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SteveMaybe she assumed it was a restoration company?
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Company agrees to return Mickey Mantle card
BY PEGGY WRIGHT
DAILY RECORD
Thursday, February 7, 2008
A Parsippany-based sports card grading company agreed today to return a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle baseball card to its owner, who sued over the firm’s alleged refusal to give it back.
The Mickey Mantle rookie card, estimated to be worth at least $280,000, is owned by Sea Girt resident James O. Haas. Haas was in Superior Court, Morristown, this morning with attorney Judith Rosenthal to demand that Sportscard Guaranty Co. LLC return the card he gave it in July for the purposes of correcting some “slight imperfections” so its worth could be enhanced.
After consultation with attorney Gordon Graber, Sportscard President David Forman agreed to retrieve the card from a safety deposit box in Staten Island and have it moved, by the end of the business day Friday, to a bank in Morristown. The card will be examined and re-authenticated over the next month, attorneys for both sides have agreed.
Haas, 62, said he tried for months to get the card back but Forman stopped taking his calls and wouldn’t provide an explanation why he wouldn’t release the card. Graber, on behalf of Forman, told Superior Court Judge B. Theodore Bozonelis that Forman had examined the card, believed its condition could not be graded above a 9 — just below a perfect 10 — but wouldn’t return it unless Haas provided him with a release that the card was in the same condition as it was when he gave it to Sportscard.
Graber told the judge that comments popping up over the Internet that Sportscard may have intended to alter the card are considered defamatory by the company.
Haas, a majority shareholder in another baseball card grading company called Global Authentication, said he’ll be content when he has his card back.
“I’m a low, under-the-radar guy. I don’t want trouble. This was trouble,” said Haas, a 1963 West Point graduate.