Who are your Top 3 Crooks, Liars or Idiots in sportscards?

[zep33]

The law offices of Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe

 

[Brewer Andy]

Since I have no interest in prospects or cards printed by a wannabe with a quality printer (which is like writing and selling Twilight fan fiction novels online IMO), I rarely ever open a thread involving Razor. Could someone fill me in on this Razor/Upper Deck "chicanery"?

 

[morgoth]

Grey Flannel- recently refused to auction a Gehrig jersey for a client that was originally bought from them due to questionable authentication. Wouldn't issue a refund either. Now its in court.

Mastro- He literally left hundreds of collectors who consigned from him holding the bag. He was a Ponzi scheme, using money from a current auction to pay for those in the past. Some collectors lost their prized family collections to him and were not given one dime.

Scott Susor- The biggest card trimmer even known. He targeted low pop set collector cards. He would pay way over book for raw versions off ebay and trim em up. PSA got wise (finally) and he tried SGC and BVG but a group of collectors (Net 54 guys) caught him red handed trimming cards, got him booted off ebay and finally filed a class action lawsuit against him.

JP from Memory Lane- CONVICTED of fraud that stole money from charities such as Retired Firefighters, Police, Churches and Schools. His father in laws company he worked for was so corrupt and it was so vast that the state of Florida had to create a special task force just to deal with them. He now runs a PHONE/Internet auction company.

 

[matfanofold]

Back in the early 90's I knew a fellow who had collected cards since the early 70's. He had amassed every topps set from 1952 to 1992, including a 1951 bowman set, early FLEER sets, some 70's factory sets, ect.. Many sets he bought complete, some he put together himself, but all were in NM+/- condition in binders or set boxes and all were gotten fairly cheap. He also had binders FULL of vintage star players. I remember looking at his collection quite a bit, and even then to see page after page of vintage 50's Mantles, Aarons, Williams, Banks, ect.. was awe inspiring. To put this in to perspective, he had at least 1, if not 2 or 3 of every Topps set spanning from 52 - 92, he had anywhewre between 1 - 20 of any given star card and/or RC from the early 50's to the late 70's. To this day, it was probablly the largest, and best vintage collection I had ever seen. I'm sure in todays market his binders of vintage star and RC cards would be worth hundreds upon hundreds of thousands alone...

Why am I telling you this? Because here is where it becomes relavent to the thread. 'Mr. Mint' was a very well known buyer at the time, much more so than today. And this guy, who was not rich by any means, decided to sell his collection to fund a taxi cab opperation he was about to start. So with the help of an LCS he set up an appointment and Mr Mint actually sent someone to his house to see and hopefull buy his entire collection.

I remember at the time thinking he should get 100,000+ easy. But was only offered $10,000 and was told "he would never get a better offer, never". So he sold. Now, I know he could have said 'no', but that always struck me as bad form, and as such have always had a deep seeded resentment for Mr Mint and his opperation.

 

[morgoth]

Mr. Mint is a huge ******. He got mad at one national because there were 2 entrances to the hall at he said he had to be located at the front of the busiest so he could get first shot at buying. When he found out his entrance wasn't the busiest he got mad and flew home.

The one time I tried to sell him something, he asked to see what I was selling. I gave him some cards I wanted to sell but not everything in my box. He said he wanted to see everything, I said no, he threw my cards he had on the table and said get out I was wasting his time.

Mr. Mint was involved with the Olberman T206/SGC error

 

[JoshHamilton]

Rush2112, I'm glad someone else has dealt with Riza. Well not glad, I'm just glad someone else knows who he is.

You people think Burge and Alan Rosen are bad? Burge trims cards and Mr Mint is a *******. Big deal. I bet they never won an auction from you just so they can get your phone number and call you and make death threats. I bet neither Burge nor Rosen ever sent you an email threatening to rape your mother. Riza threatened me with both of those things. And yes, I forwarded the email to his local police (who of course didn't do ****). The guy is seriously nuts. He's deeply disturbed. I'm almost glad I don't collect vintage hockey anymore so I don't have to deal with him. A few years back, someone found his myspace page. He looks like someone you'd see on COPS getting arrested for beating the crap out of his with in a meth induced craze.

And fitting my phone autocorrects his first name and changes it to "Ulcer." How fitting

 

[Sean_C]

I was wondering what was going on with Riza. I stayed away from collecting graded vintage hocky cards because I didn't want to possibly run into dealing with that psycho.

 

[gracecollector]

Crook: BGS, PSA and just about every grading company. So many shady practices, including sub-bumps, better grades for bigger customers, slabbing the Gretzky Wagner as untrimmed, slabbing hundreds of autos for a major auction house in less than a day (which was computed out to about 15 seconds a card), and other crooked practices. Big crooks in my opinion.

