Impossible Ty Cobb autographed ball passed by JSA and PSA
 

I was looking at Brandon's website on his upcoming book and came across this. http://deadspin.com/5892060/why-is-t...r-ty-cobb-died Good looking out Brandon! This ball passed BOTH PSA and JSA, unbelievable.

WOW. Thank God I don't collect this stuff. This is getting really bad.....

The disappearing and reappearing Wagner, now this. What's next? Why is it they never say anything about these in their defense? Where's Orlando, besides in Florida?

Even Heritage couldn't defend it.

Does it seem like if it passes one, it passes the other?

I don't know why it continues. Guarantee their opinions, and maybe they will take time to check out the baseball first with the Wilson company.

Yeah, Travis, what is next?

Did any of you TPA bashers do any research on this? Did you?

I bet none of you did.

Are any of you aware of the fact that neither PSA or JSA even looked at this item yet. The Ty Cobb auction that was listed was a Preview Page submitted by HA (Heritage Auctions).

I will repeat, that neither PSA or JSA has looked at that Ty Cobb signed ball yet. From what I understand, PSA is scheduled to visit Heritage next week to authenticate items.

I was curious about that piece myself, so I decided to do the diligent action of researching the situation behind that Ty Cobb item.

I do believe Chris Ivy of HA will confirm my posting here.

do you see the listing where it says full loa from psa, and auction loa from jsa.


there you go.

Is heritage lying?

We have went over this before, if it says full loa from psa and auction loa from jsa, then it has these certs, printed out or not. if psa and jsa hadnt looked at the ball yet, then thats psa and jsa and heritage's fault, not mine. If i had a company, and an auction house asked me to please let them put my coa on a preview listing for whatever they want, no matter how good or bad it might be, what do you think i might say? sure, go ahead? why would that do me any good, especially if the item is way out of time and place?

If psa and jsa let heritage list it with their certs when they hadnt looked at them yet, they must be giving heritage permission to to list those certs that way. if they didnt give heritage permission to put up that listing with their certs listed, maybe they should sue heritage.

Either way if you cant trust what you see on that listing, then someone is guilty of saying something that isn't so. and it's not me.


Heritage has previouslyt admitted to listing jsa certs when jsa hadnt looked at the item yet, and that wasnt a preview, it was open for internet bidding. it was a live item. so when they say jsa auction loa, then its face value. Otherwise how would you ever know if it actually had the cert or not? Are they going to put a tagline underneath that says "we really mean it this time?" Do we have to call them every day asking "are we there yet?" like kids in the backseat of the family truckster on our way to wallyworld?

I would love chris ivy to come here and explain when black and white doesnt mean black and white.

Would you allow any auction house to list chris williams full loa if you hadnt looked at the item yet, preview or not?

Would you? It doesnt cost anything for heritage to list the 'preview' item without any loa's listed, and then add them later after the companies look at them, or list them as psa or jsa authentication pending, but they don't do that? why not? wouldnt that be truth in advertising if they did it that way, not this way?

If you give permission for heritage to list it with your loa even if you havent looked at it yet, then you have given it your defacto loa, even if it is a verbal one. not my fault if you dont want to look at it before you give permission for someone to list your loa with the item. If you didn't give heritage permission, then go after them. we can only take heritage at their word.

Lots of auction houses list psa or jsa certs, and dont show the certs, do we have to call each one up individually before we bid to ask if they ACTUALLY have the psa or jsa certs? Doesn't that sound kind of dumb? Or should we expect the listing to be the listing?

If they are previewing an item and list it with a psa or jsa cert, what are they doing? Predicting it will get one? Nice trick if they have a crystal ball. They DO need to come here and clear it up.

You can't say something in your listing that is not true. There is no previewing authentication. either it has it or it doesn't. it said it had it. that's all anyone can go by.

truly previewing authentication would be saying "psa and jsa authentication pending"

CHRIS IVY PLEASE COME HERE AND EXPLAIN WHY PSA FULL LOA AND JSA AUCTION LOA DON'T MEAN WHAT IT SAYS!

