[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by Leon

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.




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Great response Chris Ivy! Thanks Leon...