2016: SHOULD BE THE YEAR OF MAJOR SPORTS CARD and AUTOGRAPH CHANGES & RANDOM THOUGHTS

2016 Can't Be Worse Than 2015, Can it?

 

I guess I'll start with what's been happening with me and the hobby most recently:

 

 I keep getting phone calls from the same Asian woman who works for BECKETT Marketing. She called twice in 2015 (March and Sept.) I politely told her both times EXACTLY WHY I'll never pay for any Beckett Magazine again. She gave up after my explanation. Then she calls me a few days ago (Jan 8th 2016) and again, the same exact Asian woman. This time she said "we listened to your complaints and we have been making changes." So I told her to send me a copy for free so I can see these changes for myself. She made me hold while she asked her Supervisor. She comes back and says "we can add a complimentary 13th issue to any subscription you make" and I said "WELL THEN IT'S NO AND BECKETT STILL DOESN'T GET IT!".

Beckett did so much harm to the hobby by buying Beckett from Dr. Jim Beckett and then making all kinds of changes "THEY THOUGHT" would save them money yet keep their subscription base the same. They obviously don't know the first thing about this hobby because one of the first things they did was hire CHRIS OLDS whose the most boring person I could imagine running Beckett Baseball. He's not only boring, on his YouTube box breaks for Beckett I literally yawned more than once watching him. He's the WORST PERSON imaginable to open boxes to show new products to collectors because he never gets excited when he pulls very expensive cards (because he doesn't get to keep them) which shows how little he cares about other collectors. All of their Price Guides ARE WAY OFF the true values of all cards in this hobby (both ones that should have gone up & ESPECIALLY CARDS THAT SHOULD HAVE GONE DOWN DRASTICALLY AND NEVER DID!

 

BECKETT MEDIA HAS BEEN FOR SALE (AGAIN) SINCE 2008, AND COULDN'T FIND ONE INTERESTED BUYER! No surprise from me!, they made themselves USELESS as a Price Guide and useless as a neutral entity providing the TRUTH about what is going on in the hobby (especially about MAJOR screw-ups CURRENT card companies have made)!

 

ANY CHANGES BECKETT THINKS IT MADE WAS TOO LITTLE TOO LATE, AND THE ONLY PLACE THEY SHOULD START IS BY SENDING A FREE COPY TO EVERYONE WHO HAS HAD ANY SUBSCRIPTION IN THE LAST 3-YEARS (MINIMUM) AND SEND THEM A FREE COPY OF THE PRICE GUIDE THEY BOUGHT THE MOST IN THE PAST! (this Asian woman knew about guides I purchased going back to 2008!).

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WHY CERTIFIED CARD COMPANY STICKER AUTOGRAPHS WILL BE WORTH FAR LESS THAN NOW IN 5-YEARS OR LESS.

 

I NEVER understood why anyone would pay anything for a STICKER autograph when there are already, or will soon be On Card Autographs of the exact same player. We all know the only easy to pull autographs in most products in all sports are rookies. This is because card companies have far greater & easier access to rookie autographs AND they are the cheapest autographs for card companies to buy on average. Plus rookies are far more likely to return all items sent to them to be autographed ads rookies to establish a good relationship with card companies until they are making Multi-Millions dollars a year in their sports.

 

Card companies LOSE a lot of money if they send cards to be autographed and they are never returned. This happens far more often than any card company would ever admit. In the late 1990's and early 2000's card companies often had to buy a whole new set of printing plates if they wanted certain player autographs in their specific brand product because the player never returned the cards they were supposed to sign, OR they were lost in the mail. Those plates cost $5,000 for one set of four in 2001. The price couldn't have changed too much lower since 2001 since the technology is basically the same as 2001. THIS IS THE ONLY REASON CARD COMPANIES STARTED USING TONS OF STICKER AUTOGRAPHS ACROSS THEIR PRODUCT BRANDS! They first came up with lame excuses to make collectors & dealers alike that this was done for THEIR benefit and to eradicate Redemption cards which we all now know was a TOTAL LIE!

