Stolen Cards

[junyab]

On this note,

I do want to ask this forum for their thoughts on the best practices in this type of situation.

Please look at all perspectives, Slab Sharks as a company, the consignor, and the potential theft victim.

Slab Sharks isn't law enforcement, we do not want to get into making judgements. But we do want to do the right thing, or the action that will create the path to the right thing.

An innocent consignor, consigns a card to us.

It is reported stolen during the auction.

Q: What information should we gather for the two parties?
Q: Should we end the auction, and return the card to the consignor?
Q: Should we end the auction and hold the card? If we hold the card, for how long? Is the consignor charged insurance fees for the card being in limbo with us? (We do not hold cards, do not have a storage service)
Q: Should we then give the consignor information to the potential victim, so they can work things out?


Keep in mind, the innocent purchaser here may have just bought the card for $500 unknowingly (these things are less difficult if the consignor is an actual thief).

Please let us know, as this situation will likely happen again with the amount we are growing. We would love to do nothing less than the best practice

This post is just strange, considering the business you're in and the assumed truth is you're a lawyer. Why would it matter what a bunch of forum dweller's opinions are? You should ask the police what their recommendation would be. And to be honest, for how much business you seem to be doing, how is such a policy not already in place?

 

[piper1]

I agree with the responses you already received from katoy2j and SNobles.

If you either can't or won't do anything regarding the credibility of the consigners, did you think of asking the owner for some credible references regarding his stolen collection Besides members of this site, he has likely made many purchases from stores and card show dealers in Alberta who can vouch for him.

 

[karnrai21]

This post is just strange, considering the business you're in and the assumed truth is you're a lawyer. Why would it matter what a bunch of forum dweller's opinions are? You should ask the police what their recommendation would be. And to be honest, for how much business you seem to be doing, how is such a policy not already in place?

Hi Junya

everyones opinions matter in coming to best practices. We can always improve. I grew up solidifying my knowledge in this industry for decades through forums. Some of the brightest people in the hobby are here.

We are only 1 year into being a company.

Being a lawyer does not make us better than anyone, or smarter in any situation. This is still something new that we're experiencing. We will lock down best practices by leaning on industry leaders, the law, and police recommendations.

Important to note, we have never been called by the police. And also important to note, police offers often don't have great recommendations in these situations.

We do have a policy already in place. It resulted in this post being made.

The current policy is, we will take down items that are assumed to be stolen, if we are provided evidence. We were not given evidence in this circumstance, hence the items stayed in auction.

Hopefully that provides some context.

 

[karnrai21]

I agree with the responses you already received from katoy2j and SNobles.

If you either can't or won't do anything regarding the credibility of the consigners, did you think of asking the owner for some credible references regarding his stolen collection Besides members of this site, he has likely made many purchases from stores and card show dealers in Alberta who can vouch for him.

We definitely reached out to the consignor.

We were not provided with a report from the owner, only a case number, that we were unable to verify.

But I think thats useful information for best practices.

When determining the evidence on the owners perspective, we will ask them for vouches/referrals on their character.

That's a good one to add.

Also to emphasize in this situation, that may have been missed above.

We are happy to give the owner the proceeds of these sales. He just needs to email us and we will settle it right away.

 

[katoy2j]

No consignor is going to admit to you that they are selling a stolen card through your service. You simply explain to them that there is an issue and you are trying to err on the side of caution until the police have concluded what they need to do. The police are going to require evidence of the claim in order to move forward so if the claim isn't valid it won't go through the required channel.

As for using your service, this is something you will need to just accept. Maybe you lose a frustrated customer or two. However that is far better off than being known as basically a fence to selling stolen property as that would have far more damage to your companies reputation.

Thank you for your reply.

How do we deal with a consignor, who believes they are 100% innocent, and the potential victim is wrong? (this has happened).

Maybe they need the money, and now using us, has resulted in their card to be in a police investigation for 60 days.

Any ideas?

 

[karnrai21]

No consignor is going to admit to you that they are selling a stolen card through your service. You simply explain to them that there is an issue and you are trying to err on the side of caution until the police have concluded what they need to do. The police are going to require evidence of the claim in order to move forward so if the claim isn't valid it won't go through the required channel.

As for using your service, this is something you will need to just accept. Maybe you lose a frustrated customer or two. However that is far better off than being known as basically a fence to selling stolen property as that would have far more damage to your companies reputation.

