Cherrystone Extension Request - Declined

Made an Extension Request (before bidding of course) on an Indian Scinde Dawk, as it looked too good to be true - ORIGINAL GUM et all.. but no certs.

Very surprised with this response.
"Sorry we cannot accept any extensions to the BPA as they take far too long to render a decision (often two years or more)."

Isn't that an indicator that the auction house themselves don't trust the sale item?

Any one has similar experience.?

*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

Not in the least, if the 2-year certification time is correct. It's just a business decision based on throughput and cashflow needs of them or their consignor. They or the consignor prefer to sell to someone (likely at a lower price) who will buy with no cert, assuming all associated risk. No seller is going to wait for 2 years.

If the cert turnaround time was 1-3 months, then you'd have a point, or the auction house would have gotten the cert before offering the item.

I agree with cj. There could be a variety of legitimate factors in denying such a request. If you aren't sure it's legit, don't get it.

Presumably the RPSL would be a good deal quicker?

But given the number of fakes moving around this specific stamp, I am inclined to take one without a cert.

If I ever get one, I would rather get it checked out by legit sources.

So I skipped it.. It went for 1300 I think in today's auction. Someone took the gamble

2 years? FFS. I can't blame them not wanting to put themselves and/or the consigner on hold for years.

Sounds like it's an area where you need to buy an item already with a cert rather than getting it certed yourself... at least if extension is involved.

I'm sure Brandon would have done a quick turn on a cert

Pretty poor on the Auction house to except this stamp without a certificate in the first place.
Attitudes like this encourage forgers to continue knowing there will always be bunnies willing to fork out $$$$.
Even better when endorsed by an auction house with an aim to make as much money from the transaction as possible.
We have a so called leading auction house in Sydney that often lists up forged Junk with this little disclaimer "due to the difficulty in authenticating this material we are offering as is but we believe in all aspects its genuine"
Sorry if an auction house cannot identify and guarantee what it is selling then find one that does

What?

It's not up to the auction house to guarantee anything. It is standard practice to accept items both with and without expertization, lot them accordingly and as accurately as possible, and then let the marketplace decide.

If you as the buyer are choosing an expertizer with a 2-year timeframe that's your problem not the auction house's. Either choose a different expertizer whose turnaround is acceptable to the auction house or bid/don't bid accordingly on the possibility the item might not be what it is claimed to be.

There's a reason that "caveat emptor" is a pillar concept of auction buying.

IMO there is zero fault here on the part of the auction house.

Weirdly, I agree with RevCollector on this one. The auction house are in this game for a profit. So I can't blame them much.

It was up to me to exercise my common sense in this scenario and let it go. I did and will wait for one with a cert to come in the market.

But If I were the auctioneer, I would have at-least sent it to PF or another local expertizing agency to get an initial cert...

That way, at-least my credibility is protected to some extent. I would have refused to sell one without a cert .

I might even recommend the seller to get one (citing that it might increase the odds of sale or even increase the market value).

I will not be sacrificing my credibility over $150 (15% of 1000).

That's what I found lacking in this situation.

Funnily, most of their items on that auction have a BPA cert on them.. Only this and a few other center pieces.

I cannot believe a general purpose seller / auction house can be an expert on everything nor can control all consigned materials. The buyer has to assume some risk.

I add my opinion to those already expressed. Both the auction house and buyer have to agree on a mutual acceptable authority. A 2 year turnaround is, to me, totally unacceptable and grounds for rejection of that expertizer.

My initial thought is: "Why did the owner of the stamp not have it expertized?" If it is rare & difficult to expertize, it probably would be in the best interest of the owner to do the deed. If the stamp is genuine, the cost of expertization would likely be more than recouped by a higher selling price at auction. The fact that this has presumably not been done would seem to reduce the likelihood that the item is genuine (at least in the eyes of the owner).

Why would someone in the US use BPA when the American Philatelic Society and Philatelic Foundation are perfectly capably of rendering quality decisions in far less time?

Steve - The item in question is an Indian Scinde Dawk... Hence the BPA or RPS... Heard Earlier from another collector who asked for either RPS or BPA and his request also got rejected it seems.

So it might have been a consignor's choice I think !

Whatever it is.. the wait continues for my favorite stamp (obviously if comes at the right price) !

I know nothing about the expertization of Scinde Dawks, but to me the answer to this riddle isn't hard -- I would guess the consignor didn't want to wait 2 years either, and was willing to take a heavy hit on the price instead.