Lets Start Making Our Own Certs.....he Is???

Jay,

You make a lot of good points (and not just the one quoted above). I would clarify my remark to say that being "informed" means knowing when to ask for help. Especially for more esoteric items where it is easy to "lack critical knowledge," one might be well advised to seek the opinion of an expert. I was not arguing against seeking expert opinions, or even a "cert." Seeking that kind of information can be part of becoming "informed."

But I don't think we need to "oversee" or "regulate" the expertizing market. Professional oversight or regulation is usually nothing more than a barrier to entry with little to justify it, at least from an economic point of view. No one has been fooled by the "cert" that occasioned this discussion. Well, no one ought to be fooled by it. And anyone who has...well, you know what they say about a fool and his money.

Basil

Bill,

I am *NOT* going to hash out every single point with you and get into yet another poisonous neverending back-and-forth here the way you insist upon doing at the other forum. This is a congenial atmosphere, and those sorts of contentious threads are not the norm here the way they are there.

As I clearly stated, it is a list of PERSONAL OPINIONS.

If MY OPINIONS don't meet with your approval, then I'm sorry.

That's all I'm going to say on the matter.

IMO, the seller is out of line putting his cert at the same level as the various "recognized" cert providers. He is a dealer with a good reputation in so far as his stamps are concerned. I suspect that his reputation will be somewhat diminished by presenting his certs the way he has. This being said, he has every right to do so. There is no law against it. Eventually, I believe, he will realize the stamping community will not accept his certs and will stop issuing them. Everyone issuing certs makes mistakes. When the mistake is made know it's how its remedied that's most important.

There is only one cert provider that I have little confidence with their "committee" and that is the PSE. A classic example is the attached cert that I have in my collection. Every time I look at it I have a good chuckle. Keep in mind that I made the purchase for the cert, not the stamp.

In as much as I only collect U.S. material I use Bill Weiss for any items I send off. I do so primarily for cost reasons but also because he's pretty damn good. But, he is getting old (No offense Bill) and who will I go to for my certs after Bill?

Nor can one man be expert in all areas and they should send off those stamps to others for additional opinions. It's also true that it takes years to become an expert in multiple areas of this hobby. Is this a reason to use one of the larger cert providers and not a one man show. Is this a subject for another topic?

Art



(Hint, it's NOT a 24)

Basil,
So the best approach to attract new hobbyists to philately just post big bold notices to anyone who is considering entry into our hobby 'you know what they say about a fool and his money' and 'Caveat emptor'? I really struggle with this attitude when it comes to a shrinking hobby. Let's put the cards on the table here. The long history of our hobby has been that knowing more than the next collector means a person can personally profit. Obviously many things in life are this way but this has been crushed with the paradigm shift known as the internet. Entire industries which were based upon this premise have been decimated; look no further than the printed newspaper/magazine industry.

To think that philately can come out on the other side of this paradigm shift unscathed is not reasonable. Of course there will always be a place for those who are willing to invest substantial amounts of time into learning but to hold onto old school principles moving forward is not healthy for our hobby. In my opinion we have to court new hobbyists by providing them with more help then we got when we entered philately.

Please allow me to draw an analogy. Keeping aquarium fish was a thriving hobby for many decades in both USA and Europe. It took a fair amount of learning, good equipment, and a source to buy your fish and supplies. But the hobby is now just a shadow of what it previously was; reasons are indeed varied and certainly include competition from things like videos games and television. But one very large factor was that 'starter kits' hit the market place which made it just about impossible to keep fish successfully. 'Fools and their money' ran out and thought that they could throw $19.95 for everything they would need to start a good hobby. Instead literally millions of these starter kits ended up in the garage sale after being abysmal failures and story after story of crying kids and stinky tanks drove the hobby into the ground. ebay is the 10 gallon starter kit of philately. If we do not help new hobbyists understand what it takes to avoid the pitfalls of buying the recycled, picked though 'left-overs' and mis-described material on the internet we are only accelerating the decline of our beloved hobby.

I completely understand the disdain and slippery slope of oversight regulations; I am not a fan. But I do not see how simply blowing off the issue of our shrinking hobby with 'buyer beware' is a solution at all. It certainly works for those who already 'know', those who already invested in learning what is needed to know to safely navigate the online offerings and self-certs. But we have to acknowledge those new hobbyists who never get that far, those who drop out silently and without ever being APS members or joining forums like this after being burnt. We all know that this is happening but no one can really put a number on it.
Don

Don,

In my opinion, I would much rather see information and education rather than enforcement and mandate, especially when it comes to ginormous behemoths like ebay.

Why?

Because in my 16 years on ebay as a buyer, seller, and advertising affiliate, almost without exception they will apply a lowest-common-denominator and simplest-to-implement-and-enforce policy.

In other words, a set of recommendations that philatelic groups might advocate re: listing or seller requirements, etc., will most likely, upon actual implementation, be transmogrified into a shotgun-approach broad-sweeping edict that the groups in question never envisioned.

