I have a feeling Halper was just one of those guys who believed everything he was told, because he wanted to believe it.
The collectible world is full of people with "stories" of their treasured heirlooms. Unfortunately there's plenty of folks out there who take it at face value without doing the research. Why else would companies like Coach's Corner be so successful?
Being in the boxing field, I can't tell you how many calls I get from people who have gloves of famous boxers "given to their father/grandfather" and passed down in the family.
Usually the story goes something like "My father met Rocky Marciano at a gym. Rocky gave him a pair of gloves and told him, these are the gloves I used to knock out Jersey Joe Walcott".
Whether the gloves were even owned or even touched by the original boxer is a matter of debate. The fact is 99 times out of 100 the gloves offered aren't even the right size, brand or even era of glove.............and more times then not, they are sparring gloves and not actual fight used gloves.
Whether Halper made up these stories himself or just naively passed on anecdotes he was told, I don't know.
I'm sure plenty of his material was also pretty good.
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