darkseraphim wrote:At that con, you should always be a buyer, and never a seller.  If you want to sell, do so on the floor via booth.  And as a buyer, be personally certain of an item's condition before escalating your bid beyond your comfort level - otherwise assume the item is in fair condition.  These measures shouldn't be necessary at a professional venue, but there, they are.  I will say no more.

The problem at the GenCon Auctions is entirely the fault of the Auctioneers...quality varies from year to year.  If they wanted to do it right, they should get a professional service to run the auctions professionally and not half-ass. In the mid-90's a friend of mine went to Gen Con and brought several items of his to auction off.  After watching the quality of the auctions, he decided to hang onto his stuff rather than have it suffer the haphazard treatment he was noticing, and was able to retrieve it from the auctioneers.  He also confirmed a few things you guys mentioned in your earlier posts just from keeping his eyes open and buddying up to some of the auctioneers after hours.  
  Since then I've never let my items be auctioned unless I was personally attending the auction.  Many times the auctioneers have regretted having me attend, because I will loudly point out factual errors, sometimes destroying their spiel.  When buying I also always ask to examine boxed sets that are open or similar items (counters, etc).  Usually the auctioneers are very accomodating...but just as often they accept stuff as is and have no clue if the items are complete, I would say close to 50% of the stuff I look through is missing a map, handout, etc.  I would never assume a boxed set is complete unless looking through it first...many auction items are sold "as is", and typically the guys running the auction can't even take the time to look at the back of the box and make sure everything is inside!
    A couple of other mistakes I've witnessed:
   Bid on a set of comics billed as "A complete set of TSR comics from DC".  It included the Forgotten Realms, AD&D, and Dragonlance series, indeed complete runs....but no Spelljammer, I guess they didn't know this was also a TSR comic.
    During one auction the auctioneer went on a long spiel about how hard to find, rare, etc the old Rogues Gallery supplement (1980) version was, that this "special version" even included stats for characters such as Mordenkained and Bigby!  He went on and on about how hard to find and rare it was, about how it was 20 years old, blah blah...then proceded to auction THREE of them off in a row.  I kept resisting an urge to shout out "And I've got five more at home for anyone else who wants one!"

Mike B.