What do you think of this Heritage offering?

[shelly]

Dan, I went out to people that you would not have any idea who they are. I questioned them about the ball not what was signed on the ball. Here is there reply.

The 1927 ball was a one year style because it was Ban Johnsons last year and Barnard followed him. There is a newer top logo with the patent date and the cursive logo.
This has been known for 20-30 yrs its nothing new. Any forger would have figured it out looking at the many 1927 attributed balls (including many Phila A's balls) To say its authentic based upon the style of ball is so flawed, I don't know what to say.
These are from people that I trust.

[shelly]

That being said, I have a question to David. Would you buy this ball? No Caveat emptor.

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by shelly

Dan, I went out to people that you would not have any idea who they are. I questioned them about the ball not what was signed on the ball. Here is there reply.

The 1927 ball was a one year style because it was Ban Johnsons last year and Barnard followed him. There is a newer top logo with the patent date and the cursive logo.
This has been known for 20-30 yrs its nothing new. Any forger would have figured it out looking at the many 1927 attributed balls (including many Phila A's balls) To say its authentic based upon the style of ball is so flawed, I don't know what to say.
These are from people that I trust.

A forger would have to be an idiot to buy a 1928 ball, as it wouldn't have Johnson's name on it, and he would have to be an even dumber idiot not to buy the one with the 1925 patent stamp. Even if he ONLY had these two bits of obvious information and guessed from there, he still would have a 1 out of 3 chance of getting it right by complete accident. Not bad odds.

Dan - I completely understand going with your gut. If my gut agreed with your gut, my next step would be to prove that it is a good ball (not the opposite) - we need to adapt the Communist approach of 'guilty until proven innocent' (in my opinion), rather than the opposite, Democratic style. The Communist method caught all the guilty and some of the innocent. Not good for human beings, but great for baseballs. If we did this, the ball would have to be tossed in the trash, as there is nothing other than alleged circumstantial evidence - can you get any worse?

The Democratic style would be to assume the ball is real (which is what we are doing here), and have to prove that it is 'guilty'. But we are further limited by the Democratic approach, in that we can't even produce evidence - provenance is apparently disallowable in our 'autographed ball court', as is questioning the authenticators, and as is any sort of forensic testing.

The above is why so many forged baseballs are floating around.

[slidekellyslide]

I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach when it comes to autographs...I think that same approach should be used with game used memorabilia as well. Maybe I'm off on the ball...don't know, I sure wouldn't buy anything like that with out rock solid provenance.

[shelly]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

I don't think there's anything wrong with that approach when it comes to autographs...I think that same approach should be used with game used memorabilia as well. Maybe I'm off on the ball...don't know, I sure wouldn't buy anything like that with out rock solid provenance.

That is what anyone with a brain would say.

[Runscott]

In fairness, you can't argue with Chris' willingness to satisfy any doubts the winning bidder might have:

"If the winning bidder would like to have the baseball sent to the FBI labs at Quantico, VA, then we would be pleased to work with them to help facilitate that process prior to the settlement of the auction and as long as the process did not damage the baseball in any manner."

[RichardSimon]

Originally Posted by Runscott

In fairness, you can't argue with Chris' willingness to satisfy any doubts the winning bidder might have:

"If the winning bidder would like to have the baseball sent to the FBI labs at Quantico, VA, then we would be pleased to work with them to help facilitate that process prior to the settlement of the auction and as long as the process did not damage the baseball in any manner."

Sure, anybody can walk into the FBI lab at Quantico and say "gentlemen, please examine this." Easy to say lets get the FBI to take a look, but is that really a possibility? My guess would be no it is not possible but that is only my guess.
It is not a criminal case, the FBI is not investigating the individuals involved with this (at least I don't think they are), so is the FBI really going to just take a baseball that walks in off the street and submit it to vigorous testing?

[shelly]

Originally Posted by Runscott

In fairness, you can't argue with Chris' willingness to satisfy any doubts the winning bidder might have:

"If the winning bidder would like to have the baseball sent to the FBI labs at Quantico, VA, then we would be pleased to work with them to help facilitate that process prior to the settlement of the auction and as long as the process did not damage the baseball in any manner."

If I where the third largest auction house in the world, with the most respected authenticators in this hemisphere. I sure would like to make sure before anyone of my customers would pay $ 1000,000 or more that what was purchased is authentic. Why not make sure now. Why would anyone send it to the FBI unless they thought it was not real. If you are so sure why in the hell would you even make that statement?
The only way that ball would be damaged is if some idiot bought it.

[Runscott]

Hey, now I'm laughing as hard at me as you are. But on the other hand, I know nothing about the workings of the FBI (and I'm happy for that), and maybe Chris doesn't either.