Authenticity and enforcement
What the house warrants about a lot, what it does when that warranty fails, and the rights it reserves against counterfeits, altered holders, defective title, manipulated bidding and unpaid invoices. Each one states the trigger, the evidence, the remedy, and the limit.
What the house warrants#
Minthouse warrants the heading line of every lot: the set, the card, the grade, and the certification number. That is the whole of the warranty and it is deliberately narrow, because it is the part the house can actually verify and stand behind.
What is not warranted, stated so that nobody has to infer it:
- The grade itself is not the house's opinion. It is PSA's, BGS's, CGC's or SGC's. Minthouse sells the certified card, not a promise about how it would grade again. A regrade that comes back lower is not a defect in the lot.
- Descriptions, estimates and condition notes are opinion, not statements of fact. Lots sell as is.
- Population figures and comparable sales are informational. They move, and the figure shown was the figure at the time of cataloguing.
- Investment performance is not warranted or implied. No lot is offered with any expectation of profit.
Inspection, before and after#
Every holder is inspected against tamper and counterfeit markers twice: once at intake before the lot is catalogued, and again before it is shipped to the buyer. Intake also confirms the certificate number against the grading company's own population report, so a certificate that does not exist, or that belongs to a different card, is caught before the lot is listed rather than after it is sold.
A lot that fails either inspection does not go out. What happens next depends on which failure it was, and that is the rest of this page.
Counterfeit and altered lots#
Five distinct failures live under the word "fake," and the house treats them differently because the evidence and the culpability differ.
| What was found | Trigger | What the house does |
|---|---|---|
| Counterfeit card in a counterfeit holder | Tamper markers, font and print inconsistencies, a certificate that does not resolve in the grader's population report, or the grader's own confirmation | Lot withdrawn before close, or the sale rescinded after it. Hammer plus fee refunded in full. Proceeds held or clawed back from the consignor. Account suspended pending the desk's finding. Referred to the grading company, and reported where the house is required or entitled to report. |
| Counterfeit or cloned holder around a genuine card | Holder seam, label substrate, hologram or font analysis against a known-good reference; certificate resolving to a different card | Same as above. The heading line is wrong because the certification is wrong, which is squarely inside the warranty even though the card itself is real. |
| Genuine holder, tampered or reholdered | Evidence of the holder having been opened and resealed; a card that does not match the label's own measurements | Same as above. A resealed holder voids the certification it carries, so the grade in the heading line is no longer a fact about the object. |
| Trimmed, restored or otherwise altered card inside a genuine, untampered holder | The grading company revoking or reclassifying the certificate | The heading line was accurate when the house sold it, so this is not automatically a warranty failure. Where the grader revokes the certificate the desk will nonetheless consider rescission on the merits, and will always assist the buyer's claim against the grader. |
| Grade dispute with no alteration | A buyer disagreeing with the assigned grade, or a regrade coming back lower | Not a claim the house can uphold. The grade is the grader's opinion and the house sold the certified card, exactly as described. |
The claim procedure#
Raise it inside 7 days of delivery. In writing to the desk, or by opening a dispute. This is the buyer protection window.
Settlement holds. A dispute opened inside the window holds the consignor's proceeds while the desk decides. This is why the window exists and why it sits before the payout rather than after it.
The slab returns intact and unaltered. A holder that has been opened, or a card removed from it, ends the claim: the object is the evidence, and the house cannot assess what it cannot examine in the state it shipped.
The desk decides. Where it upholds the claim it rescinds the sale and refunds the hammer price plus the auction house fee, to the buyer of record on the invoice.
Return of the intact slab for a refund of the hammer plus the fee is the sole and exclusive remedy for any authenticity claim, in place of every other warranty, right or remedy relating to authenticity. It is not capped by the liability limit in Terms of Service §13: that section expressly preserves this obligation, but it is also not a route to consequential loss, lost profit, or the difference between the hammer and what the card would have been worth if genuine.
After the window closes#
The desk can still be written to, and does still act, but the proceeds may already have been paid to the consignor, and at that point the house's ability to make a buyer whole depends on recovering from the consignor rather than on holding money it still has. The seven days are the period in which the remedy is mechanical rather than a matter of collection.
Defective title#
Every consignor warrants, under Terms of Service §8, that they are the sole owner of each consigned lot, that title is good and marketable and free of liens, claims and encumbrances, and that they have the lawful right to consign it. Breach of that warranty is covered by the indemnity in §14.
Where a third party asserts ownership of a lot, a theft report, a probate claim, a lien, a divorce order:
- Before the close, the house may withdraw the lot at any time, without liability beyond returning it to the consignor.
- After the close but before delivery, the house may cancel the sale, void the invoice, release any escrow lock, and hold the lot pending resolution.
- After delivery, the house will rescind the sale where the claim is established and pursue the consignor under the title warranty and the indemnity.
- The house will cooperate with law enforcement and with legitimate ownership claims, and will not release a lot into a known dispute.
