table to buy more tables, so that’s what we did. That’s the first time I met him in person, I had no idea what OPC was at that time – he was just a guy from the board who shared tables with me at a show. I’ve since seen him in person two other times – once at a different show in Houston and one other time to give him a few more things on consignment. We don’t “hang out” or whatever is trying to be suggested by that.
I like building sets, always have. There are very few individual players I really like so I don’t really do player collections (I have a couple, 1 is big, one is small but growing), but I do enjoy the challenge that comes from building sets. Especially fully graded sets. I often end up building multiples of the same set because I’ve found one of the best ways to keep costs down in my collecting is to buy bulk lots of cards. Shipping per card is also a lot less expensive if you buy several cards at once.
I also recently started collecting some specific unopened in baseball and football. I still don’t really have a great plan or strategy for that, but I have selectively bought a few boxes/cases of things I was interested in. I know I don’t want to collect cases, I really just like the boxes and especially those with pictures of the cards on them. But I buy what I can in the form available when possible, and I know I have a strong preference now for FASC items.
As far the 1986 set goes, I initially started to build an 8/9 mix for myself. But because when I set build I buy in bulk, I end up with tons of duplicates and instead of selling those I usually just start another set. I went from building 1 graded set to 3 graded sets of 1986 Fleer pretty quickly (and then a raw card set as well), and then shortly after that a 4th graded set. I currently have 3 graded still going, in various 8 and 9 grades, and a mid to low grade raw set. When I completed the “8.7 set”, I was originally planning to just sell it because I needed more funds to keep the others going (one of the graded is all 9s and I’m still missing some of the big boys). Initially I marketed it to Blowout figuring they would break it, because I knew they had done them previously and had feverish rush to get in on those breaks. However, I had a tough time getting the “official buyers” to reply to me after they expressed interest to purchase it. Seems like they are busy folks, and every correspondence reply took several days to accomplish to where at some point I just gave up on them. I then had spoken to Tom about taking the set on consignment, he agreed so I delivered it to him at a show in Houston. It wasn’t originally contemplated to go into a break with him. However, after marketing it to a few of his normal customers and getting some mild but not solid interest from other parties, he also had seen the Blowout breaks and asked what I thought about a break. I said sure, they’re fun and people over there really seemed to like them, so we agreed that he would do the break off his website.
All I was trying to do was to make people aware of it, and I posted links on a few different card sites to get it some attention. I did that because I knew people seemed to really like these things and it had been several months since a set had been broken. My belief was that if the price was right (and as I’ve said several times I don’t set the prices, Tom sets the prices), people would participate. It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would care whose set it was, and I think if you go back and look at my posts you’ll see I was mainly trying to make people aware and educate a bit on some of the star card pricing and “hits”. If you want to call that marketing or hyping my own stuff, that’s fine – it’s not how I saw it but I do understand that perspective now, although I’m still not sure why it really matters in the end. If the slot prices are good and there’s enough interest, people will participate – if not, they won’t. To me it’s just that simple, but obviously others don’t feel that way and that’s something I’ve learned now. That is raises questions still doesn’t make sense to me, because I don’t see what questions it would raise unless I also participated in the break, which I did not and never considered because that truly would have been a conflict of interest.
However, I didn’t “scam” anyone and neither did Tom. The accusation that I was “putting money in my pocket” isn’t really any different than if I had just sold the set outright to someone on eBay or anywhere else, regardless of what they did with it. In order to have a set break, someone had to sell the set or the breaker had to put one together – in either case whoever sold “put money in their pocket”. If the issue is that somehow doing this in a set break was more beneficial or something, there are multiple different ways to sell your items – sell them directly yourself, consign them to others, put them in auction houses, do set breaks, the list goes on and on. Calling this set break a “scam” or “deceitful” or “taking the life out of you” is just hyperbole and exaggeration, and my real hope is that people can see those types of comments for what they are.
But if you really think you were “duped” or “scammed”, I’d ask what you were duped into exactly? If you bought a slot, you got a random card from the break – which is exactly what you paid for. If you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten into the break except for what you call my “hyping” it, I would suggest you should really check your emotions and will power as it relates to control over your wallet. The break ran smoothly, people got what they paid for, and I think almost everyone had fun and enjoyed it and would do it again – if the price is right and that’s the key and should always be the key. If I was to agree to do another break with Tom, I’d certainly tell people this time it’s my set being broken. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t change the decision point which is and should be the price of a slot – the rest are just background details that really don’t matter.
