Let me begin by saying thank you for all the kind words about our auction. Obviously we were very pleased (though not particularly surprised) by the very strong results. Not only was the material first rate, to put it mildly, but our marketing department did a fantastic job of promoting the auction. Their biggest coup was a full page article in Tuesday's New York Times about The Lou Gehrig Collection, but we got press all over the place which brought some very serious new bidders to the auction, including some international heavy hitters garnered from considerable foreign press coverage. And, of course, our catalog designers crafted a true masterpiece--I doubt a single copy will end up in the trash. Thursday night was definitely a thrilling conclusion to a lot of hard work by a lot of people.
I certainly don't want to come off as defensive, but I did want to address the Black Betsy question. I've been working in sports auctions exclusively for twelve years and the bat has some of the strongest provenance I've ever encountered. You have numerous sources discussing the unusual curve of the Black Betsy. You have photos of Jackson with the bat. There are newspaper articles dating over decades. There is the will, and the letter from the heir. The notion that Jackson saved two very distinctively curved bats with early Spalding imprints for over four decades but that he and his family only acknowledged the existence of one seems astronomically improbable. We all know that PSA/DNA doesn't throw around GU 10 grades without good reason. Any smart collector knows that a little skepticism is a good thing, but this is evidence even the OJ and Casey Anthony jurors couldn't ignore. In other words, we'll take that "heavy sum" action. I'll be looking to retire in twenty years.
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