Ep. 84 Authentication and the Future

[@raulmenjivar6584]

Great conversation guys!

[@armchairphilatelist5654]

Fascinating conversation! As I was listening and reading the comments below, I had a few thoughts: 1. I'd love to hear what the HipStamp guy and other marketplace owners think of this potential new standard. 2. Expert services should never be volunteer; experts should always be paid. (regarding previous eBay collective) 3. As much as I enjoy your conversations with other philatelists, I also enjoy your conversations together. After all, you are two professional philatelists, yourselves. Thanks for bringing this to the attention of those of us not in the biz.

[@psarj]

Great conversation guys! The idea that buyers need to educate themselves is absolutely key. Caveat emptor.... I also think that if eBay takes this route, it needs to be optional. Buyers and sellers can develop relationships of trust over the years equivalent to a relationship with the proprietor of a brick and mortar stamp store. In that situation, why should the cost and delay of a mandatory authentication be imposed on the transaction?

[@andykupersmit350]

Lots of questions about this new development in the eBay stamp business. Off the top of my head -- Will the opinion be about just authenticity or both authenticity and condition? Who pays the fee for the expert opinion? What is the turnaround time?

[@andykupersmit350]

The philatelic community has been buying and selling certificates and not stamps and covers for many years already. By far, my biggest concern is finding experienced and knowledgeable to BE the experts who are both qualified and willing to work at the Philatelic Foundation / Professional Stamp Experts / PSAG.

[@nathanesbeck1506]

As a purchaser on eBay, HipStamp and Delcampe, I think something needs to be done to reduce fraudulent or misidentified material. I would propose three actions to make transactions safer. 1. Have the auction service act as an escrow agent when authentication is desired. Collect the payment from the purchaser and have the seller send the item to an expertizing agency of the seller’s choice (from a list of recognized expertizers). When the item comes back as described, the money and item are sent to the respective parties. If the item comes back other than as described, the seller can accept, reject or attempt to renegotiate a price. Currently there is little opportunity for expertizing because the services can’t return an opinion within the return window of the auction site. 2. Allow users to report suspicious listings and remove obvious misidentified stamps or fakes. This costs money to review but might improve buyer confidence and reduce returns. 3, Remove bad actors. If a seller is receiving significant negative feedback or has large numbers of flagged items (should the service allow flagging for forged or misidentified items). The seller should be suspended or removed.

[@DrSKay]

A facet you did not mention but is a significant source of discussion and division in other hobby arenas, is the ubiquity of slabbing by the companies working under CCG oversight. Consider the image at 10:05 in this video. Hypothetically any agreement to undertake expertization for eBay by a CCG affiliate can be expected to impose the use of slabbing to assure that the "patient" has passed nakedly through the agency hands and no others thereafter. Collectors of ancient coins have long and often lamented the use of slabbing on coins, and a significant portion of those collectors choose to "liberate" the coins for their collections from the slabs. That, however, is a daunting task inasmuch as the process of breaking through the confines can easily leave marks on the coins. But the plastic slabs used for the stamps in the pic referenced above (at 10:05) are of the same kind as the ones used for coins. "Liberating" a stamp will be much more likely to incur serious damage to the stamp. But the alternative is to learn to collect and exhibit such material in slabs. Good luck with that. Slabbing turns a true collectable into an object of investment.

[@thedigitalphilatelist]

Charles said it best: collectors need to educate themselves if spending large amounts of cash. The best knowledge can be found in places like the APS/RPSL or other specialist societies that have years on knowledge. Ebay is simply making money - take a slice of the authentication fee profit and pass the buck onto a third party service.

[@pauleagle2856]

As you mentioned, with stamps I suspect Ebay would jump the shark resulting in the growth of alternatives, if just for quicker delivery. Also, I paused the video and ordered online a copy of What Price Philately, thanks for the tip!

[@jeffguldner9831]

Great episode. I’m much more comfortable buying a Strubel with an Urs Hermann cert or another Swiss expert. Less confident with a PF or BPA for that. Same with Venetia Lombardy without a Ferchenbauer cert. There is no way to reliably bulk expertise through a single service. You would like the folks who wrote the book (literally) on an area of speciality.