NEVER assume ebay will take "the right way" over "the simple way".

I've seen it happen too many times...

Also, as you rightly mention, if indeed the ultimate solution to protecting buyers is "knowledge as power", then restriction, enforcement, or mandate do not actually accomplish that... they are treating the symptoms rather than the disease.

Don,

Accepting the reality of the problem described here, what are you suggesting be done about it?

If new hobbyists do not respond to all the "usual" recommendations--join APS or some other organization tailored to their interests; go to expos; subscribe to Linn's; join other collectors online in forums like SCF; build a library of catalogs or other literature relevant to their area of interest; and so on--I don't see how regulating the "experts" will help your concerns about the lack of growth in the hobby.

The problem here is not unique to stamp collecting. I'm a ham radio operator, and the same thing is happening there (difficulty attracting newcomers to the hobby).

Basil

Because in my 16 years on ebay as a buyer, seller, and advertising affiliate, almost without exception they will apply a lowest-common-denominator and simplest-to-implement-and-enforce policy.

In other words, a set of recommendations that philatelic groups might advocate re: listing or seller requirements, etc., will most likely, upon actual implementation, be transmogrified into a shotgun-approach broad-sweeping edict that the groups in question never envisioned.

NEVER assume ebay will take "the right way" over "the simple way".

For the most part, this is the way the whole world works, not just ebay. Because money can be made by knowing more than the next collector, greed will always trump education to some people. All any of us can do is put information out there, we cannot save every collector from making a fool of himself. And it is not usually the newbies who get hurt the most, it's the collector with 5 or 10 years experience who has a catalog level knowledge but is not really seriously knowledgeable about stamps. But they think they are, and so they get burned. You can lead a horse to water........

I agree that a certain amount of "oversight" or "regulation" or "licensing" could be helpful in some ways, but I can also see that it could immediately become a very messy can of worms. One has to be very careful for what one asks for. Philately is international; expertizing has international implications. I have yet to see an "international organization" which is not a bloated, costly, fiefdom about which at least half the people are not unhappy at least most of the time. There is a whole segment of people who get their kicks out of being on committees that have control over other people.

It would be interesting to have a voluntary U.S. based "board" which would lend its cachet to experts who apply and meet some criteria. However, as soon as not being a member of that group becomes an exclusion (which it would immediately; see Bill's posting about the Scott Catalogue listing of experts), then it is a problem. As soon as there is a list of "good people", not being on that list, for whatever reason, creates a list of people "not on the good people list". Furthermore, there would be "bad" people who would manage to get on that list, or "good people" who will go "bad" (failing eyesight, failing mental faculties, etc.). It is fairly common in philately for experts to keep working after they should have retired.

All that said, we seem to fully accept the APS accreditation of judges. I assume that is easier to accept because they are not acting in a variety of independent ways. Experts, however, are acting as individuals, members of committees, administrators of committees, etc., etc.

Jay

Dan,
Without question sharing knowledge and education are the best solution. As you know, I have often been an advocate for these things. Having folks participate in these discussions, in freely available forums like this one, certainly goes a long way towards reaching this objective. Obviously you subscribe to this, you have invested time and effort into publishing a good, free web site chock full of relevant information for a revenue collector.

And I absolutely agree with you that that the 800 pound gorilla ( ebay) is not going to change. Yet like the cheapo starter aquarium kits at WalMart, having sellers use marketing tools like self-certs without oversight may be the first things that a new hobbyists sees. Or to put it in a slightly different context, you of all people are well aware of the number of suspect, or even non-legitimate, ebay listings there are for part-perf first issue revenues. Beyond your efforts to educate new hobbyists via your web site and participation in public forums like this one, do we just look the other way if I start listing suspect part-perfs revenues with my own 'certs' designed to fool new hobbyists? Do we just sit back and shrug it off with 'people should know better and learn more' if I open multiple ebay accounts and screw over new hobbyists for years and years by mis-describing awful revenues that really belong in the trash can? (And by mis-describing I include 'lies of omission' in listings, those who throw a single front image of a stamp without mentioning any condition issues and think they are being slick by listing stamps this way. Or those who salt a lot or collection with a few under-described, high catalog value items and imply good value.)

In this lightning fast digital world some more is needed than the slow crumbling of the walls that surround the disparate sources freely available philatelic information. I proposed a open source metadata database specification 2 years ago but got little support. While well intentioned, even the Global Philatelic Library members have not been able to standardize on how they share information across their disparate databases and must jump through painful hoops every time they merge/index their resources. The more entrenched the various systems become without standardization, the more difficult it becomes to eventually be able to form a way to provide information across the entire hobby.