I will have a car for sale soon. It's a 1967 mustang, and it has paperwork that it once belonged to Steve McQueen, and its in super rare pristine condition. So save up your money and pass up any other near perfect but not pristine 1967 mustangs that that lock solid paperwork that it belonged to McQueen in the meantime, because although those are nice and would fit the bill for something you are looking for this one is in super shape and this is a preview of the one you want.


Other auctions of McQueen 1967 Mustangs go by, the buyers not buying those but waiting and salivating for mine because they like mine better and I said it had the paperwork.

Then I pull the listing and people find out I only suspected that McQueen had owned it and I expected the paperwork to materialize, but alas, it didn't, so all you guys who saved up for your dream car and passed up others at other auctions to buy mine because I previewed it with the McQueen paperwork, well sorry.

but if I would have said "it might get McQueen paperwork, it might not", then they can make a reasonable decision to buy elsewhere or wait for mine with only the chance that the paperwork will come through.

Any reasonable person who sees psa full loa, and jsa auction loa assumes that the cobb ball has these certs, preview or not. And if it says psa full loa and jsa auction loa, then that is de facto certs is it not?

What if they had 30 or 40 thousand dollars and passed up other cobb balls with lock solid certs at other auctions because they really wanted this one, and then "Yank" no psa full loa or jsa auction loa, never had them to begin with? Can't go back in time unless it was the Back to the future DeLorean.

Other auctions of McQueen 1967 Mustangs :confused:

WoW! Just how many 1967 Mustangs did McQueen have?

a whole bunch! lol. it's just a made up scenario to make a point.


how many pristine cobb signed balls from 1959 are there? i guess one less than we thought.

I guess I am just asking if Mr. Williams thinks it's alright if auction houses list LOA's when they don't exist yet? Is that an honest, ethical thing to do?

When I broke the phantom JSA auction LOA story seven months ago, (on a lesser Muhammad Ali Operation bullpen item), why didn't you complain then? Is it because this story has legs compared to the last one and is getting people's attention? That item (Ali) was open for live internet bidding, not a preview with no bidding available yet, so that can't be an excuse, (preview only). They didn't have a problem listing the jsa auction loa that wasn't there when you could bid on the item over the internet.

Here is a Muhammad Alli signed glove that was actually signed by John Olsen, this is an Operation Bullpen piece.

Notice how this auction says 25 days, 2 hours, and 55 minutes left before bidding ends.

It is an active item open for internet bidding, the current bid is 55 dollars.

This is similar to the item I emailed Heritage about when they told me that jsa hadn't looked at the item yet even though it was listed as a jsa auction loa.

Only this is an Olsen signed glove and that was an Olsen signed Ali/Chamberlain photo.

You can see this one has PSA precertification listed, and it is a live item.

This item was subsequently pulled before the end of the auction, as was the Ali/Chamberlain piece I had emailed them about, only this one eventually had PSA getting around to looking at it, and the other piece was pulled when I notified Heritage.

This proves that the "LOA that isn't an LOA" was listed on live items also, not just preview items as PSA knows about this Operation Bullpen signature of John Olsen and wouldn't give a precertification to it if they had actually looked at the item.

There can be no "we only list the loa's or auction loa's on preview items where bidding isn't allowed yet."

So what is the real excuse on why they do this?

What do you think Chris? Williams or Ivy, doesn't matter.

Third photo is an Operation Bullpen of an Ali/Chamberlain signed piece similar to what they offered. They actually offered two of them a couple of months apart, and they took one down when I alerted them to it the first time, and they took the other one down by themselves when the "real" auction loa's came to look at it, but both had the initial auction loa's listed when no one had looked at them yet, but open for internet bidding of course, just like the glove.

Both PSA and JSA hasn't certed this type of Operation Bullpen signature forever as long as i can tell as I can't find one anywhere with their full certs. They know this one is no good. They wouldn't precertify it. Every alert boxing collector knows of this type of John Olsen autograph.

So how is a reasonable, average collector suppose to know when an item has one of these 'not yet' type of precertifications or loa's.

Is it when the item is live? only on preview items? Just where is this information posted so we know? How will anyone know that the item has not been seen by the authenticator yet, but then has 'switched over' to being a real precertification or auction loa?