Agreed 100%.

In the mentioned circumstance, the consignor has more evidence than the potential victim.

For example, a picture from 2022 (year and half ago) of him with the same card still in his possession.

Potential victim is saying the card was stolen in 2024.

So, as you can see it is a little more nuanced. But, all in all, i get what you're saying.

So, to take out the best practice information here.

The potential victim will need to have police involved with a case number that we can verify, while the card is paused in our auction.

 

[katoy2j]

Yeah to be honest you as a company shouldn't be to involved in the matter. If someone contacts the company about an issue I would just pause the auction temporarily and instruct the alleged victim to go through the proper channels with the police. In no way should you be forwarding information to other parties or trying to play detective for yourself. Forwarding any requested info to authorities should be the only thing.

As you can see even in this instance you have one party saying they had the card stolen in 2024 and the other party saying the had the card since 2022. Obviously both can't be true and you wouldn't be able to determine who is in the right.

Having integrity will only help your cause as a company as if people know not to try and use your platform for stolen goods the company will be better for it in the long term.

 

[karnrai21]

Yeah to be honest you as a company shouldn't be to involved in the matter. If someone contacts the company about an issue I would just pause the auction temporarily and instruct the alleged victim to go through the proper channels with the police. In no way should you be forwarding information to other parties or trying to play detective for yourself. Forwarding any requested info to authorities should be the only thing.

As you can see even in this instance you have one party saying they had the card stolen in 2024 and the other party saying the had the card since 2022. Obviously both can't be true and you wouldn't be able to determine who is in the right.

Having integrity will only help your cause as a company as if people know not to try and use your platform for stolen goods the company will be better for it in the long term.

Agreed 100%.

We are getting on a call next week with our developer to potentially add a Stolen Card Database into our app/portal that is currently in works. Will need to think of the logistics and how it would work.

I think being a leader in this will prevent any bad actors from using us (however, won't prevent stolen cards coming to us, as we've seen honest actors with stolen cards).

We will still need to figure out how to be sure that the stolen card in our database is the same one in our auction if that makes sense.

Hobbyists must! keep photos of their cards, so we can always count on either 1) grading cert numbers, and/or 2) serial numbered cards.

We will likely only be able to operate a stolen card database, if we have those bits of info.

Then we will need to make sure to cross reference whats in the database, and whats in auction.

All in all, we'll try out best.

 

[terry1hockeyfan]

First off, thank you Karn for responding in this thread and reaching out to seek advice from the community and being willing to rectify this situation with the original poster/owner of the cards.

I feel your current policy definitely needs review and revision. The current policy is, we will take down items that are assumed to be stolen, if we are provided evidence. We were not given evidence in this circumstance, hence the items stayed in auction.

I think as a company you need to always do your due diligence in any situation involving potential stolen property. You could have reached out to police to confirm if the cards were in fact stolen and involved in a current police report. As the original poster stated, police don't just go around sharing such reports. I think you need some sort of disclaimer (whch you likely already have) for potential consignors that if the property is determined to be stolen or reported as suspected stolen property, said property will be immediately removed from auction and held/surrendered to police during any investigation until released back to your posession for possible sale, thus releasing your company from possible financial liability to the consignor and possible owner of the stolen property. Let the police do their job and then you continue with yours when given the green light from police. This could take months or even years to get resolved, but that is not your problem.

I also feel you should reach out to other major auction houses/consignment companies like Heritage, Goldin, Fanatics, Classic, Memory Lane, REA, etc. to see what their present policies are. I am sure they would be willing to share and have all likely dealt with similar circumstances in the past.

I agree with pretty much everything katoy2j stated above about you not playing detective and definitely not providing private, personal information about people to others. You would likely be violating LAFOIP laws in doing so.

Finally, in closing, I found it difficult to hear how you and your company initially handled this situation. I am relieved to hear that you are willing to learn from this experience and do your part to make it right for the original owner of the cards. I know you know what it is like from a collector standpoint and are truly passionate about our hobby. Kudos to you and SlabSharks for wanting to do, and be better!

 

[Luongo Collector]

I think this is a point that needs to be elaborated on. The consignor presented a pic of him holding one of the cards from 2022.....

So something is fishy here. We as a community tend to all jump on one side, especially when it goes wrong, and it's easy to pile on. I have no skin in this game and to be honest, I'm just curious at this point.