 

I had the very unique opportunity in 2001 to be invited to tour the Playoff facilities after befriending Ann Blake (former Playoff owner and one of the company starters) in March, 2001 right after I caused Pacific Trading Cards to lose ALL their baseball licensing for making ALL fake "Game-Used" bat and jersey cards in 2001 Private Stock Baseball. She & I spoke on the phone for 1-2 hours daily as she picked my brain for so many long-standing problems that not one of her current employees had a clue how to answer. This is what happens when card companies hire hobby know-nothings to deter theft which is what most card companies were doing by 2000.

 

After my full tour of Playoff, they had a party for the mail-room ($5.00 an hour) employee who came up with the idea to use Staples (or whatever stationary supply Super store) holo-foil return address labels for autographs. Right after the party I pulled this celebrated idiot aside and told him "You have created a way for card companies to get autographs that benefits ONLY them, and in several years these sticker autographs will be worth far less than On Card autographs which is the only way REAL autograph collectors collect autographs.". I told him how ignorant his idea was and how card company greed is the only reason they adopted his idea. I'm sure that dampened his "party" (and I'm happy I did that because no one knows his name or what he did even a year after he invented that idea). I always refused to "kiss" anyone's anything in this hobby since 1992 when I started fighting hobby fraud and I always spoke my mind to the person responsible as often as I possibly (whether a small dealer crook, or a CARD COMPANY OWNER crook) could unless card companies wouldn't let me speak to the responsible party.  

 

The PROBLEMS that sticker autographs started from the very first product they were ever in: 2001 Score Select Football which was supposed to be one of Playoff's Medium-Premium Football releases; which turned out to be THEIR WORST release of 2001, period. They sent me two review boxes (my first voluntary job for Playoff before they hired me). The first autograph I pulled out of Box #1completely rubbed off totally in one light swipe of my thumb. The ink was totally dry, but the ink literally disintegrated into tiny pieces??? That first box was missing the "GUARANTEED" FB Low Serial Numbered RC. The next box had the #'ed RC, but was missing the again "GUARANTEED" (which was printed right on the outside of the box) RC Autograph!
After Playoff have nearly every employeebusting many boxes of this product each and notingwhat was MISSING, they relealized that 66%-75% of all boxes were missing one of the "GUARANTEED" hits.
Then I dicovered that about 25% the FINAL SCORE inserts were missing the Serial Number on the backs. The highest any number of these FINAL SCORE cards made was 16, which were Serial Numbered to the number of WINSthe player's team won during the 2000 season. I still have a Peter Warrick FINAL SCORE with a blank space where the Serial Number was supposed to be! This is when the Bengals SUCKED and only won 2 or 3 games in 2000. But because these were so rare, BECKETT never listed any of these cards (back then they NEVER listed any cards that existed in numbers of 25 or less). So whenever this happens, no one knows what unnumbered cards would be worth (the rarest of all) so most people simply forgot they even existed. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET CARD COPMPANIES & PRICE GUIDES THINK FOR YOU! Plus it's TEN TIMES worse now since Beckett is the last Guide left and they've been USELESS since Dr. Jim Beckett (he's a doctor of statistics) sold out in 2005 a FILTHY RICH man right before the hobby collapsed worst than it have ever been. You can say a lot of things about Jim Beckett (both positive and negative), but he knew when to dump his company regardless of how it effected every collector; that's for sure!!!     

  

Back to sticker autographs... next sticker autographs caused players to unnaturally shrink their autographs to fit the SMALL size of nearly all stickers. This in the long-term either created two different autographs for many, many players; or caused players to shorten their autographs FOR GOOD. Now I'm not blaming playersin nearly all sports scribbling their initials for at least the last 5-years, but stickers were part of the reason!

Then there were a decent amount of WRONG PLAYER autograph stickers being placed on cards and upside-down autograph stickers. Plus the LARGE nunber of crookedly placed sticker autograph and the large number of players who couldn't stay within the lines of the stickers, so you'd get part of one autograph on a sticker, and part of another. Then there are the FREQUENTsticker autographs where the ink went off the sticker on large letters like the first letter of each name (first and/or last or both). THESE ARE UGLY AND TRUE AUTOGRAPH COLLECTORS WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS JUNK!

