Heritage Auction and their Amazing Yankee Rings
 

Those of you who follow championship rings, may recall my last battle with Heritage and their Super Bowl Steeler rings that started as salesman samples, and were modified by someone boasting to be a "favorite" of Art Rooney.

He claimed Mr. Rooney gave him those rings, yet he had no record of playing in college or the Pros. One of Mr. Rooney's grandsons, who I know well, said his grandfather would never do that.

I blew up the pictures which showed they were not real, and yet, Heritage insisted upon doing an investigation and ultimately modified their listings to say the two rings seemed a little different than other rings issued.

Well I finally got to look close up at the vintage Yankee rings coming up this Saturday in the Heritage auction.

The old Yankee rings scream "authentic" however I noticed something quite odd about them. A few of the Dieges & Clust stamps look nothing like any other D & C stamps I have ever seen, and those same rings were engraved from the Commissioner of baseball (again, I have never seen anything like this in my records)

Furthermore, I own a 1938 Yankee ring and have detailed pictures of a second authentic 1938 Yankee ring and both of these rings contain one row of stars on the shank. The 1938 Yankee ring offered in the Heritage auction has two rows of stars, not one like the two real rings I have in my records.

Do these differences I described above, rise to the level of the Steeler rings? Absolutely not.

I feel all the Yankee rings in the auction are vintage and authentic and not fakes, yet they are different in the labeling and engraving and I see a major difference on the side of the 1938 ring.

I don't know what this means, and how or why the rings are different, but wanted to mention it in this forum.

Thanks I planned on making a competitive bid but why risk it with that kind of money when there is a potential issue..ill wait for something with no issues..

Whether you bid on any of these rings or other rings in other auctions you need to arm yourself with as much information as possible and look at as many examples of real rings as possible.

Some of the rings in the Heritage auction has the classic "D&C" engraving we have seen over and over. Some do not.

I am not saying that these rings are not authentic, but clearly a few of them have unusual markings I have not seen at auction before.

Yet they come with paperwork from the family. Like so many other rings, could the rings have been repaired or resized at Dieges and Clust? Why were some of these rings engraved with the commissioner of baseball mentioned?

Also, the Mattingly ring is clearly not an original ring. The engraving inside is found on rings made much later (if the engraving is authentic at all) and the details on the side of the ring are very poor quality. I blew up pictures of my player 1996 ring and saw the differences. Boy, someone will be disappointed with that ring.

Tons of rings last night.

Anyone win anything?

I won the '27 Yankee ring. A few other Yankee rings went low, perhaps I should have bid on a couple more.

With the juice, the ring went for $33,40.00. I feel sorry for the buyer!

Michael, what sort of person do you think bids the big bucks on a ring like this, clearly lacking the knowledge that most of us require as collectors?

Given the price, there must be two such people out there. I don't use the term 'collector' to describe them, as it can't possibly be a collector…can it?

Great question - I have often asked myself the same question! I think something like a "Platinum Night" is an event that gets more foot traffic from non collectors than say an auction at the National. Perhaps these novices don't realize how questionable some items can be in these auctions.

Seemed a lot was written about the Joe Jackson autograph and many speculated in the hobby that autograph did not look good either - yet it went for a lot of money (I believe both JSA and PSA had authenticated it).

Heritage is having a vintage guitar auction this weekend, and I would love to try to win a couple of items. Unfortunately having very little knowledge of vintage guitars, when I think back to some of the items I have seen and argued with Heritage about of the last few years, I realize I can't bid in that auction as I could get "eaten alive".

Anyone else have any thoughts on who bids on these items?

I think you hit the nail on the head - it is probably people who do not reach the conclusion you came to regarding guitars.

And that's a shame some auction houses do things like this. When was the last time you read a post on net54 where REA, Goldin Auctions or a select few other auction houses were criticized for grossly misrepresenting an item?

And in cases where something was discovered and brought to their attention, they quickly adjusted the description.

I would much rather take a gamble on a piece that I don't have a ton of knowledge about from auction houses that are known to be fair then from others who just bury their head in the sand, do little research, and refuse to modify their listings?

I don't know how the various auction houses compare on this - I buy most of my 'non comfort zone' items from Heritage, mainly because they auction such a broad variety of items other than sports. I don't feel comfortable buying rings from ANY auction house without consulting with someone like you first, simply because of the anomalies you've mentioned on our forum that would never otherwise have crossed my mind. The re-cast Green Bay ring comes to mind, and now this Mattingly.

An exception might be Lelands, simply because I know if I didn't feel comfortable with an item's authenticity once it was in hand, Josh would almost certainly take care of it. I'm not totally certain about other AH's, as I've told several of them about autograph forgeries they were auctioning, and they auctioned them anyway, which had a strong affect on my trust. In addition, I once received some forgeries that I wasn't able to identify as such until they were in hand, and the AH basically told me I was shlt out of luck. I sold them stating that while they were cert'd, I didn't like them - honesty cost me a 75% loss, which is expected.

"Re-cast Packers Ring
 

I missed the story on that one, I'm in Green Bay. Can you fill me in on what that was about? Thanks.

I think Michael was the one who alerted us to it, so I'll defer to him. I read the posts with interest, but not with as much attention to detail, since I wasn't a potential bidder. The message to me was that when out of your element you should seek guidance - no amount of study would have been enough for that particular item.

If I am not mistaken, you are referring to the Frederick Thurston ring? I don't recall this ring being discussed on net54 but here are the details:

In 2011, during the National, Heritage was auctioning off a Super Bowl II player ring, belonging to Frederick Thurston. The ring was 10K which was a major clue that it was not an original ring. The Super Bowl II rings were originally made in 14K gold.

I tried to explain this to the Heritage folks at their booth during the National. They were not happy to hear this and a lot of shouting occurred back and forth. Come to think about it, maybe I did post here, because they finally relented and made an announcement the evening of the auction theat the ring was not original.

Not sure if people who were not there all knew about the description change. The ring that evening sold for $50,787.50 with the buyers premium.