Very confusing indeed. We have to go by what the listing says. The deal between the auction house and the authenticator is up to them. But you have to go by what you see.

interested to know if Heritage is gonna make a statement about this. I agree spot on with you Travis, good analysis.

Thank you,

Whats a collector to do? Ask every auction house if their listed cert is the real one or the one that they hadn't gotten around to yet?

Why does Heritage do this? Obviously the average collector or bidder would never know the listings are the way they are. And they should know before they give an internet bid, or look at a preview item. Knowledge is power. Why does a column have to be written first?

I am hoping that Travis can post a photo of the PSA and JSA "Auction LOA." Please show it to me and the rest of the members here.

No worries... I'm sure Travis and Nash will issue corrections and apologies to PSA and JSA if it is confirmed that it was a Heritage error. :rolleyes:

That isn't going to happen. Now that they have been caught it will be burned and removed from their records.

Eric

How can something that doesn't exist be destroyed? PSA is scheduled next week to visit HA (Heritage Auctions). That Ty Cobb has not been examined by either PSA or JSA.

Why wasn't there a photo of the PSA and JSA Auction Letter next to the photo of the Ty Cobb baseball? I didn't see it in the HA Preview Listing.

Can any of you show me a recent PSA Auction Letter? PSA has not issued Auction Letters for years.

What a bunch of Know It Alls we have here.

As for you, Egbeachley, if you're going to make a statement like that, please post your full name.

Steve,

they have been issuing these auction loa's "ahead of time" for months and months. When asked why they do it this way, they didn't say "oh it was an error". They said I didn't understand how big auction houses work. I have the email.

Isn't that heritage's responbility since they claim the item had one?

It's not my auction. It's theirs.

Travis, if you're going to jump on the bandwagon assaulting PSA about this Cobb item, then you better back up your claims.

Before you jumped on the never-ending bandwagon assaulting PSA, did you think to ask the author of that article to post the actual PSA and JSA Auction Letters? Did you think to ask Mike Henson, the person who started this thread, to post a photograph of the PSA and JSA Auction Letters?

Well something is definitely rotten in the state of Heritage as far as this item goes.
Heritage for sure is full of sh-- for posting this ball and the fact that it had COA's from alphabet city.
PSA and JSA are probably full of sh-- too because if they did issue a COA they did not do much homework on the ball and if they did not issue a COA then they should be pissed as hell at Heritage.
But of course they would never complain to Heritage since that is one of their biggest (maybe biggest) accounts and they want to stay on the good side of Mr. Ivy. So things will stay business as usual.

Screengrab from article says "Full LOA from PSA/DNA and Auction LOA from JSA". It doesn't say anything about a PSA auction letter.

That is being very specific. I'm not sure how you can be so definitive that there is none without just coming out and saying Heritage is lying.

Eric

Heritage's response....
 

Chris Ivy asked me to post this for him. He can be reached for questions at CIvy@HA.com or (800) 872-6467.




Why is Heritage selling a Ty Cobb signed baseball that was produced after his death? It isn’t. How did PSA/DNA and James Spence authenticate the ball? They didn’t.

The answers are that simple.

This will come as a disappointment, certainly, to readers craving a juicy sports collectibles scandal, but if fidelity to truth is important to you, you probably wouldn’t be paying attention to Peter Nash anyhow. Try this Google search:

Peter Nash invoked the fifth amendment

Or this one:

Peter Nash admitted fraud

You’ll find some New York Daily News articles which will put this self-proclaimed White Knight of the Sports Collectibles industry in a proper context, and give lovers of scandal and/or irony plenty of enjoyment.

But back to the facts of this particular issue.

Whether or not the ball was ever “for sale,” as Mr. Nash contended, is not even a matter of debate. This lot was consigned to our April 26-27 Signature Auction #7051. Go and have a look at that auction online today. If someone is able to find an active bid button from this auction, or a current lot price, please post a screen shot.

This auction is in previews. It is not active. Nothing is currently “for sale.” Period.

Many of you know how the process works at a major auction house, but for those who don’t, here’s a very basic primer. For several months prior to an auction “going live,” material is consigned from hundreds of different sources. Today, as this is written, there are approximately 2500 lots slated for our April auction, and that number will grow. Not all of them will pass authentication—typically a small percentage of autographed lots will fail.