 

I've been trying to get Beckett to do a Certified Autograph Insert (CAI) ONLY Price Guide since at least 2001 by sending an e-mail to every Beckett employee I had an e-mail address for (I sent an e-mail to at least six employees every year since 2001). Yet they totally ignored me, even thought I sent this request with all the correct reasons WHY such a Price Guide is NEEDED with updated reasons every year, AND ideas for what should be included in an Autograph Insert Only Price Guide (like putting O/C for On Card autos/and STKR or something similar to identify sticker autographs, plus noting all CAI Variaions like the onceVERY popular 1996 Leaf Signature Series Carlos Delgado Blue/Black Ink variations) since Certified Autograph Inserts (CAI's) have been the HOTTEST Inserts from 1996-present (and much earlier in football with the Pro Line autographs- especially 1991 & 1992 which I credit Bill Barron with starting the CAI craze). It's never been easy getting Football autographs as compared to baseball. So when Bill Barron released 1992 Pro Line with an autograph per box (w/Walter Payton, Emmitt Smith, Muhammad Ali, & Ali/Cassius Clay combos plusso many other HIGHLY SOUGHT after ON CARD autos ONLY) it ignited the whole hobby into loving CAI's and wanting MORE & MORE in every sport!!!

Then they finally did a yearly one in 2014 & 2015 and it was VERY EXPENSIVE!!! Considering the Executives at Beckett Media, I wouldn't take the chance buying either of these guides because chances are HEAVY that they out nothing in those Guides that I don't already know! I asked SEVERAL Beckett Writers for a Complimentary copy to no avail, and every collector I asked about these Guides never bought one. So I can't even find out if one is worth buying for over a YEAR asking dozens of collectors AND dealers about these books??? NO ONE KNOWS BECAUSE THEY NEVER BOUGHT ONE! So why can't Beckett send me a Complimentary issue? If they did it right, they'd get one heck of a positive review from me and non-stop promotion. Boy they are ignorant...

 

That has not changed to this day. In fact, autograph collectors who NEVER collected sports cards before started collecting On Card CAI's in a BIG way and their buying is still increasing every year. As much as this hobby shrunk since 2005, interest and prices of On Card CAI's have only gone up in a BIG WAY!  

 

I know all of the Forgery Certified Autograph Inserts because I caught the majority of them myself. Here are a couple of examples: 1995 Press Pass VIP Nascar LARRY PEARSON (about half are an OBVIOUS forgery version- Wal-Mart boxes had two of these autos per box and I pulled two Pearson autos out of one box with totally different autos in '95!), 1997 Upper Deck Legends FB DONNIE SHELL (a woman signed 2/3'rds of his autographs & the difference is STRIKING, but the card has a LOUD background so you need to look close: the perfectly rounded "D" version is the forgery).

 

 

 

Upper Deck promised to destroy all the forgery versions multiple times, yet these crooks kept releasing them, even in 2011 UD College Legends FB as "buy-backs". Anthony West was 100% responsible for promising to detroy these and lying to me more than once. So I flew to CA and spent hours with Jean Sargis (their Para-legal) on the Executive Floor up the black spiral staircase in their front lobby where I later learned NO NON-UPPER DECK EXECUTIVE WAS EVER ALLOWED UP THERE! We were pulling out the forgery versions TOGETHER while all Upper Deck Executives were at the Hawaii Trace Conference in 1999. Ironically Upper Deck lent THE LYING CROOK Anthony West to the FBI as their "autograph expert" for Operation Bullpen.

 

It's scary that I know more about this hobby than ANY card company Executive, the FBI, and any other CAI expert because I studied everything there was to know about these cards from 1990-present from EVERY angle and interviewed hundreds of hobby experts including: Sy Berger, Lloyd Pawlak, every Pacific Executive except Mike Cramer (who they wouldn't let me speak to), Richard McWilliam, Anthony West, Ann Blake, Dawn Ridley-Nash (NFLPA liscensor in 2001, who I recently busted for taking bribes from Playoff to derail my theft case to bust Playoff for multi-level fraud in 2001! After being on Facebook for MANY years with 500+ Connections she just TOTALLY DELETED her entire account PERMANENTLY when I accused her of turning a blind eye when she promised to help me get an "Inventory List" of what Playoff claimed was "stolen" but was EVIDENCE AGAINST THEM ONLY which INSTANTLY would have exonerated me which was totally within her power to bring to light after 3-YEARS of waiting), Ken Goldin, Donald Frangipani, Tim Flatt, James Spence, PSA/DNA, and that list goes on & on. I never left any stone unturned.