As far the group rip goes, it was really a similar type of thought process. There was some good stuff available, at what I think were competitive prices. None of what I gave Tom originally was intended to go into a break, but when I saw he had picked up a lot of the football packs and racks I floated the idea and he said it sounded like fun and we both thought people would like it. Again, the belief was that if the prices were right then things would go, if they weren’t they wouldn’t. It was that simple, we weren’t trying to get one over on anyone or anything like that. I was trying to organize something I thought people would enjoy and have enjoyed in the past. I felt like some of the prices were better than others, but that overall there was some really high quality stuff available at fair prices and people would make those decisions themselves. It never occurred to me that anyone would care that I owned the BBCE wrapped boxes and sealed cases, but similar to the set break I see that a little differently now. My bad for not seeing it originally, but it honestly just never occurred to me.
I’m not going to get into trying to defend the prices. There has been plenty of complaining about prices from this break, some were good, some maybe not, but it’s not like they were all terrible and top of the market. If you think that, you don’t really know the market and picking out a single comparison point doesn't validate your assessment of pricing. It’s easy to just point out things that may have been on the high end, but there were plenty of others that were on the low end. My belief is that people need to make their own decision on price, and that set breaks or group rips actually do that pretty efficiently. There were numerous items in the previous break that got little or no interest, and I think that was all based on price. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I believe you should evaluate what it is, where it came from, who’s delivering to you and whether the price is good. If you like it, join in. If you don’t, just pass. If things don’t get broken, it’s almost entirely because of price – and that’s how it should be.
I honestly don’t see any reason why the rest of it would matter, but obviously it does to some people so lesson learned. I’ll know better next time, assuming there is a next time but I’m really in no hurry to try again. One thing I’ve learned about this board is that there is no shortage of people who just want to criticize and complain – they add absolutely no value to the board and their behavior discourages other people from joining or staying. This board does do a great job of “eating it’s own”, such a great job that the board is indeed slowly just dying away because of it. Nice job, folks.
I’m sure there are plenty of people here who wouldn’t participate in anything I’m associated with going forward, and that’s fine – your loss. I’ve collected and bought and sold cards and autographs for over 20 years now, I rotate through my collection a fair bit each year as my collecting habits and interests change, but I try my best to focus on quality and rarity when I can – and because my interests are slowly but surely increasing in price, I need to move things out pretty frequently to keep money on hand to buy something else. But I also like to get my hands on case fresh stuff and want to do that as affordably as I can. The problem is there is so little of that going on anymore, assuming it ever really was.
I am a collector, not a dealer, and any money I make on this stuff just gets plowed right back into it. My collection is generally getting smaller in number but growing in value per item. But I spend THOUSANDS more each year than I take in, so this is always cash outflow for me in total. Any money that “goes in my pocket” generally finds its way right back out.
I’d like to continue building sets, doing my part to increase the number of set breaks and box/case rips that people have access to (whether organizing or just participating). That’s why I was a “buyer” of my own cases in the break – I want boxes, not cases, but saying I wanted everyone else to “break it for me” is incorrect. I could break it if I wanted to, I don’t need anyone to help me do that. I simply thought there might be some folks out there who would like to have access to some of those boxes as well since 70s/80s case breaks basically happen maybe once a year. I know there are some because they've messaged me separately, and have also messaged to buy entire cases as they sit. If I could have organized a group purchase of the cases at the time of purchase, I would have rather done that but I just didn’t have the opportunity to get it organized. Going forward, that’s certainly something I wouldn’t mind doing and I know some folks on the forum have done it in the past – but it’s slim pickings around here for those opportunities and there is wide disparity of how that should work and what's fair for the person who let's everyone else "borrow their wallet". Even more so because of the “eat your own” environment that some of you are so proud of. Good work.
That’s the story, and there’s nothing that was done to try and take advantage of anyone or anything of that sort. I’m sorry it was perceived that way, and apologize to anyone who feels like that. It wasn’t my intent, it wasn’t Tom’s intent. I was trying to bring some excitement and unique opportunities and fun to the board, in hopes that it would help spark others to do the same because I think that would benefit me greatly as a collector as well as others.
Clearly I missed some things and I’m sorry about that. But if this is how this forum plans on acting and treating folks going forward (basically that you're guilty before questions can even be answered), I feel pretty safe in saying it won’t be around much longer because the “cost” of being here far outweighs the value. I certainly know I won't be staying.
Good luck to you all.
Here goes…
Yes, I know Tom. I met him on this board (and on another), we shared tables at a show in Houston last year. It’s cheaper per table to buy more tables, so that’s what we did. That’s the first time I met him in person, I had no idea what OPC was at that time – he was just a guy from the board who shared tables with me at a show. I’ve since seen him in person two other times – once at a different show in Houston and one other time to give him a few more things on consignment. We don’t “hang out” or whatever is trying to be suggested by that.
