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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;GDJMSP, post: 3090825, member: 112&quot;]I think would most would say these two quotes present the two sides of the story in a nutshell. But do they ?</p><p><br /></p><p>Rather obviously they can&#039;t both be right, one of them has to be wrong. And when you&#039;re talking about ethics right and wrong is what you&#039;re talking about. And there is never, never, any time when the same thing can be both right and wrong - it is always one way or the other. Though rather obviously there are those who would disagree with that statement. That said, I fully understand what both of the above parties are saying. But let&#039;s examine things from a different point of view.</p><p><br /></p><p>The crux of the matter, I guess you could say the deciding factor in this scenario, is that one party is a professional and the other is not. And, that the professional should be held to a higher standard. So OK, lets say we agree with that. The question then becomes - exactly which party is the professional and which is not ? How do you determine from the other ? Is the dealer the professional or is the collector the professional ?</p><p><br /></p><p>The only way you can answer that, and answer it fairly, is to determine which one has the greater knowledge of the subject at hand. And if you do that, well then the shoe&#039;s on the other foot isn&#039;t it ? </p><p><br /></p><p>Ya see, what people don&#039;t think about is that just because someone is in business that does not necessarily mean they are a professional. But yet that is exactly what is being used as the deciding factor if you were to agree with baseball&#039;s point of view. From his side, simply being a business owner is what makes you a professional. </p><p><br /></p><p>In reality there are a great many dealers, and I do mean a great many, who not professionals at all. They are merely business owners. There&#039;s all kinds of coins that they know nothing about. They may not be able to identify varieties or errors, they may not be able to grade correctly, they may have no idea of a given coin&#039;s scarcity, they may have no idea of a given coin&#039;s value. But yet they are being called the professional simply because they own a business.</p><p><br /></p><p>So, you have party A who owns a coin shop, and he does not know any of the things or just one of the things that I mentioned above, and then you party B, a collector, who walks into his shop and party B knows all of those things, and more. So, who&#039;s the professional here ? The dealer, or the collector - A or B ?</p><p><br /></p><p>If you see it from that point of view and you&#039;re taking baseball&#039;s side in this - then you just undid yourself and made your entire argument invalid. </p><p><br /></p><p>Or did you ? Perhaps that makes baseball&#039;s point, the only that happened is that we switched who was the professional and who was not. </p><p><br /></p><p>However, if you do THAT, then you just made cherrypicking unethical or wrong. Remember now, that&#039;s what we&#039;re talking about here - right and wrong. </p><p><br /></p><p>The one and only difference in this entire thing, the one and only thing that is the determining factor, is who has the greater knowledge. And then the question becomes is using your knowledge to your own advantage right or wrong ? That&#039;s the question, the only question, that has to be answered. And it cannot ever, not EVER, be both ways. It either is or it isn&#039;t.</p><p><br /></p><p>Of course that presents us with a rather peculiar problem doesn&#039;t it. For if you happen to be the one with the greater knowledge, then you just made yourself guilty of the same wrong that you have been accusing others of.</p><p><br /></p><p>So do you see the problem with this ? Having knowledge and using it is a bad thing ? How can that possibly be ? Simply because you know more about something than someone else, and you use it, makes you a bad guy ? That&#039;s kind of a hard pill to swallow isn&#039;t it ? Think about your life, your entire life, everything you do in life, how many times every single day do you use your own knowledge to your advantage ? </p><p><br /></p><p>Well, there&#039;s only one way I can answer this question, having knowledge is not a bad thing, and nor is using to your advantage. If you took the time and put in the effort to acquire that knowledge then you have every right to use it to your advantage. For that is the very purpose of knowledge to begin with, all knowledge. And that is what provides us with our answer, and it&#039;s quite simple - it truly doesn&#039;t make any difference what side of the counter you&#039;re on - and yes it is ethical. It can be no other way.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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