 

Ironically T.J. Schwartz who did the "On Your Side" article for Tuff Stuff every month for many years did everything in his power to try to STOP ME from fighting hobby fraud when I started online in late 1997. I liked what I THOUGHT he was doing; but he was never fighting hobby fraud he was just trying to drum up more business for his CA Card Shop "PORKY'S" which was named for his weight (I kid you not). All he ever did was bust really small companies committing fraud (mostly ones ALREADY OUT OF BUSINESS!) or crooks that wouldn't effect REAL card companies in any way: WHICH IS WHERE ALL THE REAL FRAUD WAS OCCURRING AND HE KNEW IT ALL ALONG! He called me "Cardcop" as an insult in his article on month, but I liked that name so I took it and have been known as Cardcop online ever since. I got so under his skin that he mentioned me (never by name) but clearly by repuation in at least three different monthly 1998 "On Your Side" articles. I just proved how worthless he was and in 2000 I was set to REPLACE HIM, but then SCD bought out Tuff Stuff and my replacement didn't happen. It was actually for the best anyway because Tuff Stuff had MANY restrictions as to what I couldn't say, and that's NEVER how I work. I tell the TRUTH ONLY, or tell stories based on strong rumors from several different angles that could never be disproven (because I was always correct enough). 

Sports Card Hobby Fraud You NEED to READ: MORE FAKE GAME-USED CARDS!

I REALLY didn't want to have to post again, I'm way too sick to have to fight battles for people who are much more physically able. I just s[pent tnhe last MONTH in bed without leaving my one room apartment ONCE! I haven't been able to walk anywhere near normal because my disk (L5/S1) on top of my tailbone is herniated so bad that I couldn't use my low back muscles at all for the whole month.

I accidentally came upon some info that once again astonished me as to how stupid card companies can be. All the hobby big shots know who I am whether they wanted to or not. I FORCED them to know because they keep SCREWING UP & DIRECTLY HURTING COLLECTORS THROUGH GREED!
Ironically one of the WORST people like this died last month (Jan. 5th) and the news of his death only started trickling down to most collectors last week. The news of his death at age 59 was first released on my birthday (the 7th) which is also the day my friend Gary Carter (also died 11 months ago - age 57) was elected into the HOF in 2003 (weird...).

RICHARD McWILLIAM IS DEAD! <<<<click to go to story.

 

It sickens me how a FULL MONTH has passed and no details of his cause of death were released and EVERY story online that I found made him out to be a hobby hero! HE WAS A CROOK & HE PROBABLY DIED FROM DRUG ABUSE!!! Plain & simple. If I didn't know tons of factual stories to support this, I wouldn't have said it. I don't mean to disrespect the dead- but it's wrong to lie about this greedy scum too. He's given direct credit for all the innovations that Upper Deck came up with over the years, meanwhile there have been dozens of lawsuits against him specifically for him STEALING OTHER PEOPLE'S IDEAS. I've said it before & I'll say it again: I'VE NEVER BEEN SUED. This is because I ALWAYS TELL THE TRUTH & I'm not in this hobby to make a penny profit. I'm not going to waste another second on this jerk.

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PLAYOFF WAS BUYING FAKE GAME-USED JERSEYS FROM BRAD HORNE (<<<click) FOR THEIR CARDS IN 2002 & I HAVE ABSOLUTE PROOF!