I like building sets, always have. There are very few individual players I really like so I don’t really do player collections (I have a couple, 1 is big, one is small but growing), but I do enjoy the challenge that comes from building sets. Especially fully graded sets. I often end up building multiples of the same set because I’ve found one of the best ways to keep costs down in my collecting is to buy bulk lots of cards. Shipping per card is also a lot less expensive if you buy several cards at once.
I also recently started collecting some specific unopened in baseball and football. I still don’t really have a great plan or strategy for that, but I have selectively bought a few boxes/cases of things I was interested in. I know I don’t want to collect cases, I really just like the boxes and especially those with pictures of the cards on them. But I buy what I can in the form available when possible, and I know I have a strong preference now for FASC items.
As far the 1986 set goes, I initially started to build an 8/9 mix for myself. But because when I set build I buy in bulk, I end up with tons of duplicates and instead of selling those I usually just start another set. I went from building 1 graded set to 3 graded sets of 1986 Fleer pretty quickly (and then a raw card set as well), and then shortly after that a 4th graded set. I currently have 3 graded still going, in various 8 and 9 grades, and a mid to low grade raw set. When I completed the “8.7 set”, I was originally planning to just sell it because I needed more funds to keep the others going (one of the graded is all 9s and I’m still missing some of the big boys). Initially I marketed it to Blowout figuring they would break it, because I knew they had done them previously and had feverish rush to get in on those breaks. However, I had a tough time getting the “official buyers” to reply to me after they expressed interest to purchase it. Seems like they are busy folks, and every correspondence reply took several days to accomplish to where at some point I just gave up on them. I then had spoken to Tom about taking the set on consignment, he agreed so I delivered it to him at a show in Houston. It wasn’t originally contemplated to go into a break with him. However, after marketing it to a few of his normal customers and getting some mild but not solid interest from other parties, he also had seen the Blowout breaks and asked what I thought about a break. I said sure, they’re fun and people over there really seemed to like them, so we agreed that he would do the break off his website.
All I was trying to do was to make people aware of it, and I posted links on a few different card sites to get it some attention. I did that because I knew people seemed to really like these things and it had been several months since a set had been broken. My belief was that if the price was right (and as I’ve said several times I don’t set the prices, Tom sets the prices), people would participate. It honestly never occurred to me that anyone would care whose set it was, and I think if you go back and look at my posts you’ll see I was mainly trying to make people aware and educate a bit on some of the star card pricing and “hits”. If you want to call that marketing or hyping my own stuff, that’s fine – it’s not how I saw it but I do understand that perspective now, although I’m still not sure why it really matters in the end. If the slot prices are good and there’s enough interest, people will participate – if not, they won’t. To me it’s just that simple, but obviously others don’t feel that way and that’s something I’ve learned now. That is raises questions still doesn’t make sense to me, because I don’t see what questions it would raise unless I also participated in the break, which I did not and never considered because that truly would have been a conflict of interest.
However, I didn’t “scam” anyone and neither did Tom. The accusation that I was “putting money in my pocket” isn’t really any different than if I had just sold the set outright to someone on eBay or anywhere else, regardless of what they did with it. In order to have a set break, someone had to sell the set or the breaker had to put one together – in either case whoever sold “put money in their pocket”. If the issue is that somehow doing this in a set break was more beneficial or something, there are multiple different ways to sell your items – sell them directly yourself, consign them to others, put them in auction houses, do set breaks, the list goes on and on. Calling this set break a “scam” or “deceitful” or “taking the life out of you” is just hyperbole and exaggeration, and my real hope is that people can see those types of comments for what they are.
But if you really think you were “duped” or “scammed”, I’d ask what you were duped into exactly? If you bought a slot, you got a random card from the break – which is exactly what you paid for. If you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten into the break except for what you call my “hyping” it, I would suggest you should really check your emotions and will power as it relates to control over your wallet. The break ran smoothly, people got what they paid for, and I think almost everyone had fun and enjoyed it and would do it again – if the price is right and that’s the key and should always be the key. If I was to agree to do another break with Tom, I’d certainly tell people this time it’s my set being broken. But that doesn’t and shouldn’t change the decision point which is and should be the price of a slot – the rest are just background details that really don’t matter.
