profiles in history, another rip off?

Thanks for the info Columbo, I am curious what the item in the thread was.. was this situation ever figured out what happen to the thread?

Movie props are not my area but I have been collecting for 20+ years my #1 point when dealing with any item is DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH don't rely 100% on what the seller says be it a person or any auction house. I have seen so much incorrect information provided by auction houses over the years it's not even funny so I personally don't trust any of them I do my own research before I bid on an item and if you don't Caveat emptor pure and simple...

The Batfan said:

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Thanks for the info Columbo, I am curious what the item in the thread was.. was this situation ever figured out what happen to the thread?

That would be an interesting read. Maybe a professional courtesy was extended from the administrator of this forum to the administrator of the other forum?

James

Columbo said:

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Don't know that I have much to add about the thread that disappeared. A hero screen-used costume was posted. People wooped and high-fived over it. Then a couple of us pointed out it wasn't much like the costume in the movie.

It is extremely rare for us to delete a thread... usually it is a result of some legal entanglement. We know Wesley and I don't ever recall us having any issues with him or with HH or them asking to have a thread removed. You guys are beating around the bush a bit. What thread was it, who was the OP and what were they showing off? We rarely truly delete anything and will be glad to look into it and give you a reason for the removal if we did indeed remove it.

If I recall I remember a guy popping on here boasting about a screen used superman costume and it not going over so well.

Art Andrews said:

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It is extremely rare for us to delete a thread... usually it is a result of some legal entanglement. We know Wesley and I don't ever recall us having any issues with him or with HH or them asking to have a thread removed. You guys are beating around the bush a bit. What thread was it, who was the OP and what were they showing off? We rarely truly delete anything and will be glad to look into it and give you a reason for the removal if we did indeed remove it.

My internet history says the thread was called leeloos-suspenders-fifth-element. There is a number 152106 also. Don't recall who started it. I didn't go into specifics before because I thought maybe the original poster had deleted it himself and would not want it dragged out again and I was being a little discrete to spare his feelings. Get the impression now that posters can't delete their threads? If so it is pretty strange that it vanished completely.

As Art mentioned, we usually do not remove threads, but there are, of course, exceptions. We deal with removal requests on a case by case basis, and we make our decision based on the specific issue involved. The Leeloo thread was removed because it was simply a showoff thread that turned into a debate over authenticity and things, IIRC, got a bit out of hand.

Montagar said:

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As Art mentioned, we usually do not remove threads, but there are, of course, exceptions. We deal with removal requests on a case by case basis, and we make our decision based on the specific issue involved. The Leeloo thread was removed because it was simply a showoff thread that turned into a debate over authenticity and things, IIRC, got a bit out of hand.

Aren't threads that turn into a tiresome argument normally locked though? To delete the whole thing looks pretty odd TBH. Do I follow correctly; someone requested it be removed, and this was done for them?

Montagar said:

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As Art mentioned, we usually do not remove threads, but there are, of course, exceptions. We deal with removal requests on a case by case basis, and we make our decision based on the specific issue involved. The Leeloo thread was removed because it was simply a showoff thread that turned into a debate over authenticity and things, IIRC, got a bit out of hand.

It is too bad that the thread was completely removed. I have seen other topics where specific posts (i.e. posts that were deemed controversial) were removed leaving the original thread mostly intact.

In the spirit of transparency, maybe the Leeloo suspender topic should have remained. It could have been helpful to others researching the same item.

James

Columbo said:

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My internet history says the thread was called leeloos-suspenders-fifth-element. There is a number 152106 also. Don't recall who started it. I didn't go into specifics before because I thought maybe the original poster had deleted it himself and would not want it dragged out again and I was being a little discrete to spare his feelings. Get the impression now that posters can't delete their threads? If so it is pretty strange that it vanished completely.

Columbo thanks for the Info.. that would have been interesting thread as I am a fan of the Fifth element.. I agree that a whole thread being deleted is strange. I was a mod on a forum for years and usually if a thread goes off track etc we just locked the thread not completely deleting it from the forum as the thread might have contained information valuable to other collectors. Just my opinion...

I know you always hear "Do your own research", but seriously, auction houses should set some standards on how that authenticate an item, rather than just believing items are what they are. There are plenty of buyers who don't have any experience and they want and expect to have a level of trust implicit in the sale.

Alec

Art Andrews said:

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We rarely truly delete anything and will be glad to look into it and give you a reason for the removal if we did indeed remove it.

Any update on this yet? I'm very curious about it now.

Columbo said:

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Any update on this yet? I'm very curious about it now.

Montagar answered bud.

Amish Trooper said:

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Montagar answered bud.

So any information that was contained in that topic was deemed useless? Columbo asked a pretty good question and it had not been answered.

James

Amish Trooper said:

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Montagar answered bud.

He didn't answer why it was deleted... There's no reason to delete a thread because it 'got out of hand'. As mentioned previously, it should have been locked....

The last post I saw in the thread was someone posting screen shots of Leeloo in the movie wearing the suspenders, pointing out specific things that didn't match at all to the ones the OP had... It wasn't a case of camera angle or being over-stretched, it clearly did not match in that scene (granted, it was just one scene).

When I looked for the thread either later that day or the next day, it was completely gone... My assumption was that someone _asked_ for the thread to be removed, as deleting the entire thread made no sense. If someone got vulgar or threatening, delete that post and lock the thread.