 

 In 2002 I personally obtained several documents directly from Playoff that listed all the information about 2002 Leaf Game-Used cards and autographs. These were lists of every card made and card deatils, how much they paid for the jerseys and autograph stickers, and most importantly: who they bought ther jerseys from. I got curious a couple of days ago and Googled a name I saw on the list of who these "game-used jerseys" came from. I get "strange feelings" from time to time and when I do I act upon these feelings. Some would call it intuition and others would say it is phychic. Since I always loved all sciences, I think it's simply intuition. So I looked up one name: BRAD HORNE because I got one of my funny feelings when I saw his name. HE WAS BUSTED JUST LAST YEAR FOR SELLING NOTHING BUT FAKE GAME-USED JERSEYS IN A STING BY POLICE! And I just happen to have a list of all 2002 GU Jerseys Cards made by Playoff in their Leaf Certified product & 10% of the jerseys they used were bought from BRAD HORNE & all the info I can find pionts to one thing: THEY ARE FAKE & THE FBI PROVED IT!!!

 

I personally saw Playoff using FAKE "game-used" jerseys of players like Daunte Culpepper (when he was RED HOT) with all the tags from the store they bought them from on them when I just started weorking for them in 2001, but I had no proof of this so I rarely mentioned it since I had iron-clad proof about so much other fraud. So I knew they were using brand new jerseys and calling them game-used & now it seems that I have the proof & here is an example. Sorry the text is so small, but it was on paper that was larger than the scanner I had, so I had to shrink it to fit in one .jpg file.  

 

 

If you can read this, you will see jerseys for the Fabric Of The Game cards of several players were bought from Brad Horne including John Riggins & Joe Montana! These are FAKE & WORTHLESS people!!!

 

YOU ALL NEED TO CONTACT PANINI (just click Panini) AND TELL THEM ABOUT THIS! You should call- Media & Public Relations. Feel free to tell them to read this page, or tell them "Cardcop dug up this info" - most of them know who I am...

I am too sick to do this, so I am handing off the responsibility to you.

 

How many other jerseys from other products used jerseys bought from BRAD HORNE by Playoff, then Donruss/Playoff & now Panini? When Panini bought Donruss/Playoff they kept most of the employees I busted for one thing or another (they only got rid of the top management), so there's no reason they would have stopped buying fake jerseys since I couldn't bust them for that. I rarely ever mentioned it too since I busted them for so much other stuff just as bad.

 

HELP ME FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT!

 

James



The End Of eBay: How & Why!

                                                                                                                12/21/11
                                              HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Regular readers of my posts know by now that I was kicked off of eBay for fighting fraud in the sports card & memorabilia areas after 14-years of them praising me for doing this. In mid-2010, they decided that people like me were costing them money so we were eradicated. The details are in previous posts so I don't need to repeat myself.

I didn't quite finish getting cards to add to my 40,000 card donation this year, so I decided to try signing up on eBay again without lying about anything which I was certain would not work. Well it did! I was a full member of eBay with ID cert-auto-inserts & the only things I changed were of course the User ID & e-mail address I used. Keep in mind: I wasn't suspended, I was banned for life according to a  nasty eBay Safety supervisor who couldn't give me a straight answer as to WHY & she actually hung up on me when she ran out of lame excuses which I retorted which made her look retarted. Every regular eBay phone employee still thinks I'm suspended for a short period & they all think my account should have been reinstated by now??? Sounds like they don't have a clue what they are doing, right? CORRECT!!!

With my new ID I bought over (300) items in a little over 2-months & eBay never contacted me once about me not being allowed to be on eBay! Then once I got most of what I needed to finish my donation, I started sending e-mails to honest collectors & sellers warning them about eBay's new lack of empathy for anyone but themselves & why. So after a week of doing this, eBay FINALLY suspended my new account with their BIG BROTHER e-mail scanning software. These idiots were so paranoid that I was going to publicize this that they deleted every single item I won from their database going (200) items back!!! THAT'S THE CRAZIEST THING I EVER HEARD! That caused every seller (who I bought from) headaches they didn't deserve! EBAY DID THIS, NOT ME & IN 14-YEARS OF USING EBAY & FIGHTING FRAUD ON EBAY I NEVER SAW THEM DO ANYTHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. They erased the existance of (200+) items that I won, paid for & 95% of them were already received by me. So why delete them???

