Integrity: Your Reputation in this Hobby Means Everything
For the longest time, throughout history, people would fight to preserve their good names…their honor.
The ‘ole slap across the face with a white riding glove because one gentleman had besmirched another is a trope we’ve all seen dozens of times in film and television. Knights jousting, duels…honor and integrity.
Having integrity is doing the right thing even though no one is around to witness your actions, and boy, do we have shortage of integrity and honor in the world today.
Our hobby, the hobby we love and support is rife with a cantina full of sleazy characters looking to take advantage to get ahead in an imaginary competition of collecting.
In the SWAU we take the integrity of the hobby and our members very seriously. And if you’re just visiting or reading this and you’ve heard differently, you likely heard it from a disgruntled misfit that was booted for one of a variety of reasons.
A few examples:
Using a child to obtain autographs, or using disabled access at a convention to speed through long lines.
Claiming to have gotten items in-person when in reality you’re using a PayPal account to pay for a service.
Taking items for a fee for a convention, then not returning said items or taking months to return items. Although, you may also be able to still report the news while not actually reporting the news…that one is still lost on me.
The examples above are just a few of the many reasons people are no longer active in our groups. Once you’ve done someone wrong, you cannot be trusted…period.
If you’re taking items for consignment for a fee, you are responsible for taking the items, getting them signed as advertised, communicating with customers and returning items in a reasonable time frame.
If you tell someone that you’re going to buy something…you buy it. If your life changes so drastically in a few days that your financial situation has been affected to a point where you cannot afford the item you committed to buy, then you likely should’ve never bought it to begin with.
If you have set-up a payment plan for a purchase with a seller, then continue to buy other things that prohibit you from completing the transaction you committed to, then you have no integrity and cannot be trusted.
If you try to flip an item you know is fake to another unsuspecting collector on eBay or another group, you have no integrity and you will be shamed.
If you have an agreement with an IP collector and you refuse to pay because the signature is in the wrong color, or doesn’t look the way you want it, then you have no integrity and no IP grapher will ever work with you again.
Once you do something to tarnish your reputation, brother…it ain’t coming back. You’re done. Scarlet-lettered. A pariah in the autograph world who no one wants to deal with.
Oh, and if you sell something and an item is damaged in transit? It’s up to you to make it right.
At the end of the day, you are what your actions say you are. Act like a mutant and defraud people, your access to the hobby, including signings and items will vaporize.
The most precious thing you have on Earth is your name. And all you have to do to preserve it, is do what you say you’re going to do.