The cataloging (writing the catalog text) for an auction of this size requires hundreds of hours of work. Heritage, and every other major auction house, begins writing its catalog months before bidding goes live. Most houses don’t put their auctions in previews, but we do. We believe in giving our consignors the most exposure possible. This inevitably means that a small percentage of material visible on our site in previews is not genuine.

Heritage is one of the only auction houses that utilizes the services of both PSA/DNA and James Spence for its autograph authentication. We believe that the legitimacy of the material is of paramount importance, and our dual-authentication policy should illustrate this fact.

We fly each authentication service to Dallas after the consignment deadline so that all autographed material consigned to the auction will be in house. On this trip, the visits come within a week of our deadline to turn the catalog over for layout and printing.
So, the choices are as follows: 1) We can go back individually into seven or eight hundred lots in the incredibly hectic last few hours before our design deadline and add the “authentication tags.” Or, 2) We can add the authentication tags as we write during the weeks and months preceding the authentication process, and simply delete those lots that don’t pass when they are removed from the sale. After all, the bidding is not live, and nobody of reasonable intelligence could conclude that these lots are “For Sale” when they are clearly designated as “Coming Soon.”

And nobody of reasonable intelligence did reach this conclusion.

That’s not a comment on Mr. Nash’s intelligence. He’s very smart. He just doesn’t think that you are.

He saw an opportunity to grab some headlines, to drive traffic to his website, by making an outrageous allegation. The veracity of the statement, or lack thereof, wasn’t the issue. Imagine this headline: “Heritage has non-genuine material in previews that will never make it to auction.” Boring, right?

I can guarantee that the Cobb ball won’t be the last autographed lot booted from this auction. There are surely a few dozen lots in our previews right now that won’t make the cut.

But they’re not for sale. They never were. They never will be. And Mr. Nash always knew it.

We intend to change our policy and figure out a way to add the “authentication tags” only after the authenticators’ visits, in a way that will allow us to launch our auction on time. We have our Internet Technology department working on a way to hide the tags until the auction goes live. It’s apparently more complicated than it sounds, but as long as there are people like Mr. Nash out there desperately dreaming up scandals to deflect from his own, it’s a project and cost that makes sense.




.
.

I know, Eric, you were just following Travis' lead.

But I was referring to this statement that you wrote; "Now that they have been caught it will be burned and removed from their records."

Eric, can you prove that "It will be burned and removed from their records?"

Of course you can't, because there isn't a full LOA or Auction Letter from anyone.

Fair enough. There will be no burning at the stake since there is no LOA. I take that back.

Thanks for the great response from Heritage. It was a good lesson in how the process works.

First of all, I have shown where the put those pre-authentication statements on items that were live. So heritage didnt tell the entire story.

second, it worked, the hobby worked again, if they are going to change the way they do it, then they realize that what they were doing is confusing/not going to work. Hurray!

A few of us swimming against the tide, who saw something we thought was wrong, got heritage to do the right thing. While taking arrows and personal digs all the way from those who want the status quo to continue and want to protect the auction houses and authenticators.

It still wasn't explained why psa or jsa allowed heritage to do it this way. If they would have simply said 'no, you cannot put our name on the item when we havent looked at it yet', then heritage would have had to do the impossible and hire a few temps to add the authentication tag lines on the last day.

I think Heritage did a GREAT job explaining, but yes, I do agree w Travis in that they shouldn't put that up, when it seemingly is easy to add a tag line before the auction becomes live, even if a lot of items.

I don't normally get involved in threads about the authenticity of autographs, because that is not my area of expertise. But, the response from Heritage so astounded me, that I had to reply.

True, the ball is not yet for sale, but that description makes it crystal clear to anyone of "reasonable intelligence" that Heritage believes this is an amazing ball. Anyone of "reasonable intelligence" would believe after reading the description that the LOA had already been issued, as it clearly states in the description. I can't imagine it's a sound business model for any company in America to put things on its website that at the time they are written may or may not be true, or in the case of the statement about the ball having an LOA, are patently false.

