Honestly I do not know, maybe just to make sure you are not giving out a false address?

How does giving admin your contact info prove that you are trustworthy?

I personally think that the middle man idea would just complicate things for the reasons that whosurdaddy explained. The JM is obviously Andy. ;-) Hey Andy, I never knew that you were from the UK! I guess that that would explain why you have so many footballers autographs. :lol: Who do you have in mind from the US?

The Middle Man, I was afraid that's what you were talking about, Not only would this person be responsible for opening both parties mail ( to check what both parties have sent)they would inturn be responsible for repackaging payments or items and then sending them to the respective parties. Your talking about extra postage and materials(envelopes) and that would be insane. As far as the JM I'm talking about quite honestly it's is a no brainer, However unfortunately living in the U.K he himself has said in posts that he is not familiar with some of the material collected here in the U.S.. So it should actually be two people( Not necessarily moderators) that have the knowledge, one from the U.K and one from the U.S.

the best system I can think of is to close it down, this forum isnt really set up to be a trading forum, so yes theres going to be ripoffs.

other then that, the best idea Ive heard is posting pics of what your selling is the #1 requirment (its a lot easier to rip off a 12 year old by sending the pic in a pm then it is posting the pic for everyone to see and judge)

[quote="Fudgemonkey"]Hi,

I know that there's been a lot of talk lately about improving the Autographs For Sale/Exchange Forum. I agree that something must be done about it. Here are just some ideas:

[list]-Have a middle man when trading (thanks to Afem101 for this idea).
-Make it into more of an auction type thing (a Fanmil.biz Ebay...). This, of course, would only be done for purchasing, not trading.
-If you are going to trade, you must give admin your contact information (this would ensure that you are trustworthy).
-Get some sort of better system of moderating...I think that we should have some Moderators specific to this forum. If the moderators have suspicion, they can bring it to the Moderator Forum.[/list]
-Fudgemonkey[/quote]
These are just some ideas. Feel free to comment!

1)I definately don't understand the middle man concept.
2)Making it more of an auction does absolutely nothing to improve the forum.
3)Giving Admin. your contact info. for selling or trading still does not guarantee either party of (being trustworthy)receiving payment or merchandise.Does Admin. really want to get caught up into being a collection agency?
4)As far as a better system of moderating, It depends on what mod. or mods. are chosen. Personally there is only one JM on here that I would feel comfortable moderating that forum.

Actually credit should be given where credit is due for ideas that we're suggested that weren't from you as a matter of principle. That was the point of my original post. As for the ideas, they sound good to me.

Andy posted a thread just like this.

http://www.fanmail.biz/mboard/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=72445