Bid manipulation#
Shill bidding, collusion, and bidding on one's own consignment are prohibited under Terms of Service §10. Two of those are enforced by the engine before they can happen rather than investigated afterwards.
What the engine refuses at the moment of the bid#
- The consignor's own account cannot bid on its own lot. Checked first, on every bid and every Buy Now.
- An account sharing the consignor's shipping address cannot bid on it either. The engine compares address fingerprints between bidder and consignor and refuses a match as a self-bid, writing an audit row that survives the transaction's rollback.
- The consignor's address is frozen when the lot is listed. Comparing only against the live address would let a consignor edit it after listing and unlock their own puppet account; the frozen fingerprints are kept alongside the live ones and both are matched.
- A bidder the house cannot key is refused, not waved through. An account with no address on file is asked to add one before bidding on a consigned lot. An address-based check that switches itself off when somebody supplies no address is not a check, and a newly-registered second account starts with no address, which is exactly the account a shill would use.
A puppet account that supplies a different address still passes this check. It always would have: the check keys on an address, and a determined abuser can produce another one. What the design changes is that evading it is now a deliberate act left on the record, rather than something achieved by leaving a field blank. The house states the limit rather than describing the check as though it were complete.
What the house does after the fact#
- Reject the bid. The auctioneer may reject any bid that appears erroneous or manipulative, at any time before the close.
- Void the result and re-offer the lot. Where manipulation is established after a close, the house may reverse the sale, void the invoice, release the escrow lock and re-offer or withdraw the lot.
- Suspend or close accounts. Including every account it finds to be under common control. Suspension does not excuse invoices already owed, and lots already closed remain binding.
- Withhold consignor proceeds. A consignment found to have been shill-bid does not settle.
- Refuse future registration.
The evidence the house holds#
Every ruling the auction engine makes is appended to a hash-linked event chain, each event carrying the hash of the one before it, and countersigned into a receipt that binds the chain position, the price, the outcome and the frozen rules version. A bid, a proxy answer, an extension and a close are all in that record, in order, and the record cannot be rewritten after the fact without breaking every hash after the point of the edit. Where escrow collateral is enabled, the lock, release and settle for every lot are additionally public on chain. See Receipts and the event chain.
Unpaid invoices and default#
| Stage | When | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Due | 10 days from the invoice date | Payable in full. |
| Late | Past the due date | The desk chases. The lot is not released. |
| Defaulted | 5 days after the due date | The sale is reversed, the lot is passed, and a default fee is charged. Bidding on the account may be paused while the fee stands, and the account may be suspended. |
The default fee#
The greater of $250 or, applied marginally to the invoice total:
| Portion of the invoice | Rate |
|---|---|
| First $10,000 | 5% |
| $10,000 – $250,000 | 7.5% |
| Above $250,000 | 10% |
Where the winner was collateralised in the escrow, the house's ordinary remedy is to settle the invoice against the standing lock rather than to pursue a default at all, which is the point of the collateral. A default is what happens when there is no lock to settle, or the lock does not cover the invoice.
The escrow is a convenience for collection, not the mechanism of the sale. If a settle transaction fails or never lands, the invoice simply stays unpaid and the ordinary invoice and default machinery runs. No sale ever depends on a transaction landing, which is why a chain outage cannot void a contract of sale.
Rights the house reserves#
Collected in one place, with the section that grants each.
| Right | Exercisable when | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Decline any consignment | At any time, for any reason | ToS §8 |
| Withdraw a lot before it closes | Doubts about authenticity or title, description errors, legal reasons | ToS §8 |
| Reject a bid | It appears erroneous or manipulative | Conditions §1 |
| Refuse registration | At its discretion | ToS §3 |
| Suspend or close an account | Breach, suspected fraud or bid manipulation, failed screening, unpaid invoices | ToS §3 |
| Pause bidding on an account | While a default fee is open | Conditions §5 |
| Reverse a sale and pass the lot | Default, upheld authenticity claim, established manipulation, defective title | Conditions §5, §6 |
| Charge a default fee | Invoice unpaid 5 days past due | Conditions §5 |
| Hold consignor proceeds | An open dispute inside the buyer protection window | Conditions §7 |
| Refuse a payout or refund | The account is screened blocked, or the payment is tied to a sanctioned address | ToS §10 |
| Pause the escrow contract | An incident, by the guardian key | Threat model |
None of the rights above reaches a bidder's free escrow balance. There is no state, no finding, no default and no suspension under which Minthouse can transfer unlocked collateral out of the escrow contract: not to itself, not to a consignor, not to anyone. A default fee is a debt the house may pursue; it is not a key to the contract. See Guarantee 1.
Disputes about a ruling#
Write to notices@minthouse.io. Both sides try in good faith for 30 days before any filing; anything unresolved goes to individual binding arbitration under Terms of Service §15, with a small-claims carve-out and a 30-day opt-out from arbitration itself.
A bidder disputing a specific auction outcome should quote the receipt id from the ruling in question. The receipt binds the house to the chain position, price, outcome and rules version it recorded at the time, and it is the fastest way to establish what actually happened.