You say that the consignor has proof, which is evident from the 2022 photo. So is this person stating that he has been in possession of this card since 2022? Is he claiming that all of the cards have been in his possession since then?

The older I get the longer I wait to judge a situation and scenario. I think we should all reserve our judgement for now until all the facts are out there....

Or you can all tell me to !@#$ off I guess! lol

Chris

Agreed 100%.

In the mentioned circumstance, the consignor has more evidence than the potential victim.

For example, a picture from 2022 (year and half ago) of him with the same card still in his possession.

Potential victim is saying the card was stolen in 2024.

So, as you can see it is a little more nuanced. But, all in all, i get what you're saying.

So, to take out the best practice information here.

The potential victim will need to have police involved with a case number that we can verify, while the card is paused in our auction.

 

[TMCards]

I think it comes down to doing the right thing (or trying to do the right thing). If I were running the consignment company and this sort of thing was recurring on a relative-frequent basis, I would have some sort of "action plan" that gets enacted after receiving communication that an item listed is potentially stolen.

Having proper framework would allow you to step through these processes consistently and would likely reduce the strain on Slabsharks resources.

I think what terry1hockeyfan posted is in the right ballpark. It's unfortunate to have to take down listings if people claim they are stolen but I think most collectors will agree it's the right thing to do and protects Slabsharks' public reputation (very important). If your cards were stolen, how would you feel if probstein123 sold them?

 

[karnrai21]

I think this is a point that needs to be elaborated on. The consignor presented a pic of him holding one of the cards from 2022.....

So something is fishy here. We as a community tend to all jump on one side, especially when it goes wrong, and it's easy to pile on. I have no skin in this game and to be honest, I'm just curious at this point.

You say that the consignor has proof, which is evident from the 2022 photo. So is this person stating that he has been in possession of this card since 2022? Is he claiming that all of the cards have been in his possession since then?

The older I get the longer I wait to judge a situation and scenario. I think we should all reserve our judgement for now until all the facts are out there....

Or you can all tell me to !@#$ off I guess! lol

Chris

Hey Chris,

Thanks for your comment! I just wanted to reiterate that this is a separate situation than the one from this post.

I’ve brought it up to add to the discussion that there has been a time that a card was reported stolen maliciously, or mistakenly to us, with the consignor 100% having complete ownership of the card with 100% proof of long term custody.

So, on our end, it is a bit nuanced. We don’t want a completely innocent party to go through hoops for their own cards.

We’ve come up with a strategy last night as a team moving forward, we have got in touch with other auction companies for their strategy.

They all felt the same as we did, that it is a slippery slope and difficult to have a blanket process, but we’ve come up with a general framework.

-

To an above comment, it is important to note that we were unable to verify any police report in this circumstance - I did try. And did actively ask for one. While, I believe the OP to be truthful now, at the time the team thought there were some red flags (mistakenly)

-

To another above comment, I go back and forth about whether I’d want my stolen cards to show up in a very public auction. So far, anyone that has had their cards show up in our auctions and has reached out to us with evidence of ownership has received a positive outcome on the companies dime. I believe bringing the cards to light increases the chances of a resolution by a huge percentage. But then again, we obviously don’t want to handle stolen cards. So it’s a tough one to answer.


-

Moving forward this is our stance, (please keep in mind there are trolls and those who mistakenly or maliciously report stolen items)

When we have claims of a stolen item in our auction, we’d like the following:

Verifiable personal information
The story
And a character reference

If those 3 are fulfilled, we will suspend the auction. If the auction is ending in a short time period, we will renege on the character reference requirement.

During the suspension of an auction,, the potential victim will provide us with a police report, or have the police contact us. At this point, we will comply with any police orders.

If there is no police order, or further communication from the potential victim, the auction is relisted the following week. (This allows for a 1 week response from the potential victim to get things in order)

If there is a police report, and further communication from the police. We will comply. If we are told to hold onto the items, we will ask the police if we can send them back to the owner and provide contact information.

I envision these situations will be very rare. Although, I was shocked that every auction house I spoke to has dealt with this 2-3 times a year.

I hope this framework is sufficient.

And let’s hope people stop stealing cards. They are traceable, it is a dumb crime. You can never live in peace. Provenance can be tracked easily even years down the line.

We will be creating a “report card” button on our auctions via website/app as well, that will streamline the application process mentioned above.