There's currently at least 762 (probably more) threads in the Junkyard with a title of 'Sold, mods please delete' or something similar dating back as far 2010, and they still exist. Many of them have had the contents of the posts deleted by the OPs as well, so you can't even see what it was they sold... So there's no reason for them to still be there. I figured it was board policy not to delete a thread at all, so these just linger behind.

Which again points to some other reason for the complete removal of a thread, even if there was a disagreement about the item's authenticity...

This seems like an answer to me:

Montagar " The Leeloo thread was removed because it was simply a showoff thread that turned into a debate over authenticity and things, IIRC, got a bit out of hand"

This might not be the answer you want but it is still an answer.

Im assuming the OP requested it to be removed. Not necessarily because of the debate but because he started to doubt the authenticity of it. It did have a nice price tag on it so my guess was he got embarrassed. Hell it happens to us all eventually. The OP posts on another prop board as well, and along with the guys who run Hollywood History so Im sure it eventually all got sorted.

I will say this though, Wes and Co. over at Hollywood History are great guys. Granted they dont run their site as a living but they do back all their props with a 100% money back. Im guessing it got returned.

Amish Trooper said:

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This seems like an answer to me:

Montagar " The Leeloo thread was removed because it was simply a showoff thread that turned into a debate over authenticity and things, IIRC, got a bit out of hand"

This might not be the answer you want but it is still an answer.

Like I said, that's not an answer for why is was DELETED... A thread 'getting out of hand' is locked, not deleted (based on past experience). And I had been reading the thread nearly up the point it disappeared, and it didn't seem to be 'getting out of hand'... Unless something happened in the last few hours of it's existence.

And 'IIRC' is a way of saying 'this is what I think happened'. In other words, he doesn't know for sure, just taking a guess...

To me, that's not an answer.

Are the mods going to start deleting every thread on the board when someone questions the authenticity of an item? Based on that 'answer', that's what would seem to be happening...

Alan Castillo said:

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Yes, it is.

Actually, after re-reading Montagar's post, it seems you might be right. I had originally read it as an 'I think it was deleted for this reason...' Now I see I mis-read it.

Apparently the OP of the thread requested it to be deleted because it was just supposed to be a showoff thread that turned into a thread questioning the authenticity of the item, and they honored that request and removed it.

The 'IIRC' part was about it getting out of hand... But regardless of whether that happened or not, it was just a matter of the OP requesting it's removal and they agreed to it...

Misunderstanding on my part, just wasn't reading it correctly.

Alan Castillo said:

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The above notwithstanding, and as I said before, it is not our 'right' to grill the mods / admin to explain (further) why a decision was taken.

Nope, wasn't try to grill anyone. Someone was hoping for more of an explanation, and maybe didn't quite realize one was given (like me), or perhaps wanted a response from Art specifically... MirrorminD got it, just wasn't my day for reading.

Problem solved, sorry about being a pain in the...

(never mind)

Slightly off topic but I see that Screenused are now conducting regular auctions.

At least these guys are genuine collectors and are approaching the auctions from a provenance perspective. Hopefully they can take a lot of the PiH business.

Joe

SU Has sold off PIH items as well.

Rik1138 said:

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Like I said, that's not an answer for why is was DELETED... A thread 'getting out of hand' is locked, not deleted (based on past experience). And I had been reading the thread nearly up the point it disappeared, and it didn't seem to be 'getting out of hand'... Unless something happened in the last few hours of it's existence.

And 'IIRC' is a way of saying 'this is what I think happened'. In other words, he doesn't know for sure, just taking a guess...

To me, that's not an answer.

Are the mods going to start deleting every thread on the board when someone questions the authenticity of an item? Based on that 'answer', that's what would seem to be happening...

Rik1138,

I am not going to answer point by point since Alan did a pretty good job, as usual, stating our views in our absence.

At the end of the day, the work we do as staff is rarely cut and dried. I would love nothing more than to live in a binary world where everything neatly fell into one of two areas. It doesn't. Because it doesn't we have to make judgement calls. To the very best of our ability we try to be consistent in those judgement calls and to act in a manner that is relatively predictable in order to maintain a certain level of calm among the membership. You can believe, any time we deviate, even a bit from the norm, someone is going to call us on it. We are not robots and from time to time a certain situation "feels" like it needs to be handled in a way that is not what you might expect. Often that is because there are circumstances that are not public knowledge nor do we care to make them public knowledge. I know that means that our actions are sometimes not entirely clear or may seem somewhat inconsistent, but there is always a reason behind any action we take, even if we don't share that reason publicly.

Fortunately, over time, we have been able to build a relationship with the community in which most members have learned to trust us, even when we don't explain ourselves and sometimes, even when we take actions that they don't agree with on the surface. I hope, in time, you can do the same.

Art Andrews said:

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Rik1138,

I am not going to answer point by point since Alan did a pretty good job, as usual, stating our views in our absence.

Fortunately, over time, we have been able to build a relationship with the community in which most members have learned to trust us, even when we don't explain ourselves and sometimes, even when we take actions that they don't agree with on the surface. I hope, in time, you can do the same.

Hi Art,

Just wanted to state that I have no problems with the actions of the moderators of this board in any way. It was a complete mis-understanding on my part, I had mis-read what Montagar had originally posted about the thread removal, and that started the back-and-forth with me and Alan...