Posted By:
Rick KohlHere is my side of the Monte Irvin story.
Yes I did go Monte Irvin's house and bought some items from him.
Monte had a lot of items displayed on his walls and his HOF plaque was NOT one of them I did ask about it and to quote Monte from the article “When he finally found it in my closet, he tossed it on the pile of all the other stuff”.
The HOF plaque, which was bought for $2000, was sold to Joe Esposito (B&E) for $4000. I made $2000 on the deal and thought I was done with it. Joe then sold the plaque to Josh for $10,000. You have to remember, this isn’t like having a ’62 Koufax PSA 7. Often times in the memorabilia market there is only 1 of an item and it is much harder to put a value on it. If I had known it was worth $10,000. 1- I would have given Monte more then $2000 for it and 2- I would have certainly sold it for more then $4,000.
After I sold the plaque, it was the last I heard of it until the article was printed. I was never called to comment on it or get my side of the story. When I read it, I was upset at how I was portrayed and I called Josh. The article makes it look like I sold the item to Josh directly and made a “kings random” on it, both of which are untrue.
Essentially what Josh conveyed to me during that conversation was that the HOF, Joe Morgan, and Irvin were coming down hard on him to return it and he felt like he would have received a ton of negative press if he didn’t return it. He then decided to “get $10,000 worth of press” by basically throwing me under the bus.
As a footnote, AFTER this article came out, Monte himself called me not once, but TWICE to buy a few misc. items, and I declined.