So here I was: PUBLIC ENEMY #1 ACCORDING TO EBAY'S Safety Supervisors (yet con-men like tntnorthnj are NEVER suspended???). I decided to see if they'd let me have a new account with the SAME Paypal account & same master Paypal e-mail account (the 1st account they suspended: cardcop05) BTW & used the new ID for over 2-months & I busted myself basically or eBay NEVER would have caught me. IS THIS CRAZINESS OR WHAT?

Since it worked once, I tried it again. AND IT WORKED AGAIN!!! I tried ID ectopic-foci (an EKG medical term) & that account lasted as long as I wanted it to once again! This one lasted a month, then I told several sellers (who asked) how to donate cards to children's charities with the holidays coming up quick. This was obviously one of the RED FLAGS eBay's software e-mail search worm used to find me and I was suspended after 4-weeks - again.

The point here is that there are MANY sellers especially in the collectibles areas on eBay who rip people off as their main business practice just sign-up again when they get suspended & EBAY DOES NOTHING TO STOP THEM! As hard as it is these days to get eBay listen to you & ban these jerks from eBay you'd think eBay would take steps to keep these crooks off of eBay FOREVER: BUT THEY DON'T & I PROVED IT TWICE!!! All they'd have to look for is the last name and zip code, BUT THEY DON'T DO THIS LIKE NORMAL SITES???

All eBay cares about now is making money & every single bit of their honor & integrity that they once had is long gone. If you don't listen to me, you will be ripped-off with NO RECOURSE at some point in the near future & this is no 'IF" - this is a "WHEN" and I am trying to save you heartache now so please LISTEN TO ME: get off of eBay now!!!

Most of you can travel to 200+ table card shows (I can't because I have Muscular Dystrophy so I'm screwed): THESE ARE THE BEST PLACES TO BUY! So stick to these rules and you'll never lose:

1) Pay no more than LESS THAN LOW BECKETT PRICES- period.

2) Never believe rookie HYPE, or new release hype. Only buy cards that have been out for several months to a year or more.

3) NEVER buy loose packs in bulk lots from big dealers like Dave & Adam's Card World. These are the packs that sat on retail store (Target, K-Mart & Wal-Mart) for up to a full year & have been searched dozens of times- so every good hit has been LONG GONE from these packs!!! Also stay away from SUPER DISCOUNTED boxes from big dealers like DACW, card companies run out of all big hit inserts yet let the packaging continue. Then they sell these boxes dirt cheap to DACW & you think you are getting a bargain getting a $75.00 box for $29.95! BUT THESE BOXES HAVE NO DECENT INSERTS & IN MOST CASES CARD COMPANIES WILL DO NOTHING TO HELP YOU IF YOU CONTACT THEM! Their disclaimers on packs & boxes legally give them a right to NOT help you!!!

4) Only buy MINT cards or better made after 1985. Or NM-MT or better On Card Certified Autographed Inserts.

5) Your best bet for long-term collecting is to stick to HARD SIGNED (On Card) Certified Autographed Inserts (CAI's) from BIG card companies only- like Topps & Upper Deck, and Panini to a lesser degree. When Panini took over Playoff they kept most of the crooked Playoff employees, so I still don't trust them.

6) Buy what you like for personal reasons to collect, NOT with investments in mind. The days of reselling for profit are gone!

Price guides are useless for ten years now! They don't print the whole truth & NEVER print negative info about companies still in business. Plus they always push products based on the amount of advertising dollars they get from the companies. THIS IS ALL A COMPLETE CONFLICT OF INTEREST & IF THE SPORT LICENSING AGENCIES CARED ABOUT COLLECTORS, THEY WOULD STOP THESE PRACTICES!

PLEASE EDUCATE YOURSELF ONLINE & BUY SMART! Everyone selling is looking to take your money & they don't care to tell you what I'm telling you here: EVER because that will lower the amount of money they make. This is why I never became any kind of dealer- I'm way too honest and care too much about fellow collectors: especially young ones.