Liar: Beckett's Interactive Dept. Saying their website would be easier to use, more feature rich, and better for collectors proved totally false and created an exodus of massive proportions. Their current line that the website will be much improved by December doesn't feel too honest either.

Idiot: MLB Licensing. I feel their decision to limit baseball cards to a monopoly with Topps is really hurting the hobby.

 

[TNP777]

Crook: BGS, PSA and just about every grading company. So many shady practices, including sub-bumps, better grades for bigger customers, slabbing the Gretzky Wagner as untrimmed, slabbing hundreds of autos for a major auction house in less than a day (which was computed out to about 15 seconds a card), and other crooked practices. Big crooks in my opinion.

Liar: Beckett's Interactive Dept. Saying their website would be easier to use, more feature rich, and better for collectors proved totally false and created an exodus of massive proportions. There current line that the website will be much improved by December doesn't feel too honest either.

Idiot: MLB Licensing. I feel their decision to limit baseball cards to a monopoly with Topps is really hurting the hobby.

win!

 

[predatorkj]

Back in the early 90's I knew a fellow who had collected cards since the early 70's. He had amassed every topps set from 1952 to 1992, including a 1951 bowman set, early FLEER sets, some 70's factory sets, ect.. Many sets he bought complete, some he put together himself, but all were in NM+/- condition in binders or set boxes and all were gotten fairly cheap. He also had binders FULL of vintage star players. I remember looking at his collection quite a bit, and even then to see page after page of vintage 50's Mantles, Aarons, Williams, Banks, ect.. was awe inspiring. To put this in to perspective, he had at least 1, if not 2 or 3 of every Topps set spanning from 52 - 92, he had anywhewre between 1 - 20 of any given star card and/or RC from the early 50's to the late 70's. To this day, it was probablly the largest, and best vintage collection I had ever seen. I'm sure in todays market his binders of vintage star and RC cards would be worth hundreds upon hundreds of thousands alone...

Why am I telling you this? Because here is where it becomes relavent to the thread. 'Mr. Mint' was a very well known buyer at the time, much more so than today. And this guy, who was not rich by any means, decided to sell his collection to fund a taxi cab opperation he was about to start. So with the help of an LCS he set up an appointment and Mr Mint actually sent someone to his house to see and hopefull buy his entire collection.

I remember at the time thinking he should get 100,000+ easy. But was only offered $10,000 and was told "he would never get a better offer, never". So he sold. Now, I know he could have said 'no', but that always struck me as bad form, and as such have always had a deep seeded resentment for Mr Mint and his opperation.

Yeah but can you call him crooked for that? Every dealer pulls that crap. Every dealer. Maybe not to that extent but I have never met a dealer willing to pay even close to 50% of what something is worth. He was willing to pay 10% and lie through his teeth. Sounds like every other dealer I have ever run across. Not saying its not wrong. Just saying its normal in my eyes.

 

[matfanofold]

Back in the early 90's I knew a fellow who had collected cards since the early 70's. He had amassed every topps set from 1952 to 1992, including a 1951 bowman set, early FLEER sets, some 70's factory sets, ect.. Many sets he bought complete, some he put together himself, but all were in NM+/- condition in binders or set boxes and all were gotten fairly cheap. He also had binders FULL of vintage star players. I remember looking at his collection quite a bit, and even then to see page after page of vintage 50's Mantles, Aarons, Williams, Banks, ect.. was awe inspiring. To put this in to perspective, he had at least 1, if not 2 or 3 of every Topps set spanning from 52 - 92, he had anywhewre between 1 - 20 of any given star card and/or RC from the early 50's to the late 70's. To this day, it was probablly the largest, and best vintage collection I had ever seen. I'm sure in todays market his binders of vintage star and RC cards would be worth hundreds upon hundreds of thousands alone...

Why am I telling you this? Because here is where it becomes relavent to the thread. 'Mr. Mint' was a very well known buyer at the time, much more so than today. And this guy, who was not rich by any means, decided to sell his collection to fund a taxi cab opperation he was about to start. So with the help of an LCS he set up an appointment and Mr Mint actually sent someone to his house to see and hopefull buy his entire collection.

I remember at the time thinking he should get 100,000+ easy. But was only offered $10,000 and was told "he would never get a better offer, never". So he sold. Now, I know he could have said 'no', but that always struck me as bad form, and as such have always had a deep seeded resentment for Mr Mint and his opperation.

Yeah but can you call him crooked for that? Every dealer pulls that crap. Every dealer. Maybe not to that extent but I have never met a dealer willing to pay even close to 50% of what something is worth. He was willing to pay 10% and lie through his teeth. Sounds like every other dealer I have ever run across. Not saying its not wrong. Just saying its normal in my eyes.

