Quote:
Originally Posted by benjulmag
My bottom line -- photo-matching in and of itself is not enough to conclude a multi-million dollar HOF game-used jersey is genuine.
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I agree with this.
Because of the difficulty I don't think it is a practical problem for shirts valued at less than, say, $100,000, to pick a more or less random number. If such a shirt was independently deemed genuine by a qualified pro (in my book, that means one specific authenticator,) then photo matching can be one more element added in favor of it being genuine.
But on one of those mega expensive shirts, I do see your point. Especially jerseys without pinstripes. For example, a loose thread, stain, tear, or other imperfection visible in a vintage photo could be produced on a fake easily enough.
I was thinking about Halper too, when I made my previous post. Interesting you also mention him. Specifically, I always wondered about his claim to have jerseys of all the HOFers. Take Waddell... how could the shirt Barry claimed to have been Rube's have possibly been confirmed?
More modern flannels have (usually) several specific taggings, and always an identifying uniform number on back. There are plenty of exemplars. It's a much easier world to navigate.
A shirt from, say, 1906, with no number and virtually no tagging, not to mention few, or maybe no, team/season exemplars to compare....... Yes, I can see serious problems there and agree, a photo match wouldn't do much to convince me if that's all there was.