Ebay Authenticity Guarantee
RTBrand
Posts: 19 ✭✭
Ebay's Authenticity Guarantee: Required (not optional) for cards sold at $200 or above (I believe this is where the limit is now). PSA is the Authenticator now. They are pretty efficient time-wise in their authentication process. In essence, they deem the card to have no defects that would effect it's value relative to its selling price. Its all interesting. When you buy a card on Ebay and it is authenticated, they will say the card is a Final Sale (I believe most of the time). The effectiveness of this system is debatable. But I am going to touch on one specific issue. When a card (mostly vintage) is manufactured too short, PSA will not grade it and will give it an N6 designation (the desirability of this practice is debatable). Graded cards (especially expensive) sell for much more than the same ungraded card. I don't know, but it could be even worse if you provide this information in your listing. Unfortunately, this has happened to me two recent times. If you search AI, the estimated loss in value (I gave it a $500 card purchase) in this situation can be 50 to 70% when trying to resell the card. I don't know if this is correct, but it is what AI said. Most recently, the card was 1/40" short side to side. I have been grading with PSA for 30 years, & my experience with this issue is that if a card is more than 1/80" short of the specified dimension, PSA will often deem it Minimum Size (I use a 40 scale ruler). My experience only. When I measured the card upon receipt, and realized it was short, I requested a refund from Ebay, but was denied ( I won't get into details). What is interesting, is a card bought from Ebay before my previous example (but still recent) was deemed Authentic by PSA. I later sent the card to PSA to be graded and it was deemed not to meet Minimum Size (N6) and was not graded. It was also 1/40" short (but it was top to bottom). Just curious if this also happens elsewhere?
Comments
I get a lot of cards back with N6 which are not actually small, and many times they get a number grade the next time I send them back. PSA Support has told me in the past that size is grader discretion regarding both the measurement and how it looks in the slab. I don't know if this is policy or not, but it's what I have been told. I can't even begin to explain the mental gymnastics I've attempted to find logic in that statement.
What did Tommy Boy say about Guarantees?
"Because they know all they sold you was a guaranteed piece of sh!t".
Seriously, the whole 'min size' then re-sub and it's magically the correct size is ridiculous. Small children grow, cards do not.