No, I'm not calling him crooked for that, I even said "Now, I know he could have said 'no'", but there is a ethical line somewhere and he crossed it here. If you grandmother had a valuable family china set worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and she was selling it to fund the grandchildrens college, but was offered $10,000 and told 'it's not woth, nor will it ever sell for a penny more', and sold it. Would you still feel it's just normal business in your eyes? Or whould that be shady in your eyes? It's much the same. The guy new he had something valuable, but was not like we are with regards to understanding value. He just bought/collected baseballcards durring a time when they were cheap and fun. He had no reason to disbelieve the guy. I guess, in the end, we can all see it the way we wish, but I'll always see it as slimey and seeing he made his millions doing this exact same thing, he tops the list for me.

 

[itsinthegrade]

My top 3 all tie in to eachother:

1) All the familiar names: I CANT LOCATE THE LIST OF ALL THE KNOWN FORGERS BUT I KNOW EVERYONE KNOWS THE NAMES.

2) ***

3) EBAY

Best regards!

 

[sbib]

I have many more than 3, but the biggest pet peeve for me is the Ebay bidder who wins a card and does not pay for it - it is a lot of hassle to send the invoice, email again after a time period for fair payment, file a non paying bidder claim, closing the claim, and having to relist the card. I do not really like the second chance offer, because I never like to see anyone think I am not fair to them on the bidding process.

Just my 2 cents

 

[hofmichael]

Doug Allen,Bill Mastro and Greg Marino are the 3 biggest scumbags in the hobby in my opinion.

 

[predatorkj]

Back in the early 90's I knew a fellow who had collected cards since the early 70's. He had amassed every topps set from 1952 to 1992, including a 1951 bowman set, early FLEER sets, some 70's factory sets, ect.. Many sets he bought complete, some he put together himself, but all were in NM+/- condition in binders or set boxes and all were gotten fairly cheap. He also had binders FULL of vintage star players. I remember looking at his collection quite a bit, and even then to see page after page of vintage 50's Mantles, Aarons, Williams, Banks, ect.. was awe inspiring. To put this in to perspective, he had at least 1, if not 2 or 3 of every Topps set spanning from 52 - 92, he had anywhewre between 1 - 20 of any given star card and/or RC from the early 50's to the late 70's. To this day, it was probablly the largest, and best vintage collection I had ever seen. I'm sure in todays market his binders of vintage star and RC cards would be worth hundreds upon hundreds of thousands alone...

Why am I telling you this? Because here is where it becomes relavent to the thread. 'Mr. Mint' was a very well known buyer at the time, much more so than today. And this guy, who was not rich by any means, decided to sell his collection to fund a taxi cab opperation he was about to start. So with the help of an LCS he set up an appointment and Mr Mint actually sent someone to his house to see and hopefull buy his entire collection.

I remember at the time thinking he should get 100,000+ easy. But was only offered $10,000 and was told "he would never get a better offer, never". So he sold. Now, I know he could have said 'no', but that always struck me as bad form, and as such have always had a deep seeded resentment for Mr Mint and his opperation.

Yeah but can you call him crooked for that? Every dealer pulls that crap. Every dealer. Maybe not to that extent but I have never met a dealer willing to pay even close to 50% of what something is worth. He was willing to pay 10% and lie through his teeth. Sounds like every other dealer I have ever run across. Not saying its not wrong. Just saying its normal in my eyes.

No, I'm not calling him crooked for that, I even said "Now, I know he could have said 'no'", but there is a ethical line somewhere and he crossed it here. If you grandmother had a valuable family china set worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and she was selling it to fund the grandchildrens college, but was offered $10,000 and told 'it's not woth, nor will it ever sell for a penny more', and sold it. Would you still feel it's just normal business in your eyes? Or whould that be shady in your eyes? It's much the same. The guy new he had something valuable, but was not like we are with regards to understanding value. He just bought/collected baseballcards durring a time when they were cheap and fun. He had no reason to disbelieve the guy. I guess, in the end, we can all see it the way we wish, but I'll always see it as slimey and seeing he made his millions doing this exact same thing, he tops the list for me.

Oh...I agree its very slimey. Very wrong. I guess after a while you just become numb to it. I see so much of that kinda crap from all walks of life...when you mentioned Mr. Mint...it made me wonder what he did that was so particularly bad compared to the rest of the dirtbags who pull their own crap.

 

[bigalbert]

I'm going with Topps, who after getting a solo license for baseball could have shown us why MLB made the right decision instead they put out subpar products with chicle a&g and 206.

 

[predatorkj]

I'm going with Topps, who after getting a solo license for baseball could have shown us why MLB made the right decision instead they put out subpar products with chicle a&g and 206.

Chicle maybe. 206 and A&G are big sellers no? Why wouldn't they continue with these lines? If they need to axe them...whats next? Bowman? Sometimes you just don't mess with a good thing. Luckily at least topps has figured that out.