Mastro...at it again?

**I posted this on the other board (nonsport) as well.


I decided to give Mastro another try...don't know why. Perhaps I thought an FBI investigation would have set them straight.

I bought two lots. When I looked at these 72 Ovaltine Indians I noticed right away 5 of the 6 have frosted bottom edges and bilateral lower sides. Didn't pay any attention to the auction picture which clearly shows the same. A closer inspection reveals some recoloring on Crazy Horse. Quite sure each have had the cards slipped out and replaced but not sure why, since they are not very valuable. The one untouched slab is not of the same PSA serial sequence.

The bottom edges (examples shown) all have either glue or heated plastic seeping out. Each of the bottom tabs or circle welds are spidered. This is typically an indication the slab has been cracked.

As many know, I am no stranger to altered cards and slabs. Just wanted some more opinions before I go ballistic on Mastro. Two heads are better than one!

This time I will not settle on a simple refund offer. Although they may not be responsible they should have caught these no-brainer cracks. Maybe the feds can use these along with my help?

Yikes! I am sorry to hear about your find. Probably the biggest reason that I choose to buy from auction houses is the much higher likelihood that it is not a scam (like some of the listed higher end cards on ebay). I would have expected the frosted edge pieces to be caught and weeded out prior to them going to such an auction at a major house. I probably wouldn't expect them to find the coloring / gluing evidence since that would take a much closer look, but the frosting is pretty obvious. So, I think you have a beef. In terms of compensation, I suppose that is up to you and I won't comment on how far you should push it, but suffice it to say that I would at least try to get my money back.

In general, I haven't been looking for evidence of altering in auction house photos, but apparently will need to do so now. Thanks for the heads up and sorry again for your find.

Brian

An auction house has to successfully complete a number of tasks to provide the buyer with a successful auction, including product delivery. It seems reasonable that no one will be able to have 100% success at all of the tasks required for many successive auctions; without some error cropping up.
Lets say an auction house can maintain a rate of one noticable error for each 250 auctions.

If this is not ok with you, they can do better.

But it will cost you more for them to use employees with greater skill, experience, or greater number of employees performing quality control checks on each other.

At all times though, you can have what you want. And it is not just Auction Houses, it is grading companies, and all other phases of your collecting and non-collecting experiences. You can have what you are willing to pay for.

What do you want? Im sorry, that is not available at the price which you are willing to pay.

ItsOnlyGil wrote:
But it will cost you more for them to use employees with greater skill, experience, or greater number of employees performing quality control checks on each other.

At all times though, you can have what you want. And it is not just Auction Houses, it is grading companies, and all other phases of your collecting and non-collecting experiences. You can have what you are willing to pay for.

What do you want? Im sorry, that is not available at the price which you are willing to pay.

True, but with a 20% buyers premium (one of the highest in the industry), you should expect these types of mistakes not to happen. From Kevin's pics, an amateur could determine that these slabs were cracked and re-glued.

imo mastro has always been about the bottom line...make and scrounge as much money as they could from collectors, or take actions that would lead to that end. they're shady as hell and they don't care about us.

On ebay, getting a negative 1 out of 100 times is considered good performance. One out of 200 times is very good.
By this yardstick, any auction which any house holds should expect the equivalent in unhappy buyers. Sometimes the buyers are crazy, other times they have not been treated right. The rule of thumb is to evaluate the seller based upon what he does once confronted with his error.

For some reason, hobbiests sometimes do not feel that this "rule" applies to Auction Houses nor Grading Companies. Why is that?

Clearly there is a difference between errors and deliberate misrepresentation. From the scans which Kevin supplied, it would seem almost impossible for a person familiar with slabbed cards to overlook the holder defects shown. But it would similarly seem to be an equally almost impossible decision to deliberately misrepresent an auction while under investigation for doing that (if that is what they are under investigation for).

I may be wrong but do any of the auction houses have a return policy? I know the 2 times I had problems with auctions houses they had a no return policy. I had a good laugh when David Festberg asked me if he should fire his grader after he I bought a group of 40 VG/EX T206s that were good at best.

Lee

Doug called this morning as promised and will fix it all. He did a quick investigation and turns out that the slabs where super heated at the bottom which melted the plastic and frosted the edges. Something him or I have never seen...a terrible day in the slab lab. He also stated it would have concerned him as well had he seen them.

PSA will crack them out, look them over and do a reseal. I'm not worried about the other cards...just the crazy color on Crazy Hourse. We both agree it just doesn't make any sence, since these are not high on the alteration probability scale.

Wow....as I'm typing this, Orlando just sent the send them back to fix them email. Fast service all the way around.

But why "super-heated"?

They do not seal those slabs by melting them together, they are sonically welded.

(with sound, not heat)



"OH, THEY JUST HAPPENED TO GET SUPERHEATED ABOVE THE BOILING POINT OF WATER, AND KINDA MELTED"
Please elaborate. I was trusting a bit going in. But this superheating explanation don't cut it for me.








PSA will crack them out, look them over and do a reseal.

What? You can heat a slab high enough in temperature to partially melt the slab - but the card in unaffected?

Humm....maybe sonic is latin for heat?

I'm curious how the super-sonic heat can melt the bottom half, frost the edges and spider the weld knobs. This even has Doug scratching his head. I was assured these were not tampered with or altered since Mastro submitted them.

These are super tough to inspect since they are so thin and round. I would need to examine them out of the holder. Still feel a little uneasy about the red border though. These came in Ovaltine, so my guess is that they were not in contact with anything sticky that was red or transparent. Does anyone know/remember how these were packaged?

Hopefully this will be a good learning experience.

What? You can heat a slab high enough in temperature to partially melt the slab - but the card in unaffected?

ah....but these are stickers .