Posted By:
TomSorry if I sounded like I was questioning you. I didn't in my original post say that YOU were the one trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. Somehow, though, someone was with the mini bat. It may not even have been your consignor. I don't know. It's neither here nor there at this point as you did what I think was the honorable thing and pulled the auction. Whatever your ethics and business practices, you do seem to be a standup person, when confronted with a valid issue or concern, who will go in the right direction. As for consignor's material, none of us are without blame when we assess cards or memorabilia.
As for the minibats--yes.......living in Louisville, I have quite a bit of info about them. I can trace the 14" minibats back to about 1922 or so. The decal mini's can be traced even further back to 1912-1914 I think. The 4.5" bats come from 2 places--either the mini bat banks that have 10 bats on them which date to no earlier than most likely the late 1940's to early 1950's (more likely 1950's)or the baseball bat pens and pencils, and, again, no Ruth bats on either of those--which is VERY unusual since he was H&B's premier player during the 1920's/1930's.
I've got about 500-600 of the baseball bat pens and pencils and have never seen a Ruth signature bat like the one Henry was selling (they MAY exist) from the 1930's/1940's (H&B or otherwise). I've got about 35 or so of the H&B baseball bat banks and the earliest one I have or have seen has Ted Williams, Berra and others on it and dates back to late 1940's/early 1950's.
I didn't mean to slam Henry and this forum may not have been the best to confront the issue. Hopefully Henry can check the consignment items a little better before they're listed as many people don't take the time to really understand what they're bidding on (given the AAA graded filth that's out there). With listing 300-400 items, there will be mistakes in descriptions and other problems as well but overall the auctions he does seem to be mostly above board.