As far the group rip goes, it was really a similar type of thought process. There was some good stuff available, at what I think were competitive prices. None of what I gave Tom originally was intended to go into a break, but when I saw he had picked up a lot of the football packs and racks I floated the idea and he said it sounded like fun and we both thought people would like it. Again, the belief was that if the prices were right then things would go, if they weren’t they wouldn’t. It was that simple, we weren’t trying to get one over on anyone or anything like that. I was trying to organize something I thought people would enjoy and have enjoyed in the past. I felt like some of the prices were better than others, but that overall there was some really high quality stuff available at fair prices and people would make those decisions themselves. It never occurred to me that anyone would care that I owned the BBCE wrapped boxes and sealed cases, but similar to the set break I see that a little differently now. My bad for not seeing it originally, but it honestly just never occurred to me.
I’m not going to get into trying to defend the prices. There has been plenty of complaining about prices from this break, some were good, some maybe not, but it’s not like they were all terrible and top of the market. If you think that, you don’t really know the market and picking out a single comparison point doesn't validate your assessment of pricing. It’s easy to just point out things that may have been on the high end, but there were plenty of others that were on the low end. My belief is that people need to make their own decision on price, and that set breaks or group rips actually do that pretty efficiently. There were numerous items in the previous break that got little or no interest, and I think that was all based on price. That’s how it’s supposed to work. I believe you should evaluate what it is, where it came from, who’s delivering to you and whether the price is good. If you like it, join in. If you don’t, just pass. If things don’t get broken, it’s almost entirely because of price – and that’s how it should be.
I honestly don’t see any reason why the rest of it would matter, but obviously it does to some people so lesson learned. I’ll know better next time, assuming there is a next time but I’m really in no hurry to try again. One thing I’ve learned about this board is that there is no shortage of people who just want to criticize and complain – they add absolutely no value to the board and their behavior discourages other people from joining or staying. This board does do a great job of “eating it’s own”, such a great job that the board is indeed slowly just dying away because of it. Nice job, folks.
I’m sure there are plenty of people here who wouldn’t participate in anything I’m associated with going forward, and that’s fine – your loss. I’ve collected and bought and sold cards and autographs for over 20 years now, I rotate through my collection a fair bit each year as my collecting habits and interests change, but I try my best to focus on quality and rarity when I can – and because my interests are slowly but surely increasing in price, I need to move things out pretty frequently to keep money on hand to buy something else. But I also like to get my hands on case fresh stuff and want to do that as affordably as I can. The problem is there is so little of that going on anymore, assuming it ever really was.
I am a collector, not a dealer, and any money I make on this stuff just gets plowed right back into it. My collection is generally getting smaller in number but growing in value per item. But I spend THOUSANDS more each year than I take in, so this is always cash outflow for me in total. Any money that “goes in my pocket” generally finds its way right back out.
I’d like to continue building sets, doing my part to increase the number of set breaks and box/case rips that people have access to (whether organizing or just participating). That’s why I was a “buyer” of my own cases in the break – I want boxes, not cases, but saying I wanted everyone else to “break it for me” is incorrect. I could break it if I wanted to, I don’t need anyone to help me do that. I simply thought there might be some folks out there who would like to have access to some of those boxes as well since 70s/80s case breaks basically happen maybe once a year. I know there are some because they've messaged me separately, and have also messaged to buy entire cases as they sit. If I could have organized a group purchase of the cases at the time of purchase, I would have rather done that but I just didn’t have the opportunity to get it organized. Going forward, that’s certainly something I wouldn’t mind doing and I know some folks on the forum have done it in the past – but it’s slim pickings around here for those opportunities and there is wide disparity of how that should work and what's fair for the person who let's everyone else "borrow their wallet". Even more so because of the “eat your own” environment that some of you are so proud of. Good work.
That’s the story, and there’s nothing that was done to try and take advantage of anyone or anything of that sort. I’m sorry it was perceived that way, and apologize to anyone who feels like that. It wasn’t my intent, it wasn’t Tom’s intent. I was trying to bring some excitement and unique opportunities and fun to the board, in hopes that it would help spark others to do the same because I think that would benefit me greatly as a collector as well as others.
Clearly I missed some things and I’m sorry about that. But if this is how this forum plans on acting and treating folks going forward (basically that you're guilty before questions can even be answered), I feel pretty safe in saying it won’t be around much longer because the “cost” of being here far outweighs the value. I certainly know I won't be staying.
Good luck to you all.
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Comments
It sounds like you don't understand why folks reacted the way they did. I read the thread in question, and it's really very simple what you're being accused of; they are accusing of you of shilling the sale of your product by participating as an enthusiastic buyer without having disclosed the fact (until folks became suspicious) the product for sale was yours.