On the other hand, if you were trying to pull a stunt, surely
you won't send the description to a place like MOPO, would you?
So, Mr. Wayne Stiles may well have not known any better -- he has a
feedback rating of 623 with 100% positive and offers a 7-day money-back
return policy, all of which speaks very well for the way he does
business. This appears to be a case where he needed to get a little
more information *before* posting the auction. Admittedly, it is
trickier with Mexican lobby cards... most are not dated and were used
and re-used over the years, sometimes for more than one release. But
there are some basic guidelines that can be used, as Walter points out
here, and a seller wishing to make a good reputation (and solicit
business from a place like MOPO) needs to know as much as they can.
Sadly, with many sellers on eBay we seem to be back to the old
Portal shuck-and-jive auction descriptions on these Mexican lobby
cards. That means the seller may or may not know the true story behind
the paper, but feels the thing to do is simply "throw it out there"
with some vague claims of age or authenticity and then finish with a
caveat that "we're not sure about any of this, but that's what we think
it is." With a description like that, the seller is covered. If no
knowledgeable people come forward to challenge the description, then
they can hope to sucker in someone who doesn't know any better into
paying too much. If a knowledgeable seller comes forward, they may have
to only settle for what it was worth, but can claim they were guilty of
nothing more than "a mistake" -- and sometimes, you never can tell,
maybe they actually did make a genuine mistake. It does happen... but
it happens far too often with the Mexican cards to be a genuine
mistake much of the time.
Having said all this, I must say I am fascinated by Mexican
lobby cards -- in general they are so much more interesting than most
U.S. lobby cards, which I generally find to be fairly dull and
uninteresting bunch much of the time, particulary after the
late-1950's. It's too bad the Mexican area of movie paper collecting is
in such disarray.
-- JR