It's also rather scary that people at a major auction house couldn't tell with just a casual glance that this is not a 1959 Wilson baseball. And while the description references that the ball was likely signed during Cobb's return to Cooperstown for the 20th anniversary of the 1939 induction ceremony, it took me about 15 seconds on the internet to determine that the 1959 HOF induction ceremony was on July 20, not on July 14 as it says on the ball (highly unlikely that Cobb showed up six days early).

Greg

Great response Chris Ivy! Thanks Leon... ;)

The Game Used Universe auctions posts their auction lots early in part to give bidders and board members a chance to look over the lots and discuss them before the actions-- the discussions going on at the same site where the auction takes place! There was discussion of a Joe Namath jersey and, due to questions, it was pulled before the auction started so they could further research. I believe this is an example of why they post the lots early and let people discuss. If they made a big boo boo, they want to hear about it before the auction starts rather than after it's sold and shipped.

First, it was a 1968 Ford Mustang GT 390 not a 1967 Mustang driven by McQueen in Bullitt. http://themustangsource.com/timeline/67-68/68/bullitt/. Any collector or auction house who had done their homework knows it, and would not sell or buy it.

Second, the Cobb ball is obviously a bad forgery. Any collector or auction house who had done their homework knows it, and would not sell or buy it.

Yes, authentication is a touchy subject as is misrepresentation. But really, take a breather, please.

Ty Phelan

doesn't mike gutierrez work for heritage? shouldn't they let him look over these autos first? weird situation all around.

Hey, Chris. What do you suppose will happen (or has already happened) to Spence's records of my '27 ball?

Quoting SeyHey: "I don't normally get involved in threads about the authenticity of autographs, because that is not my area of expertise. But, the response from Heritage so astounded me, that I had to reply...."

Totally agree with SeyHey. heritage should just acknlowledge it made a mistake, and corrected it as soon as they becam aware. Why lie when the truth sounds so much better?

+1...Great post SeyHey. Here's the original description from Heritage. How the rest of you are defending Heritage, I don't know. This is pretty straight forward, had they said it was a mistake I would have said great, thanks for that, you guys are top notch.

When I read the below description, I think that PSA/DNA has looked at the item and authenticated it, not that it's a preview and maybe it will be authenticated maybe not.

yes, you have to go with what they say, if they say full loa and auction loa, then that's it, and if they just said sorry instead of getting all testy, people would have respected that. as it is, they say they are only making the change because they didnt want any more posts misrepresenting what they are doing, but they still think what they are doing is no big deal. Thats the impression I got.

Why not say you are making the change because you realize that you shouldn't be giving impressions of authentication ahead of time no matter what the reason and it is the right thing to do.

Everyone really needs to read the rules. That being said if you said something in this thread that requires your full name to be in the post please put it there....thanks

Thats all fine and dandy but is game used Universe stating that their items are already authenticated by JSA or PSA before JSA or PSA even looks at them?

Personally, if its a preview auction and nothing is actually "for sale" yet, i don't see nothing wrong with posting the items so people can "discuss" them. I really don't think anyone is against that. The big thing is, is they posted that the Ty Cobb ball came with full PSA loa and JSA auction letter, when really JSA and PSA had never even looked at the item.

Post the items early, thats great!! People can discuss these items, but it should state authentication pending from PSA or JSA or both. Like mentioned earlier, what if a collector seen this preview, seen the statement about the PSA and JSA letters and decided to save all their money for this item? The very next day, they see another "Whale" of theirs somewhere else for sale but since the Cobb ball was more important to them, they hold off buying the other item, it sells to someone else then they find out days later that the Cobb ball never was actually authenticated and now they are SOL on both items? That would REALLY suck for someone.

Even if there is 2500 items to "Edit", like Travis said, hire a couple temps/family members/friends for a day or two at $10-$15 bucks an hour and get them to edit the authentication into the preview/auction or give some of their own workers some OT or a "special Project" for a couple days , WHEN the items have actually been looked at and authenticated.

Just my opinion, please don't take any offense if you disagree. I just think it would be wiser to spend a couple hundred bucks to hire a couple guys for a couple days instead of going through an issue like this.

Bilko,
You've brought up some excellent points here. Nice post...