I just had a collector today ask me what to do with a dealer who they won a fairly expensive itewm from for $1.00, then the seller just refunded the buyer's money & the buyer thought there was something I could tell them to help them. With eBay not caring about buyers anymore- WE ARE S*** OUT OF LUCK! So the only recourse is to STOP BUYING ON EBAY UNTIL THEY GET THEIR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT AGAIN >>>>IF THAT HAPPENS<<<< BEFORE THEY GO BANKRUPT!

I wish everyone the best & enjoy the holidays!

James McCay aka Cardcop

It's time collectors TAKE THE HOBBY BACK by force!

I've been a lone wolf fighting mostly Corporate Hobby Fraud from 1997-2004, then at age 37- I was too sick to continue my website, so I gave it up. I believe that plagarism is truly the best form of respect, so when many others started websites similar to mine mostly in the mid-2000's I couldn't have been happier.
I was the only non-attorney fighting for every redemption holder in the Score Board bankruptcy (1997) & for this this Al Muir of Beckett was nice enough to do a full page article (I think it was November, 1997) about my fight with the courts. At least I inspired Fleer to donate 5,000 autographs (one per household) to those who could prove they were owed a redemption. I ot a nice Steve Young 8X10 Card Sheet autographed wityh the Fleer Autograph Authenticity stamp. I so wish I would have kept that because I've never seen another one anywhere. I collect great lefty quartebacks (the few that there are).
By 2001, I was fighting Pacific asking them for copies of LOA's (Letters of Authenticity) that come with ALL full game-used items for GU cards I had from 2001 Private Stock Baseball. They refused no matter who I was transferred to. The excuses went from silly to ridiculous. So I posted the whole story on my website , and part of my taped conversation with the then Vice-President. The MLB Player's Association was reading my website on a regular basis and then they asked Pacific for exactly what I was. It turned out to be exactly what I thought- THEY HAD NO LOA's BECAUSE THEY WERE FAKE GAME-USED ITEMS!!! Pacific lost their baseball license about a month later which bankrputed them a few years later. That was not my intent, but somtimes retribution is more harsh than we expect.
Next I went after Playoff. I spoke with the owner (Ann Blake) for hours every day for a month in May, 2001. She told me "you know the hobby from more angles better than anyone I ever met". That was quite a compliment, but I spent countless hours learning what I knew from 1997-2001. Then she offered me an all expenses paid trip to Grand Prairie, TX to meet the company & go with them to the Cleveland National as their VIP guest. That was one of the coolest things I ever had the opportunity to do in this hobby, but I didn't let it effect my investigation of Playoff. A week later, she offered me a job as a Senior Manager of Customer Service/Redemptions & Replacements. Little did she know that I took the job to investigate them from the inside.
What I discovered was FAR WORSE than any rumors I ever heard (and most of you have heard) througout the years! Back door selling of expensive autographed inserts (for pennies on the dollar) to big dealers like Dave & Adam's Card World as an incentive to promise to buy cases of not yet produced products was 100% true & I caught the President doing it red-handed. They also produced cards that were against their licensing rules like 2000 Retro Ichiro RC's (I destroyed all but ten of each version, I still own one of each) & parallels of that card which were physically produced in 2000 when Upper Deck had an exclusive license prohibiting that & they were even selling single cards to others which was completely against their licensing agreements in every sport. Card companies were only licensed to sell boxes & cases of cards in nearly every case prior to 2002. This was told to me by Dawn Ridley-Nash who then was the person in charge of NFL licensing.

