I realize many of you helped me out a week or two back when I had some weekend snafu with the bank, and I appreciate that.
This, however, is something different. Essentially, you are being asked here to reinforce my GENIUS.
Now. Is that so difficult?
In all seriousness, though, if you feel like contributing, fine. If not, cool. Thanks in advance.
Thursday update: Getting close. Thanks so much for your continued support!
Thanks, guins!
Thanks, blitz!
Thanks, Bill S!
Thanks, sdferr!
Thanks, Blake!
Somehow, “Kneel before Jeff” doesn’t quite have the same ring as “Kneel before Zod.”
I feel it’s incumbent upon us to support the sort of mad intellect that could produce an interview with a GAY PORN COCK OF LIES!!
I realize that’s a blast-from-the-past, but it popped back up (heh) when I caught John Aravosis latest screed, accusing Second Amendment supporters of terrorism.
http://americablog.com/2013/05/second-amendment-terrorism-has-begun.html
In ancient Rome, the genius (plural in Latin genii) was the guiding spirit or tutelary deity of a person, family (gens), or place (genius loci).[2] The noun is related to the Latin verb gigno, genui, genitus, “to bring into being, create, produce.” Because the achievements of exceptional individuals seemed to indicate the presence of a particularly powerful genius, by the time of Augustus the word began to acquire its secondary meaning of “inspiration, talent.”[3]
— Wikipedia
Please don’t think my teeny donation in any way reflects my respect for you; I just can’t afford what you REALLY deserve. Plus, the tornadoes in OK hit my pocketbook, too.
“From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us.”
— Traditional (Scots)
I have lurked and enjoyed this blog for too long without donation so – done!
Thanks, Kevin K!
Thanks, Lillian!
Thanks, SW!
Thanks, Gregory R!
Thanks, Patrick C!
Thanks, SDN!
Thanks, Jeff Y!
Thanks, Charles W!
Thanks, John B!
So you all know why I’m absent here lately, I sold a very high end baseball card recently to a guy who, upon receipt, discoverd “damage” that wasn’t there when it left my possession. In the world of cards, grading is now everything at the high end. I had purchased the card myself about a month ago and listed it for sale at a huge markup until such time as I had the opportunity to send it off myself for grading. The card was in fantastic shape, and I really had every intention of holding onto it. But somebody was willing to allow me to turn a $500 profit for simply holding the card and photographing it, so I figured I may as well take the money.
The person who bought it off me badgered me with questions before the sale, had me looking through a jeweler’s loupe for him, had me send him extra pictures (him: those are too blurry; me: not on my end. I’ve done all I can do. Buy it or don’t), because he was obsessed with buying an ungraded card that he could have graded highly. Cards of this sort that already have high grades go for significantly more than ungraded cards, because there’s no risk: the card is slabbed with info, encased in lucite, and sonically sealed. What this buyer wanted was an assurance the card would receive a certain grade, something I couldn’t promise him because I’m not a card grader. All I could do was describe what I saw, post photos, and answer questions.
Anyway, long story short, he bought the card, I packaged it up very carefully, insured it, and sent it off to him. He received it and, when he did, he informed me that there was significant indentation on the back of the card, as if somebody had written on a piece of paper over the card.
I was taken aback. I’d seen no such thing. Well, he told me, that’s because you have to take the card out of all protective covering and hold it to the light at a specific angle. He sent me a picture of this angle and this lighting.
The only problem being that what he showed me in the picture would have been noticeable to the naked eye.
So I immediately contacted the person I’d bought it from. He’d noticed no such damage and he sent me his scans. He also told me that he’d traded for it with a military officer, whose info he provided me. I emailed the officer who called me back and we spoke on the phone. He saw no damage to the card either, and he had purchased it a year back at the (at that time) height of its early value. Meaning that the person who listed it and from whom he’d purchased it hadn’t indicated any damage, either, else the officer wouldn’t have paid top dollar; the card dealer who traded for it would have demanded his cards back; I would have demanded my money back, and so on.
My suspicion is, the buyer who got the card from me feared it wouldn’t get the grade he wanted, and that if he sent it off to be graded it might get, say, a 9 (MINT) instead of a 9.5/10 (GEM MINT, score dependent on which of the major grading companies you use) — and that can affect the current value. Too, guys like this one I was dealing with — who have you looking through jeweler’s loupes, yet who are too cheap to pay extra for the already graded card they so clearly want — won’t stand for anything less than what they’d been hoping for.