[@andykupersmit350]

I suspect it is more likely that eBay requires certificates of authenticity issued within the last x years for philatelic material of a certain value PRIOR to sale. X could be 5 or 10 or whatever.

[@bigernie9433]

What is the likelihood this potential requirement for certification would apply to ebay US only ?

[@le_med]

You need to do your next episode on what is happening in the UK with their switch to barcodes only and limited time to swap old non bar codes current stamps to all bar coded. Why they are doing this besides the counterfit stamps is beyond me when they are going to damage philately. It is my opinion that if they were still printing art plates old school stamps there would be less forgeries...I strongly believe that because they went plastic print stickers it is easier to counterfit.

[@richardfrajola3377]

If eBay institutes a one size fits all mandatory expert service, it will finally be the nail that will make an alternate venue economically feasible. Stamp collectors need to resist the turning of the stamp and postal history collecting areas into a commodity market. Ebay has long been dishonest in how they treat the stamp category. Promises of reform dating back to my involvement in clean-up back in 1999 that result only in more opaque feedback systems, etc. I might mention the art market solution used in France. For an individual artist’s work, there is a court appointed final “expert” who often has a history of selling the particular artist’s work. Without a certificate from that expert, the item can not be sold. An absurd situation where an interested party is the final arbiter of truth.

[@le_med]

This ebay change HAS to be an option because they can not force sellers to use a particular company otherwise this seems fishy as to why they would support company A and not B, C or D. Also as you mentioned stamps =/= baseball cards since cards are not cancelled etc as you mentioned

[@davidprovost1981]

Given the exclusivity accorded this authentication firm, it makes me wonder if eBay has a stake in its ownership. Also, who pays for this service, it has to ultimately be the buyer.

[@raulmenjivar6584]

What happens when PF says it's not genuine, and eBay says it's real?

[@219belizeman]

Sales sites like Ebay need to require refunds for items proved to be fraudulent. Likewise collectors should learn enough about what they collect to confidently render their own opinion. Authentication services or recognized experts should be sought for purposes of confirmation. I've had stamps marked as forgeries that were genuine as well as stamps marked genuine by BBP recognized experts that were not.

[@davidprovost1981]

Given eBay’s insistence on using this one company, I wonder weather or not they have an ownership stake in ASG. I assume that the buyer ultimately will bear the cost of this. There may be a major shift on the part of sellers to other platforms, I.e. Hipstamp.

[@andykupersmit350]

As of 16 Feb. 2022, eBay has zero ownership stake in CCG (not ASG). Do not assume buyers will pay the cost. As it is now, buyers pay the cost if the opinion matches the description and sellers pay the cost of the opinion significantly differs from the description.

[@kolbjrnschjlberg7870]

If implemented for stamps I'd simply not bid on objects falling into that price category. Mainly because I would have zero faith in eg. CCG to have any expertise in my specific field of collecting - hence their "certificate" would be useless to me. But, for that worthless "certificate" I likely will have to pay a premium, plus wait a long time to receive it - with incurred shipping costs. Maybe Ebay ends up becoming the "Dollar Box", who knows.

[@patiencezero-xc9zl]

Ebay were idiots for disbanding SCADS.

[@2realesazul]

Granted that no system will be perfect (APS, PF and others do make mistakes too) but it's on ebay's best interest that their customers have confidence in the security of the platform. Fraudulent transactions erode buyers' and sellers' confidence thus reducing the number of sales. Now, I get the poor fella that finds an old-looking stamp in grandpa's drawer and puts it on ebay for a fortune because "it looks very old". But professional dealers do essentially the same thing, regularly listing forgeries for thousands of dollars and I don't think they are trying to scam anyone, I think they just have no clue and no time to do the research. Since you guys are dealers, when in these situations, why not get a cert before listing?

[@physics2112]

Like or Dislike: Like. When Trump was president and every tweet of his got fact-checked, often often by unqualified or ill-motivated agents, it was the beginning of a trend that has now spread to eBay, i.e. the outsourcing of critical thinking to quote-unquote authoritative sources. My tone is cynical because I see the trend as more destructive than constructive, but I can also appreciate that consumers, be they consuming news or stamps, have limited resources at their disposal, and eBay's service is an attempt to compensate for that limitation.

[@vkinkela]

Cgc only does Chinese stamps … nothing else as of yet