I then caught Playoff's President red-handed stealing cards from MY department to be sold to dealers out the back door. I fought with him constantly over the wrong things Playoff was doing which evertually had him downgrade me to an outside consultant. But I got a full 3-months of training working inside a big card company. I even worked 6-7 days a week with a MINIMUM of 70-hours per week to learn as much as I could from everyone & everywhere I could get to.
It was sick what I saw there! Right when I started they were moving from Grand Prairie to Arlington, TX. So the old CS manager had thrown away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of cards (autographs too) that could have been used for replacements for long overdue redemptions from 1999!!!  I was able to save some, but most had been badly damaged being thrown in an industrial dumpster with literally thousands of pounds of cards! This guy (Noel) was a moron as far as hobby knowledge goes!
I took what evidence I could to bury them once I left, but as I was preparing my case against them once I returned to FL- they had me arrersted for Grand Theft over $200.000- a 1ST DEGREE FELONY! I was released from jail on bond & after a 3-year battle all the charges against me were all dropped & once again the MLBPA believed my story and they finaally pulled D/P's baseball license which bankrputed them also. During that three years I kept fighting for them to make an inventory list of what was "stolen" & they never made one! After consulting several attorneys, the general answer was that one of the FIRST things done in any theft case is to make an inventory list of what was taken. So why after 3-YEARS was no list made?
It turned out that the person that I thought was helping me from the NFLPA (Dawn) was blocking the release of the inventory list! To hide the evidence of course. That evidence was never released & they kept my 14-year personal collection as well. But in the end I got even.
eBay has changed drastically over the past few years as well regarding sports cards. eBay helps NO ONE regarding fraud anymore & even punishes those who try to help others??? I know first hand after being suspended for 2-weeks for trying to collect evidence from NSA sellers against  who refuses to answer any of my e-mails.  NSA is the company that made only the best SUPERSTAR "Game-Used" Dual Encased PATCH "cards" that were selling on eBay for $6.00-$10.00 each??? Imagine, a Game-Used Tom Brady/Peyton Manning Dual REAL "Game-Used" multi-color/layer PATCH card for $10.00? Or a Derek Jeter/Alex Rodriguez Dual GU Patch card for $10.00? IMPOSSIBLE IF THEY WERE AUTHENTIC! Most of these patches were the rarest patches you've ever seen as well, like MLB logo patches and shoulder patches. The old saying "if it seems to be too good, it probably is" fits perfectly in this instance!
Here is a good link about NSA:

http://www.sportscardforum.com/showthread.php?t=998332

In rapping this up, I want every one of you to know that YOU CAN MAKE A MAJOR DIFFERENCE TO CHANGE BAD THINGS IN LIFE BY YOURSELF- I'm living proof. All it takes is percerverence, patience, and a drive to improve things for everyone- ESPECIALLY CHILDREN in our hobby who cannot fight for themselves!!!
You must complain to the right people such as the Hobby Relations Representative which every card company has, or the person in charge of card company licensing for each sport's Player's Association. These are all easily found in search engines. When you first call, ALWAYS ask who you are speaking to & keep notes as you go along or tape record the conversation. You can buy a 4-hour digital tape recorder for like $50.00 in Target these days & use a phone with a speaker. If the person you wind up speaking to doesn't sound like they are willing to help, or seem uncaring ask to speak to their boss- EVERYONE HAS A BOSS!

Another major problem that needs immediate attention: Not one card company is doing anything to STOP pack searching & the selling of these packs on eBay. These crooks bend packs & the ones that are unbendable have the key cards. Or they weigh packs & the ones that are different from the rest also have key cards.. I didn't want to let this secret out, but it's more fair if EVERYONE knows how they do it since card companies are doing nothing to stop it!
Every year I send them all a long letter explaning this with ideas on how to stop it, they never reply and they never try things to stop searching. That is a plague in our hobby right now. Go to eBay & type hot pack in the search box. The results are hundreds of packs ending every few days that leave hundreds of boxes MISSING THE KEY CARDS. They sell those boxes as if those key cards were still in there 90% of the time. IF THAT'S NOT FRAUD, THEN I DON'T KNOW WHAT IS!!! These searchers can also search blaster boxes to know which ones have the best cards by weighing them! ALL OF THIS NEEDS TO STOP FOR GOOD ASAP!

I have a rare/deadly form of Muscular Dystrophy (since 2006), five ruptured disks in my neck & lowest part of my back with severe sciatica in both legs (late-2001 at age 34). I had two heart attacks from taking Vioxx (2004), and my life will be cut very short because of all this. So it's your turn to take over!

THE FUTURE OF THE HOBBY DEPENDS SOLELY ON YOU! They recently formed a group that is looking out for brick & mortar card shops, but do you think they care about us collectors? NO WAY!! They care about making more money from us & THAT'S IT! So we collectors need to band together & form our own group to fight for our rights. I'm too sick to do it, but someone out there can and I hope they will...