I've just now finished a letter to Mr. Prusha at Panini asking him to please stop sending me hobby boxes for review. This has nothing to do with Panini, but everything to do with Beckett. First, to see why I did this, read this from the commentary at Beckett Blog.
This is all about Chris Olds defending the two "legitimate boxes" that Beckett recieved from Topps. You know, no funny business. The 1/1 Pujols, the Stras auto and the rest of the lot were just marked down as 'good luck'.
First off, let me start back up where Chris Olds is leaving off. Tracy Hackler did contact me and when I really laid out all of my points to him, I got no response. So that's kind of a moot point. The last I heard from Hackler was that he'd get back to me to respond to my problems with Beckett after the 4th of July holiday. Never happened.
And here Chris Olds takes a bit of a dig at Panini in the next paragraph. "things that apparantly vanished or you apparantly forgave Panini about after a simple phone call." Well, he's referring to the box I took a bit of umbrage with that Panini sent Beckett that had a Kobe auto in it. Now, I documented very well that I did indeed place a retraction and that I had a phone call from Prusha. No secrets. And I'm old school. So when Prusha tells me right off that those boxes were random, ok. I'll take anybody at their word the first go around. That's how I am. Did Prusha lie to me? How the hell would I know? But I took him at his word either way. For me it's a done deal. Chris Olds is the one who brings it up again - not me. Mr. Olds seems to imply that perhaps I shouldn't have taken him at his word if he's seeming to say that I shouldn't have forgiven Panini just because they called my home number? Maybe Chris Olds will better explain to Panini what he meant there.
And finally, I have recieved boxes from Panini. There's no secret there. But Olds here is calling me out. So here's my response to Beckett. Take notes.
From this point on, I'll only review product that I buy for myself. I don't need to employ practices that Beckett employs. I dare Beckett to do the same.
A guy who's quickly becoming my friend, Mr. Fuji, made a good point - nobody should recieve free boxes. People spend money to try to buy what other people are recieving for nothing. Sure, I have contests to give away my cards - so does Beckett. But truth be told, it's still an imperfect system. The greater buying public still is at the mercy of a contest to get cards that were meant to be purchased.
So I respectfully asked Panini to not send me boxes in the future. I'll still write reviews and cover this hobby that I love. The only difference is that I won't do it like Beckett does it. That's a huge difference, by the way.


