APS Expertizing Service Errors?

Anyone had experience with incorrect ID's by the APS Expertizing Service? I have seen quite a few over the years in items I have purchased. Most recently I spied an item on the website of a very knowledgeable and respected dealer, with an APEX Cert identifying as US #24. I could tell even by the low-res image that this was not correct, so I ordered the item. Turns out to have been a #23, Type IV, recut once top and twice bottom, position 41L1L. How is it possible for an expert committee to certify this item as Scott #24, Type V, genuine? In any event, I got a fault-free F-VF centered #23 for $15 (sorry, no image available).

I doubt there is much sanction for getting it wrong, for one thing. The seller thinks he made a fair sale, the buyer knows he got a good deal. Who is going to take the time to tell the APS that they are wrong?

I guess I'll comment that I've never had any reason to doubt the APS and its expertising. I am concerned about the hearsay given by the original poster ("I have seen quite a few over the years......."). What exactly does that mean? Were any of these certs with questions returned to the APS? Will you be returning the current cert, with stamp, to the APS for a re-review? If not, I agree with smauggle; you got a good deal. Why point fingers?

Just wondering is all. No, I won't return it--no reason to. But I have purchased a number of stamps (personal experience, not "hearsay") over the course of 50 years collecting with APS certs that I know are wrong (items bought on the basis of what I knew they really were, not what the cert said they were). Many of these, including the current one, are egregious mistakes.

Certs are documented opinions, and any opinion can be incorrect. Obviously the desire is that when a person pays for an opinion they expect it to be correct. But this desire does not change the fact that opinions can be wrong.

I think there is room for improvement. When a mistake is made there should be full transparency, acknowledgement and a correction published. I know of one case where the certifying body made a mistake, it was pointed out to them 6 years ago and they said they would publish a correction but never did. Even worse when this same incorrect cert was revisited two years ago the president of the company again acknowledged the mistake, said it would be corrected, but to this day the cert is still listed online as legitimate.

Compounding the issue is that many certs do not carry the name(s) of the actual person who performed the examination.

I think that it is understood that everyone makes mistakes. But without better transparency and communication, consumers have no quantified method for determining expertization service performance. I wish all expertization services would quickly resolve and document any mistaken certs. They might feel that keeping the mistake under the radar is the best marketing approach but I wonder if the opposite is actually true.
Don
APS #094826

I'll add that I am not an active collector of classic US. I have had a couple classic US items receiving APS certs in the past 10-12 years, and both were found to not be what I thought. No, I was not out any significant money as both were part of much larger collections. Perhaps dudley might consider becoming an APS reviewer since it sounds like he has some considerable knowledge of classic US.

Don raises good points about transparency. I also have certs from two different, non-US, specialty societies that do certifications. Both provide the reviewer(s) name(s) on the certs. I have around 100 certs just from one of those two specialty groups. I have my own references and for most of those 100, could have done my own review. But I'm not considered an expert, or have not tried to obtain such a designation. So, I needed the certs.

All expertisers make mistakes, it is a question as to whether one of them is any better or worse than the other ones that cover a particular area. I have my own opion as to which ones are better and worse when it comes to US, but without the stamps and certs in hand to show, I will not give such an opinion in a public forum.

Dudley --

Mistakes do happen from time to time when it comes to certifications. I'd be glad to have the certification evaluated and corrected, if necessary, at no cost to you. I agree with Steve, we should make sure that the certifications are good for future use and since we post these online for people to go back to, I would like to make sure the record is corrected.

Please contact me at scott@stamps.org and will coordinate with our expertizing team to get it in and reviewed.

Scott

Of course I don't personally know if this particular certificate is right or wrong, but I think it's awesome that there is an APS official who has become active in this forum and who is willing to step up and see that a possible certification problem is addressed and, if necessary, corrected.

I have erroneous certificates from all of the major U.S. expertizing organizations. In my experience, APS certificates are far from the worst. It would happen less frequently if all of the "experts" were really experts on the stamps that they are examining.

Scott, thank you for your response. I will be in contact.

sinclair: not trying to be flippant here. If you have a level of knowledge that allows you to know that certs are erroneous, have you thought of becoming a reviewer? See my comment on ikey pikey's thread. Reviewers do their work gratis, at least for APS and robably most specialty societies. How to keep those individuals volunteering and still have more transparency may be the big time question here.

True enough but I think the answer is straight forward, pay the experts.

I think part of the problem is the screwy fee schedules that are used by certifying organizations. What is up with 'the higher the catalog value the higher the cost of the cert'? Huh? Do higher dollar stamps always take more time or incur more resources?

Some stamps are huge time sucks, others are not. If an expert can immediately determine a stamp as fake, why would the fee be the same for another which takes 10 times as long? When fees are based upon catalog values, two stamps might have identical catalog value yet take vastly different times to certify. Plating is another example, some plating might take 20 seconds, same stamp but different plate might take an hour, yet the plating fee is the same?

I think the 'logic' that is being used is, 'if we tell a hobbyist that their stamp is valued at big bucks, then we can charge them much more and they will accept it.'
Don

Don: I think one may need to differentiate between getting US items certified vs. other countries. If a collector has enough knowledge to know a certificate of authenticity may be needed, then maybe they should be expected to do some of the legwork themselves. There are all sorts of resources out on the web; and many persons may live near one of the philatelic libraries, or be a member of one.

My main specialty is not US, but is Portuguese colonies. Years ago, I bought a Portuguese India collection. There were a lot of surcharged Crown issues (1877---) that I wondered about the surcharges being genuine; around two dozen. But I never sent them off for certs because I could see that the underlying stamps were Fournier forgeries. I did get a few certs for surcharges, but the actual stamps were genuine.

Don,

Don't overlook the marketing value, that is the resale value, of the certificate to the owner/seller. That is, if the society certifies a high-dollar stamp, that stamp naturally will command a higher price in the market when the owner goes to sell it. My view is that the certificate price basically is a "cut" of the future sales price of the stamp. "We've told you that you have a $5,000 stamp? Then we want a cut."

Chris

Don,

The major expertizing committees, APEX, PF, PSE and PSAG, will reduce the price of a cert to the minimum if the stamp is a less valuable Scott catalog number. In some cases stamps may be returned at no charge. PSE and perhaps others may offer reduced rates for high catalog value stamps with faults or poor centering.

I have seen bad certificates from PF, APEX and PSE. I haven't seen any bad PSAG certs yet. Older certificates are the most problematic, especially some older PF and APEX certs. Forensic equipment like the now obsolescent CrimeScope or more modern Video Spectral Comparators (VSC), expertizing committees have a better chance of finding alterations like removed cancels. Using a VSC for watermark detection, while generally effective, has not been fully validated. More research is needed.

To the extent that expertizing can become a science instead of merely opinions based on having seen a lot of stamps. Placing certificates in an on-line searchable database will help reduce repeated attempts to achieve a good certificate or may help uncover cases where an owner with conflicting certificates discards the unfavorable one.

Clark