Basil,
Oversight need not be some commercial entity, nor does it have to be mandated. Art mentions above about Bill getting old, so let's use that as an example. A well respected certifier ages over time, his eye sight might become compromised, perhaps dementia begins to set in. At some point his certs become incorrect and faulty, but how long does it take for 'market forces' to catch up with this fact? It is not a stretch to think this might unfold over a period of years before it finally becomes obvious to all that certs after xx/xx/xxxx are not as valid as those that came before.

But if there was some oversight, perhaps even a non-profit voluntary mechanism that certifiers could subscribe to, this could be avoided. A few simple audits performed each year and/or track records published would quickly identify any problems quicker than the lag that market forces represent.

And of course this holds true for the reverse situation too. Rather than an experienced, older sage certifier we would now have a way to ensure that someone simply doesn't declare themselves an expert and start issuing certs without any real experience behind them.

I thank both of you for your thoughtful replies and questions. I know that oversight is no panacea and there are many examples where it only serves to increase costs. But in my opinion there are ways to implement oversight mechanisms that limit or even avoid this. If ebay turns a deaf ear on it then so be it, we can help fill the void with peer tools like the Stamp Smarter web site http://www.stampsmarter.com.
Respectfully,
Don

This has got to be one of the best discussions I have read in eons. I'd like to say 'thanks' to all the contributors (from beginning collectors to experts) for your input. I can think of no other format whereby all are welcome to speak.

If the hobby is to grow, then there will have to be a paradigm shift as Don suggests. Expertizing is just one area of many that need to be addressed. And it appears that SCF can, and will, play an important role in defining the future of philately.

Well done SCF!

Brian

Rileysan, agreed! Great thread

Lest anyone get the wrong impression, I am in no way suggesting sitting idly by and doing nothing. I'm not saying "Caveat emptor. *shrug*" That was another responder.

I do get concerned, however, whenever the discussion gravitates towards greater control or regulation. As with state and federal government, more restrictive laws are useless if you're not even bothering to enforce the existing ones... which is frequently ebay's approach.

I think that stampsmarter can ultimately be a useful tool in this effort. I like the changes that have been made recently, and even more so the removal of some of the initial content that was there. It's a more polished and professional presentation now. I now see an effort that I could get behind.

That said, I do have an issue with approved/published reports that simply state "I think this is fake" from an anonymous party, e.g., the listing for Scott 353. Without knowing who made the report, is it anything more than a random someone's opinion?

If the site is to be of use to BEGINNING COLLECTORS and not just experienced philatelists, then the reasons or diagnostics as to WHY the reporting party considers an item to be fraudulent absolutely MUST be a required part of any report prior to publication. Even something as simple as "the top edge is too ragged" or "the top edge is not parallel to the bottom" or some such would be sufficient.

Providing the reason behind a report also helps educating the reader, and in turn makes them a more savvy collector more able to protect themselves... which is the paramount objective, is it not?

It is my observation that it takes a very long time for the "market forces to catch up". And when the market forces do catch up, they don't behave exactly as one might initially expect (but one would expect if one thinks about the dark side).

I can think of two individual expertizers of particular segments of Scandinavian philately who got too old to be issuing certificates (by then the late 1960s and early 1970s). They continued at least 3-4 years too long. (There are also a couple others that never should have been doing it in the first place, but that's a different subject.)

A 'funny' thing happened. Almost all of their later-period _good_ certificates are rarely seen; they have been replaced by modern certificates. However, there seem to be a lot of their later-period certificates for questionable / problematic items that are still floating around because they would probably not get completely "clean" certificates today.

This is common knowledge to deep specialist collectors and experienced dealers in those respective areas. However, it is one of those "secrets" that does not get widely discussed. In my opinion this is because a) talking about bad certificates is perceived by some as discrediting the whole concept of certificates and b) some people think they are able to profit from the existence of bad certificates if they happen to buy or own an item that has one.

Jay

"If the site is to be of use to BEGINNING COLLECTORS and not just experienced philatelists, then the reasons or diagnostics as to WHY the reporting party considers an item to be fraudulent absolutely MUST be a required part of any report prior to publication. Even something as simple as "the top edge is too ragged" or "the top edge is not parallel to the bottom" or some such would be sufficient";

This is a good and reasonable point. I am on record as saying that for me personally, given my busy life, to be compelled to spell out reasons why I think a coil (for example) is not genuine pretty much amounts to me being compelled to teach any reader how to self-expertize a coil, so the time factor + the free teaching factor has caused me to be unwilling to do so. However, I am going to reconsider, and in the future will do my best to spell out the reason(s) I believe a coil is fake. Thank you for the prompt.

I also am pleased to see you make positive comments both about StampSmarter as well as the overall goal of trying to help those with less knowledge then more advanced collectors. Therefore I propose that we mutually agree to try our best to put aside any personal animosity which might previously existed and going forward try to "make a difference" by subscribing to the concepts and aims of StampSmarter and it's overall mission. I hope you (and every reader!) will agree?

Fair enough. I'm happy to participate as time permits.