Do People Toss Bad Certifications?

Climber,

sorry for the hijack of the thread. Perhaps you need to find more worldwide collectors willing to post certs and stamp scans as examples to debate. Just trying to post examples where a collector could easily throw out a "bad" cert. But I apologize for the hijack.

I do agree with you that the expertizers listed on PF website are very scant. I clicked on revcollector link and really didn't find a great answer to who is expertizing over there. There were like 2 guys listed on the site, one who specializes mainly in carriers/locals (head guy I think). I think PF could do a better job. One guy lives in NYC so I assume he may be a "go to" kind of guy. Obviously no reputations are at stake since they don't even list their experts. (except for 2 or 3). I would assume they have many consultants that do work for them. How come these names aren't listed? Everyone is so concerned about reputation yet we can't even get the name of the guy that is their consultant for 1851 one cent Franklin. These 2-3 people cannot do it all! (specialize in everything!)


They do list the name of the guy who intakes/books/prepares the stamps and scans them, and the secretary. They look like nice people.

rg

"Could the unwritten rule be "Faults: find one and done"?"

No. Although after a certain point it becomes sort of meaningless to say anything but "small faults", or "just "faulty". However many expertisers do try to avoid "piling on" if possible, after two thins and a tear they might not mention a crease. But not in a case like this, a tear would surely have been mentioned.

The PF site only lists the paid employees who work regularly. There are many unpaid "consultants" who will be called upon for a wide range of items if needed. Exactly what purpose would be served by naming them all, except to give collectors more people to chase down when they don't like an opinion.

You make it sound like a secret society. Bill Weiss must of thought differently. Maybe PSE and PF worried about losing business to someone with a great reputation: keep the consultants a secret? I am not familiar with PSAG.. is this a spin off by a guy who was at PSE with a solid reputation????

Bill Weiss had a whole group of consultants that he regularly asked for help. And he didn't publicize that fact. I know it's true, because I was one of them. He only did the easy ones by himself.

Wow. Nice respect there.

Sorry if the truth hurts, but it is what it is. His level of respect from other professionals was very different from his level of respect among collectors.

Thread is taking a bad turn. Anyone want to go back and comment on perfs on 1$ trans#128522;?

"I am not familiar with PSAG..........." http://stampauthentication.com . Web site of J. Randall Shoemaker, founder of PSE and creator of stamp grading. I have no comment regarding reputation, for reasons I don't care to share. He does list his reviewers. Although he does certs for Canada & provinces, lists just one reviewer for that. He does seem to have a "who's who" of US experts; although some US experts, most notably Ken Lawrence, are not listed as consultants.

There are a lot of truths that are best kept to oneself. My respect for him comes from what I know he contributed to the hobby, including this community in which he was willing to donate money and time to help others. I also try not to say negative things about people who are deceased.
Don

I agree that he did good things for the hobby; I liked him personally. But the statement was made that he did "thought differently" about expertising, and did so without consultants and "not like some secret society", which is far from the truth.

It also happens that I have been friends with one of the expertisers at the PF for 45 years, and I know how knowledgeable he is on US stamps. I also know that he retains his adaptability and his willingness to hear other opinions while able to articulate his own; he does not allow ego to get in the way of what he feels is a correct opinion. I know how much he has freely taught me over the years.

Adding perfs to a natural straight edge is not the only time they alter the perfs - they will reperf a stamp to "fix" short or pulled pers or to try to improve the centering. And sometimes they also scrape off guidelines.

No. I was responding to your saying that you would go with what you see, and I was saying you don't have such equipment.

They don't compete for business the same way that stamp expertizers do. Few people travewl outside their local area for health care, and many are stuck using a group defined by what health insurance company they use, so they can't even pick among local choices without changing plans or forking out huge $.

FYI-the VSC6000 can do very high magnification to the point where individual paper fibers can be seen. It also sees color as layers, so it is possible to remove the stamp color and still leave any other colors showing, such as cancels, dirt, etc. Or a cancel can be removed from sight to see what is underneath. That is why I say it's impossible to hide a cleaned cancel from it, traces will always show up at such high magnifications. I have seen it in operation, it's a remarkable machine.