So he damaged it in order to demand a refund, knowing that eBay / PayPal always sides with the buyer. Like, 99.99 % of the time.
He’s filed a claim against me, and I’m determined to fight it, even as realize the battle is an exercise in existentialism. And he filed the claim after I’d agreed to simply refund him the money — which I did because I know such battles are fruitless in the end, and because my wife wasn’t happy that I’d spent the entire day at the computer playing cyber sleuth, tracking down past owners, etc. There are chores that need doing, after all, and children who need attending and attention.
I’ve wasted an entire weekend obsessing over this, angry, determined, etc., and now — because the dickbag escalated to a claim (so he can put a mark on my record, I suppose, and have “proof” he hasn’t acted like the lying scum he is) I have to put together a dossier of sorts just to defend myself, knowing full well that this fucking New Jersey solar power snake-oil salesman is going to get away with fucking me over so that he can save a couple grand and continue his search for a finer specimen. At my expense. He even took to a collecting forum where he and other big sellers on eBay meet and collude to post a thread claiming he needed help with a “potential high end scammer.” Me. Who just recently found himself ridiculously looking over an autograph with a jeweler’s loupe, who was taking care of a newly mobile toddler, who was blogging, and who values his integrity above most things.
I wrote the forum and asked that they take it down but received no response. I demanded of the buyer that he remove it, and he wrote the forum and got a response: they would of course take it down for him, but repost it whenever he wished. Because this is an insular forum. And the fix was in.
Let me say this: years and years ago I purchased a 1952 Topps Willie Mays rookie card, his first tops card, for Satchel. But Satchel has never really gotten into baseball, so I decided recently to sell it. After all, as attached as I was to it, it was meant as a gift to my oldest son, and so I figured I’d sell it and get him some different collectibles, which I did and have stored away for him (signed cards from Rulon Gardner, Cael Sanderson, Dan Gable, John Smith).
In selling that card, I took extra care to describe every inch of it, because that’s what I do and who I am (description and picture here, for those interested.
A person who describes one card that way would never knowingly try to pass off a damaged card, particularly to someone he knows to be obsessed with stray pen marks, eg. I had no hesitation selling the card, however, because there was nothing wrong with it.
Nothing.
Had it not sold in the interim when I was putting my next grading order together, I would have sent it in for grading.
I don’t know why it is, but these kinds of things really do sting me. I try to find the good in people every day, and yet each day seems a reminder to me that most people — save the obviously wonderful people who gather here, their families and friends, and my family and friends — are more or less pieces of shit.
And it may be time for me to move into the barn and live with the horses.
Thanks Roger H!
Sorry you don’t get a venting comment. John B won the sweepstakes!
Memo to self: never put up a collectible for sale, nor even publicly admit to owning it, until I’ve had it graded.
Then again, my idea of collecting is to buy something I’ll use, that happens to remind me of something I’ve done or a place I’ve been.
Which is probably why my coffee-mug cupboard threatens to overflow…
Thanks, McGehee!
And that’s good advice, too. Most anything of significant value I offer is graded nowadays.
Thanks, Terry H!
And it may be time for me to move into the barn and live with the horses.
We could pretend that PW is the barn, and each of our interlocutors are horses, ourselves being — by contrast — mere scruffy Gullivers, caught betwixt and between.
Or, in the alternative, for fun and psychic profit, hold ourselves a Swift-fest, celebrating that great betwixt and betweener.
I like sdferr’s modest proposal.
Me, too. A hearty Yahoo! to the modest proposal.
Now we sup on Irish babies.
We are all both brobdingnagian and liliputian.
As to the particulars, I leave that to others to decide.
Thanks, Thomas D!
Thanks, Bill Q!
Thanks, serr8d!
Thanks, Arthur L!
Thanks, Jon E!
Thanks, Pablo!
Thanks, William, for all the cool gadgets, and the medicinal plant seed so that I can heal myself after abusing or misusing all the cool gadgets!
Thanks, Billy H!
I gave at the end of May because I don’t always believe what the clock or the calendar tell me. Nature is my clock. Or possibly early stages of dementia. One of those.
Thanks, Palaeomerus!
“medicinal plant seed”, eh? I take it your glaucoma is flaring up again.
At least it isn’t dementia with a glaucoma flare up.
Thursday?
What day is it? I forget.
What do we have to pay you to get the preview-thingy back?
thanks, Evan C!
Thanks, William Y!
Thanks, Kenneth H!
good to see the nsa hasn’t got you