Quote:
Originally Posted by henson1855
Tough to pass off a modern Rawlings 9-11 baseball,as a vintage ball,I personally think the balls this guy does look amazing,you can speculate on the intentions of the buyer but c'mon not everyone is out to ruin the hobby or get over on someone maybe the buyer doesn't have 20k laying around to buy a real one,on the other hand if someone tried to pass this off as authentic it's a rawlings baseball the sigs are stamped not real hard to figure out.I have been searching for an Addie Joss and a Willie Keeler autograph for many years,my problem is not the cost of thes pieces it's the availability,to my knowledge a total of two Joss autographs have surfaced and are now in private collections,Keeler is nearly as scarce,I had this guy do one of each for me on baseballs,they look amazing,and display nice among my authentic baseballs,does that mean I am not a true collector or I am damaging the hobby,hardly,the purist might frown upon this but so what you should be able to buy and collect what you want. I think people who sell reprints and pass them off to people as anything but,are doing great damage to our hobby and we should keep calling them out,just as I am a true believer in buyer beware, a little bit of basic knowledge about what you are buying doesn't hurt either.
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But Mike, you are a guy who is a collector, and will not pass the stuff into the hobby. The issue is that many people out there ARE the type to pass it off as real, esp such a convincing item. The type of ball, yeah, but we see a lot of "unknown balls" in the Hobby. Am I too cynical? Maybe, but with all of the negative stuff in the hobby, and in this case, so many bidders for a "replica Ruth", Id say at least some of them who bid had evil intentions.
Id rather wait for a cheap Ruth cut or a lesser condition ball w top shelf authentication like JSA or PSA, than buy that if I was a collector. Again tho, finances are an issue, and availability in your case w Joss and Keeler. Very difficult issue indeed, just means even more vigilance is needed when buying rare and/or expensive signatures.