Weighing packs frowned upon or no?

[pfm]

I’m going to quote myself here, I got some good reception the first time I posted this so obviously there’s other people that agree with this

@pfm

@fazool

Calling weighing wrong is fine and a personal opinion.

The reality is though that it should just realistically be the rule now. We aren’t in a magical world where it isn’t happening to the vast majority of vintage packs. Selling “unweighed loose” vintage boosters is unethical to me at this point.

I really wouldn’t even purchase a loose pack anymore unless it was weighed high or low

We have very reputable people like Rusty selling unweighed packs from freshly cracked boxes, but even that is quite uncomfortable as it leaves the door open for others to crack a box and claim to sell all the packs unweighed while weighing them off camera.

Tl;dr I think all vintage packs should just be sold as heavy or light at this point as pretending you have the 1:3 chance from the 90s is an outright lie

I agree. The only conditions were you have ethical dilemmas is when a portion of people disclose the fact the pack has been weighed and a portion of people don’t. Then you have a situation where people can deceptively sell weighed packs.
If no one weighed anything there wouldn’t be a problem. But no matter how hard you fight against it, there will always be people who weigh. The other option is where everyone provides the weight of every pack they sell. Then there are no victims because everyone is 100% aware of what they are buying. Everyone should be demanding to see the weight when they buy packs because if this practice is normalized, no buyer will get burned.
Arguing that weighing is unethical is just not relevant today. The difference between heavy and light 1st ed base packs is on the order of $2000-4000. Heavy and light packs have an established value but unweighed packs are basically Schrodinger’s pack where the value lies in the seller’s reputation since the seller has all the power to deceive someone. Weighing a pack is the equivalent of realizing the value of an item, just as grading a card through PSA takes Schrodinger’s condition and places it on a quantifiable scale and establishes value.
Pack weighing is the functional equivalent of grading. Period. It establishes a (mostly) objective way for a seller to describe an item that offers greater transparency to the buyer and prevents scummy sellers from omitting critical information about the item. It establishes the value of the item. It also protects the seller. If you sell 6 truly unweighed packs, there’s a 8.8% chance they are all light. Unknowingly selling all 6 to a single buyer can seriously damage your reputation. Buy weighing, you remove that risk from the equation since there’s a transparency and standard you can point to if the buyer has an issue, exactly the same with grading.

If weighing packs is immoral then so is grading. What if someone buys a PSA 8 from you, and they crack it from the case and relist it as “mint” hoping to get a premium from a buyer who is looking to grade a 10? Is selling PSA cards unethical too because of the indirect impact it could have on a future buyer?

Everyone should be demanding weights when they buy a pack. Anyone who doesn’t enables scummy sellers to continue to not disclose weights.