tom: i may be wrong but i think chris was pointing at my post.

re: my post and troy's response

first, i think it's a great thing that MEARS has the character to respond, promptly and in full, to these things. perhaps one day lampson will grow a pair, come out from under his rock and follow their example. so hat's off to troy for not ducking things. to the issues:

"Dave Bushing and I purchased this item at the show at the 2007 National Convention in Cleveland...I authored both the MEARS LOO and the supporting article."

if the actual ownership was joint between troy and bushing then the fact that troy wrote the letter and not dave is irrelevant. if you have ownership in the item, you don't write the letter on it. very simple stuff to grasp, especially for an organization that has long trumpeted the importance of true-third party authentication. if you purchase an item and then you evaluate your own item after you've purchased it, how is that third-party authentication? how is it not a conflict of interest, which MEARS has also long railed against?

"Yes, an A10 grade was given, but the jersey and its merits were carefully chronicled in the detailed MEARS LOO and had nothing to do with Bushings ownership."

the jersey may, or may not, very well merit an A10. that's not the issue in the least. the issue solely centers around the inherit existance of bias in evaluating items you own, regardless of whether the grades are justified.

"What I do feel is that a high majority of active bidders and collectors do not have issues with MEARS members buying and evaluating their own items. This is illustrated by higher prices realized of MEARS evaluated items, even on the items owned and disclosed as being owned by Dave Bushing."

most don't have an issue with it and MEARS items sell for more. all completely irrelevant to the issue. what's right is right regardless of whether people have a problem with it or not. ethical behavior isn't a popularity or profit-making contest.

re: disclosure

i'll say it again: disclosure doesn't eliminate the conflict. it only informs people of the conflict.

"Authenticators John Taube and Lou Lampson are also dealers that have consigned to auction houses in the past. To my knowledge, they have yet to adopt the full disclosure practice mandated by MEARS, yet they never receive criticism."

well this i did not know. i always suspected lampson authenticated and consigned his own items into his buddies' auctions because hey that's just the sort of guy that lou is but with doug allen's dodgy responses and mastro's bizarre refusal to identify their authenticators, i never had any proof. hard to criticize without proof. if taube's consigning and authenticating his own items into auctions, then it's as much a conflict of interest as when bushing does it. taube once told me he didn't authenticate his own items, disclosure or not. i believed him.

"If the current crop of authenticators are still consigning items they own, the collecting public does not know as I know of no formal method of the identification of these items and the disclosure of their owners. Dave received the criticism, as he was the only person disclosing."

ok dave gets kudos for disclosing however holding him up against the current crop of authenticators sets the pretty bar low. who are we talking about here..lampson, coppola, cocchi? i'd name mastro's mystery team but doug keeps them a bigger secret than the colonel's original recipe. MEARS made its name by setting themselves to a higher standard. comparing dave to the current crop of authenticators seems to go against that.

"But, I guess if you do not disclose, how can anybody see the self applied target on your back? Next time you receive an item in auction that was authenticated as real or you get a PSA letter with a high grade, it might have been owned by Taube or Lampson, but you will never really know due to the lack of full disclosure policies for these individuals."

i'd like to see taube address this issue. anyway, troy the inherant problem in what you write above is that, due to various factors, folks have the expectation of the highest ethical standards from MEARS. clearly they don't have that same expectation from lampson. sure, in a way you've done it to yourself but i don't think you'd rather go skulking around the shadows and end up as nothing more than a reviled laughing stock.

rudy.