Good post. +1.
But some people seem to be surprised by what Heritage did. Why?
Alleged COA's out of thin air? Why should that be a surprise?
And are the authenticators complaining to Heritage about this?
I would think that they should be complaining or have they given their permission to Heritage to engage in this practice?

the dead horse
 

I find myself scratching my noggin quite often when reading this and other boards. Why is it people take almost every situation either out of context or don't fully comprehend what folks say? I just don't understand. Chris, above, already said they are going to change the way they do the authentication tags on line. I think that means they feel it wasn't being done correctly, in their mind. If they were doing it correctly he wouldn't have said this-

"We intend to change our policy and figure out a way to add the “authentication tags” only after the authenticators’ visits, in a way that will allow us to launch our auction on time."


.
.

Leon,
I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
You stated: "I think that means they feel it wasn't being done correctly"
They might have felt that way but IMHO until someone called them on it they were just going to continue to do the same old thing.

Actually, it shouldn't be that complicated. I'm guessing there is an Auction Open/Live boolean flag or a Date field when it's open sitting in your database that you can use in your if and else statement to hide those tags on all items that belong to that particular auction. I noticed your pages are PHP, give me two hours of time at $150/hr and I'll code it and test it for you. And my guess is that JSA/PSA would like this done immediately too.

Matt

Leon, I told them 7 months about this problem and they didn't care.

It's only after it blew up in their face that they decided to change it and if you look at Ivy's post, he says that they are changing it just so people wont take what they are doing and misrepresent it anymore. It didn't seem to me that he wanted to change it solely because they thought they were doing anything wrong. They would have changed it 7 months ago when i wrote an article detailing this very problem, and I told them it was wrong, they DID NOT AGREE with me and Ivy's emails to me called me the equivalent of naive and totally ignorant of the way auction houses do business. that doesn't sound to me like someone who is concerned about this problem and wanting to fix it because it is the right thing to do .

fixing it because its on the radar now and he doesnt want to go through it again.

7 months ago he didn't seem to care, I told them, I told them, I told them. But back then the article was just on a small website, and didn't make it onto deadspin, and tagged by a large national newspaper.

exactly right, this isnt putting a man on the moon to make this change.

A few temps with a macro key or a cut and paste feature wouldn't take that long, and a more permanent fix by some IT guys wouldn't be that costly. The probably upgrade their auction software anyway on a periodic basis and for an auction house with millions upon millions of sales and a lot of commissions, it would be a drop in the bucket.

It's not finding the cure for cancer.

I think Heritage's biggest mistake in all this is not in writing the copy for the auction catalog ahead of time, but rather in letting people view the "work in progress" with the expectation that they would understand that it was not finalized. There seems to be a pretty broad misunderstanding that every word in the preview is to be taken the same as the finalized catalog.

I have no doubt that writing up the descriptions ahead of time for hundreds of items as having full LOAs from autenticators, with the anticipation of that being the case, is a common practice with auction houses. After all, who wants to go back and re-work the description of EVERY autographed item sold in an auction? By "pulling back the curtain" to let bidders see the catalog as it is being formed though, they are inviting headaches of this sort. If they feel the headaches are worth it for the additional exposure for their consignors' items, that's their decision, but they should either take the additional measures that have been discussed here as well as add big glaring notices that this is only a preview (subject to change) and not the finalized catalog. That way, if/when someone does a screen capture of the preview, the notice would appear big and bold to put the write-up in its proper context.

Incidentally, this is why I actually avoid looking at auction "previews." Too often I am either disappointed when something I was watching gets pulled from the "live" auction, or else I don't notice when a description has been tweaked between the preview and the live version. I prefer looking at items I can actually bid on then and there.

Lance F!ttr0

This policy is stupid and I'm glad it is stopped. Business's that don't care are destined for FAILURE

Obviously Ty Cobb signed the cow and they made a baseball out of it when the cow died 20 years later.

This story would have been a lot better if it'd been a Chrysler LeBaron once owned by Jon Voight.

Haha! :D

Rob Lifson once told me he wished people would submit their consignments throughout the year, but they tend to consigned them soon before the deadline. He said writing/researching the auction descriptions was a lot of work, and it's tough doing it all at once.

So I'm sure auction houses like to write lot descriptions early on and as-they-go if they can.