Small Traditions Auction Mickey Mantle Forgery 500 Homerun Club
 

A few days ago I was scanning the Small Traditions Auction site and discovered the below obvious Mickey Mantle and "500 Homerun Club" forgeries on a baseball.

I emailed the owner (David) of Small Traditions and informed him of the forgeries on his auction site.

David did reply to my emails, but does not believe that the below autographs are forgeries.

I am hoping that someone here on Net54 can convince him to remove the below items.

The first item shown is a "500 Homerun Club" set of forgeries with a COA from Shop At Home. Shop At Home, during the "Operation Bullpen" era, sold approximately $750,000 in forgeries to consumers.

http://smalltraditions.com/LotDetail...ckey-Mantle-Ha

Attachment 115654

Attachment 115655

The below is another Mickey Mantle forgery with a COA from Shop At Home. Another obvious forgery.

Attachment 115665

Attachment 115662

Attachment 115666

Obvious, ghastly, mass-produced fakes. :mad:

Killer looks awful

agreed, not to mention the INFAMOUS "banana Mantle" :rolleyes::eek:

I just spoke to Dave Thorn

I explained the history as to Shop at Home, who the vendors were (besides Score Board, as they had several) and which vendors used 'Shop at Home' certificates, as well as why the 2 items Chris pictured are not authentic.
He thanked me for the call and told me he is removing the items.
Thank you chris for pointing this out.

Good job:):)

Great work guys! I'm not super educated in autographs but are aware of these well known forgeries. If I am familiar with them then an auction house should be and it took a lot to finally get them to do the right thing. I don't think I will be registering for their auctions any time soon.

My two cents.

Regards,

Larry

One think that all the autograph collectors should be careful of . Shop at Home, Madison Sports, Howards and B and J certs.:eek::eek:

JimStinson
 

Good Job Ken & Chris and as always useful information to all by Shelly.
Something else to keep in mind on those 500 home run balls is that I looked at a lot of them that had been seized back in the day and the names they could not seem to "get right" were Harmon Killebrew & to a lesser extent Reggie Jackson.

But I have a question, Since I don't handle much in the way of contemporary autographs could someone explain the "shop at home" thing ??? I thought that was where the player would actually be on the show hawking his autograph and signing on the spot. Like a TV private signing infomercial
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Buying and Selling Vintage autographs On my web site
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That Killebrew is hilarious.

Jim
you are thinking of QVC or Home Shopping network
They had shows occasionally, once a month or so, and usually had an athlete on the show as a guest.
'Shop at Home' was the smaller network in TN and ran sports from I think early 90s (ie 91/92) until 2003. I think they had 2 sports guests in that 12 year period, Sammy Sosa on one occasion and I think Pete Rose . They ran show 3 nights a week and their product was supplied by about 12-15 different vendors across the country.

For sports items like five hundred, Koufax, Mays, Williams Mantle, etc. They came from the companys I named. They also supplied the famous shake and bake Mantle.:eek::eek::eek::eek:

I will bite, was it the shake and bake mantle?

The only way I can discribe it looks like he signed it during and earth quake.:D

Some of it was players hawking their own signatures.
Johnny Bench was hawking his autograph on Home Shopping
He would tell the audience that his autograph was worth $150 and you could get it on Home Shopping for half that price.
For that and other crap that Home Shopping pulled, the NYC Dept of Consumer Affairs started an investigation into false advertising and fined Bench $5000 and also fined Home Shopping but I don't know that amount.
I am sure this incident does not appear on Mr. Bench's resume :D

The tremors in the loops in the M's in Mickey Mantle measured 6.5 on the Richter scale.:)

Fake or real?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/500-Home-Run...item462ba76ec4

That link will get you nothing but small, angry looking red faced emoticons...

Terrible

Starts off w the infamous Banana Mickey and goes on downhill:mad::mad::mad::mad:

Copy right infringement:):):):):):)

Funny thing about B&J certs is that I bought a Pete Rose auto ball from them over 10 years ago. Who forges a Pete Rose ball?

B&J did have some authentic material. They conducted signings and had people like Rose, David Wells, etc. back in the 90s.

But like the infamous Stan Sports who was also swept up in Operation Bullpen, B&J conducted some private signings and salted with good material to create an appearance of credibility. Their Mantles, DiMaggios, No Hit Kings, Williams were mostly, if not all, fake.

I spent the late 70's and early 80's with my brother getting almost 10,000 autographs in person in Phila and in NYC mostly on cards. By '84 we had met virtually every living hall of famer. By the early 90s or so, I went to a Phila auction and these same items came up for sale and I had not yet heard anything about massive forgeries. I bought almost $3000 worth of balls and photozs which all turned out to be fakes. They came from the big FBI sting on the large forgery guys. I am still pissed cuz I fell for it. I thought having met all the guys on the 500 HR ball, how could they be fakes??? its such a shame that this stuff is still out there. On behalf of all good autograph collectors, thanks to everyone on this forum for helping with the fakes... JJ