Thanks everyone for the help. We took this extremely seriously, and would love to make it right for the original poster

 

[katoy2j]

To be honest the stolen cards aspect of your business is kind of the easy part. It sounds like it's 2-3 a year which in the grand scheme of things is really, really small and as you said it's pretty easy to track. It's mostly pausing a listing and letting the police determine the situation.

The really hard part will be tracking altered cards. Many cards have been trimmed especially older baseball cards and were slabbed without issue despite that but hardcore collectors are aware of them. As well you have so many patch cards that were altered and slabbed. This will be tough because the person who currently owns these cards likely isn't the guilty party and probably paid a hefty sum for these cards but will really be blindsided by the news if they tried to consign them. This is the really tough one because it impacts the credibility of your company.

 

[karnrai21]

To be honest the stolen cards aspect of your business is kind of the easy part. It sounds like it's 2-3 a year which in the grand scheme of things is really, really small and as you said it's pretty easy to track. It's mostly pausing a listing and letting the police determine the situation.

The really hard part will be tracking altered cards. Many cards have been trimmed especially older baseball cards and were slabbed without issue despite that but hardcore collectors are aware of them. As well you have so many patch cards that were altered and slabbed. This will be tough because the person who currently owns these cards likely isn't the guilty party and probably paid a hefty sum for these cards but will really be blindsided by the news if they tried to consign them. This is the really tough one because it impacts the credibility of your company.

We’ll do what we can. We do need some empathy as well from the hobby community - to help us, instead of tear us down.

We’re a small Canadian business that is really trying to bring special cards / items for Canadians to buy within the country (and for Canadians to sell internationally without the hassle).

We are going to strive to be as close to perfect as possible, but we are human, and when dealing with volume - there will be mistakes within the 1000s of positive interactions.

Altered cards is definitely a tough one. We will try our best. Feel free to email us anytime there is suspicion.

 

[Matches]

Hey everyone,

Just want to give a quick update. I spoke with Karn over the phone today and we had a good conversation. Looking back with 20/20 hindsight a phone call could have saved all of us some stress.

In the found out there were some miscommunications, big one being I sent Slab Sharks the incorrect file number, which I found out today when I asked the RCMP for an update, so that's on me and I didn't have a method of sharing the scans of my cards at the time.
So, as the auctions were coming to close and just coming out treatment for PTSD, I decided that the cards were going to be gone and there's nothing left I could do and that it was best just to let the RCMP do their thing. There was no use in me stressing out over hockey cards and falling back into old patterns and behaviors that I would revert to before the treatment.

Karn was easy to deal with and listened to my ideas on how they could approach similar circumstances in the future, which hopefully they don't. Karn also said that they would also help in the investigation and provide the investigating officer any information regarding the consignor.

Thanks again Karn, it was a pleasure talking to you, just wish it was under different circumstances.

 

[dudical]

I've sold many items with Karn so far in their short history, everything has been 100% positive. Sold about 200 items over 5 different consignments. That being said, it is good to see some transparency with him coming on this board to talk with everyone. Most companies, even the huge ones, think keeping quiet will make it go away. ie: see Beckett and Probstein anytime there is an issue.

2 cents.

 

[gomaz]

Matches, I’d totally forgotten about this, and bought a lot of Niedermayers at the Edmonton Expo off a guy. I showed them in my episode (at the end) of SCL last night. Check it out and let me know if they were yours.

 

[Matches]

Matches, I’d totally forgotten about this, and bought a lot of Niedermayers at the Edmonton Expo off a guy. I showed them in my episode (at the end) of SCL last night. Check it out and let me know if they were yours.

Thanks Gomaz, I had a quick look and yeah looks like they're all mine. I'll shoot you a PM to confirm serial numbers and give you some info regarding the file number with the RCMP.

 

[Matches]

I just want to thank Jeremy(Gomaz) for hosting me on his podcast(Sports Cards Live) last night, as well as Karn from Slab Sharks and Dallas from Morrison Trading Post for joining the discussion regarding stolen cards in the hobby. Great discussion to bring some awareness to everyone if the unthinkable happens to them.

And for anyone who joined in, sorry about the cricket sounds, it was either my laptop or the fan on my fireplace. I couldn't hear it during the live show.

And thank you to everyone in this community for all the support and giving me tips whenever some Niedermayers popped up.

I will be getting a portion of my collection, which I'm thrilled for.

I'll post some more updates, hopefully in the near future.