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Message:: [QUOTE="GDJMSP, post: 1712759, member: 112"]For the most part I have stayed out of this discussion other than to quickly voice my opinion because I know from experience that it would serve little purpose to do otherwise. In other words, nothing I say is going to change anybody's mind. But, my opinion is based on several things, and none of them are what if's or maybes. But your question, or request if you prefer, begs the question - what are ethics ? Simply put ethics are knowing the difference between right and wrong. Well that sounds pretty simple anyway, but as this thread shows us it is anything but simple in the minds of our membership. But the opinions of those members, are in many cases, based on a lot of what if's and maybes. So let's look at it a little differently. Let's determine what we know. This is Mike's (the OP's) basic question - Mike also says - Here Mike tells us flat out that he doesn't know what the exact situation was at the time of sale. That's fair enough, but he also tells that he (Mike) leans toward the idea that the dealer should have at least suspected that the coin might be an MPL at the time of sale. Even though the coin was slabbed and graded as a business strike. But we do not, stress not, know that to be the case. So that idea is still a maybe. Now what else do we know ? We know that at some point after the sale, and we don't have any definition of how long after the sale that it happened because Mike never said how long it was that I can recall, Mike was asked by the dealer to give his opinion of the coin and help determine if Mike thought the coin might be an MPL. Now this fact all by itself tells us that the dealer was absolutely not certain the coin was an MPL, otherwise he would not be asking Mike for his opinion. It also tells us that the dealer has a good deal of respect for Mike and his knowledge of coins, again otherwise he would not be asking Mike for his opinion. This speaks to the point that someone else made in the thread about a coin dealer supposedly being an expert just because he is a coin dealer. Well, I can tell you from personal experience that a great many of coin dealers are most definitely not experts on coins. And this one obviously isn't an expert or he wouldn't be asking a collector for his opinion. Then we come to something else, something that I know, personally, and perhaps many of the rest of you do not. I have known Mike for longer (about 12 or 13 years) than just about anybody else on this forum, with 1 or 2 exceptions. I know that Mike is a good man, an honest man, someone I trust. I also know that he has a great deal of knowledge about coins. But before anyone can trust someone, you have to know that person. So perhaps I have an advantage over a lot of you in that I know & trust Mike. That said, here is something else we also know. Based on the following - - we know that Mike trusted and respected this particular dealer over a long period of time. Otherwise he would not have been a good and long time customer of this particular dealer. And obviously the dealer held reciprocal feelings about Mike as we have seen from above. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but because I know Mike, the fact that he trusted and respected this dealer for a long time tells me that dealer deserved to be trusted and respected. That he, the dealer, was a good and honest man who knows right from wrong. So I ask you - what changed ? In my mind nothing changed. But in Mike's mind, and in the minds of many of the rest of you, this trusted and respected dealer went from being an ethical man to being an unethical man because he said that if the coin turned out to be an MPL that he would not, long after the sale was completed, share any financial benefit with the person he bought the coin from. Now I'm sorry, but I just don't understand that. And I like to think that I know the difference between right and wrong, that I know the difference between ethical and unethical. For here we have an example of a man, an ethical man, who was trusted and respected over a long period of time, and who had proved to another trusted and respected and man that he was deserving of that trust and respect, turning into an unethical man - based on nothing more than a maybe. Why is it, how is it, that years of trust and respect can be thrown out the window because we think that maybe, just maybe, this dealer might have suspected that the coin was an MPL before he completed the purchase. If it were me, and I had trusted somebody for many years, then I would be much more inclined to continue that trust and give the dealer the benefit of the doubt and believe that he only came to suspect that the coin might, stress might, be an MPL at some point after the purchase had been completed. For my ethics demand of me that I do not throw my trust and respect for someone that was earned over a period of many years out the window because maybe he thought something at the time of purchase. But that's me, and that's how I look at ethics.[/QUOTE]

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