I appreciate it myself. I've long wondered what happened to Travis. Thanks Rich.
I remembered that thread 10 years ago, and just re-acquainted myself with it again. I found it mostly kind of sad.
Travis was once a solid advocate in the area of boxing autographs. He was always a bit of an erratic personality, but had a solid eye for detail, was great at cataloging good and bad exemplars, and a pretty good sense of right and wrong...though he could often be misguided in some of his finger pointing.
He did shine a light on several piles of forgeries that had fooled boxing collectors, TPA's, and most of the major sports auction houses for a long time. The most prominent being a large stack of Rocky Marciano typed/signed letters that had been bought and sold for a decade or more on just about every platform you could imagine. He wasn't the first one to notice them, but he was the first one to get anybody to rescind them from circulation.
I got along with Travis in my interactions with him, but by the time this thread rolled around it seemed like his various personality "quirks" were getting worse and worse...and he was starting to become associated with some of the same types of people he used to expose. Not because they agreed on the authenticity of any specific signatures...but because they all suffered from some sort of grievance against the TPA companies, whether real or imagined. Some of them for very different reasons then others. Some of the reasons more noble than others.
Travis had big ambitions, but very little resources and backing capital, and I think it led him down some dark roads in order to get validation for his work.
|