Imperforate Revenues First Issue: Good Scissors Or Real Deal Collection?

Why? The only way that the PF should get involved with any of this is if any of the items get sent in for a new cert. Since a scan will NOT give enough information, there is nothing else to say. Apparently no one is allowed to have an opinion here unless you agree with it.

Yes, that is exactly how it works. When a company is sold, the new owner generally acquires all of the inventory, customer base, employees, assets, trademarks, furnishings, accounts receivable, and so on.

They also get all of the liabilities, outstanding debt, accounts payable, etc. They don't get to magically walk away from the previous owner's responsibilities.

Now, if the previous owner simply sold their assets and inventory to another person, and that person opened a business in their own name, that is entirely different.




There is a law called the Statute of Limitations that would be applicable in the example that you suggested.




This suggests that you would have no issue at all with, for example, a retail store refusing to refund a return of some faulty merchandise that you purchased at the store a week ago, even though the ownership of the store had changed a few days ago? You would simply shrug and take your broken item back home?




Do you honestly feel that that type of comment is appropriate for a mature stamp collector to make to another fellow collector on a chat board?

Jim

Why are you bring up something that happened a week ago when we are clearly dealing in decades here? And since you bring up a statute of limitations here, there is no way that someone would be held legally or morally responsible for a mistake made 20 or 30 years ago by a previous owner. In retail the most one usually has is 7-10 days. Days, not decades. And yes I do, since you clearly seem to think that any mistake not in your favor must be refunded no matter how many years ago it was or who actually made it. If they are dead just dig them up and make them pay.

Guys, at the end of the day, this is all moot. Even if you believe that these expertizing services *should* guarrantee/wearranty all of their decisions, legally and logistically that's not how it (currently) works.

1. Expertizing is worded as "an opinion" for a reason, as it is at its base, a SUBJECTIVE determination, not objective. It's not binding. Yes, an individual auction house or collecting body can consider it binding, but that is at the discretion of that external entity (and thus the liability is upon them, not the expertizer).

2. How would compensation be determined? Is it what the submittor originally paid, the current owner originally paid, current market value? It can't be what was on the expertizing form, as that is almost always full catalog value regardless of condition.

3. As long as the terms and conditions of the expertizing service indicated on the form (which the client agrees to by submitting items) don't express a guarantee, legally there isn't one.

This doesn't even get into the issue of prevailing grading and philatelic standards evolving over time and the possibility of a stamp being determined a genuine XXX 20-40 years ago might not be determined so today.

My entire point is that the "reality" of expert certificates from, apparently, most foundations or services, is that they have a very finite shelf life (except for the APS certs).

The opinion(s) may change at any time in the future.

This 'secret' knowledge of how these certificates actually work in the real world is disingenuous to the typical stamp collector.

Many collectors spend a lot of money on their stamps, and their primary assurance that they are getting what they paid for is provided by the authentication services.

Yes, they need to study the stamps themselves to fully understand what they are buying, but the certificate of genuineness helps them to sleep well at night (at a minimum).

The services advertise and boast of XX decades of combined experience, owning giant reference collections, having huge libraries, and using high-tech electronic tools of all sorts.

But when push comes to shove, all of that is just so much hot air, as there is nothing more to it because the services are just expressing an "opinion."

I just think that when a collector actually realizes this, there might be more than just some mild disappointment.

And there is a way to fix this.

Jim

Sorry Dan, maybe I incorrectly expressed myself.

The certificate has nothing to do with compensation.

If a certificate-issuing entity is going to properly stand behind their official opinion, that someone has paid them good money to render, then they should (in my opinion) offer a free replacement certificate if the opinion changes at any point in the future.

I would consider this a guarantee, that you will always have an accurate certificate, good or bad.

Of course, if the opinion doesn't change, then the collector or dealer would have to pay for the new certificate.

That's it.

Whatever financial fallout that results from a change in the opinion on the certificate is between the buyer and seller.

Jim

It ALWAYS been a good idea to redo a decades old cert if you are buying the item. If you originally got the cert and have treated the stamp correctly then there usually is no need. And more then 99% of all PF certs are accurate based on the few which are overturned. And certs have ALWAYS been an opinion; having all the tools you are now saying are just hot air enable the possibility of that 99+% accuracy. Most of what is known about any philatelic item from before we were born involves at least some level of opinion, and sometimes it's all opinion based on experience because that is all the info available.

I might add that for many collectors the authentication service is not used to validate their expert opinion but rather it is used to validate the item because the collectors are not experts themselves and nor should all collectors be expected to be experts. You may be highly educated in revenues but not in certain front of book classics or Wash-Frank coils and so on. As James states certificates provide a comfort level that is the grease that lubricates many collectors wallets when they wish to step up to the next financial level. Heck, after reading this thread I would be very hesitant to dabble in these revenue issues if the PF certs are so easily brought into question. I am drastically expanding my US collection as we speak but if the value of certificates became reasonably questionable I might think long and hard about how far I wish to go and scale back or stop my efforts. Throwing around doubt is not healthy for the hobby and I have yet to hear the primary person casting doubt provide any concrete evidence that a certificate is wrong. Lots of smoke but no fire. It would be helpful if Revcollector for instance stated in the affirmative that a cert was wrong and provide the unarguable reasons why that is so. Otherwise it is just another opinion expressed without benefit of the resources that the PF has at their disposal.

As it happens, when it comes to revenues I have those resources available to me. However to AGAIN restate, it is just an opinion based on the information available from the scans. Without actually seeing the item in question nothing else is possible. Current revenue PF certs are very accurate; however some older certs may not be, just as is true with any other area. We are still talking about a very tiny fraction here. Wondering about this specific stamp is no reason to not trust PF certs in general. If that specific stamp had not been posted none of this would have come up. It just happens that this particular stamp is faked a lot and always has been. The shade, the impression, the cancel date, and the paper give it away far more often then the margins do. Those things must be seen in hand.

Roger,

The safest, but not the cheapest, way to acquire authentic revenue stamps is from one of the top tier dealers in this area: Eric Jackson and Richard Friedberg. Every item that they offer is genuine, unless of course they state otherwise.

This is not a free plug for them, but it is the truth.

As they are (or were) both experts on several committees of the expertizing firms, when you buy from them, it's just like getting a free (verbal) certificate.

Jim

Gentlemen, you lost the original poster 3 pages ago.

Or, since those 3 pages have been over less than a 24-hour time period, perhaps he hasn't had time to be back to the forum. People do have lives, after all. Making the assumption that has anything to do with the tenor or nature of the discussion is a bit of a reach at this point.

"As they are both experts on several committees of the expertizing firms"

Actually they are not. I know the PF will ask both for their opinion on specific items, but they are not part of a "committee". They both used to do work for PSE, but my understanding is that PSE does everything in house for the last decade or so.

James - Thank you for naming some people to deal with that have your trust. I mainly deal with Christopher Rupp for my front of book and less complex back of book material and he is awesome in so many ways.

yeah, still here. was up at Saratoga enjoying races
getting anxiety reading these posts
appreciate helpful hints in the middle of the debate




blue proprietary stamp? any chance? value?
very nice collection here