As is the case every year, Hunt Auctions will be holding a football auction, the day before, and in the same city as the Superbowl. As a ring and football collector I look forward to the auction every year.
This year, Hunt has a few football rings in the auction and I have been conversing by email with David Hunt about one of the rings in the auction.
The first two pictures below show the ring in the Hunt Auction. The last two pictures show an actual player's ring in my collection. I have no doubt that the item in the auction is a real font-office ring, however it is smaller, different, and contains less diamonds than what player's received.
When it comes to championship rings, auction houses sometimes get facts wrong or their descriptions need clarifications. In the auction houses defense, I don't believe they mislead bidders on purpose. There aren't books available to refer to, and I spend countless hours a month researching rings and detailing my findings in my personal database.
I am happy to help collectors, and auction houses too, and go out of my way to let auction houses know when something needs to be changed, withdrawn or clarified. Most auction houses are happy to avoid upsetting bidders and quickly make the changes. Some go into denial, and do their own research and usually wind up making the changes. Sadly, a few try to do nothing or very little.
When I first noticed the problem with the description, I emailed Daivd Hunt, and suggested he update the description to include that the ring in the auction was smaller, different and contained less diamonds than a player's ring. I sent detailed photographs showing the differences.
His response to my email was that they were already aware that the Bears ring was not a player’s ring and that if it was a players ring the estimate would have been 2-3 times the listed amount.
I was shocked with the response. Was it possible David was claiming the bidder should know the ring was not the same size, based upon a lower estimate?
I wrote back and specifically reminded him how little information is available to collectors and questioned why take a chance on upsetting bidders and consigners with bad information that may lead to problems, or bad feelings or loss of a sale when the truth is found out?
His second response stated that my point was of very little relevance to the sale amount of the ring given its description and related estimate. He said he was happy to add into the description that the ring was a front office ring. He then stated that if they had published an estimate of $10,000-$15,000 and were not informing buyers that this type of ring typically sells between $5,000-$7,000 there might be a genuine concern that someone could be deceived.
I responded to David that I found his responses frighting and mentioned I would be warning the collecting community about this problem.
Well true to his word, David did add that this is a front office ring to the auction description. I repeatedly continued to request that he clarify the description even further with the fact that it is a smaller and lesser version than the player ring but he refuses to honor my request.
So therefore, I am trying to alert the community about this matter. If any of you have any contacts at Hunt and feel the way I do, perhaps you can request that they change the description. I will also be reaching out to the NFL on this matter as they coordinate this auction with Hunt.
If you would like to see the auction item, here is the link:
http://huntauctions.com/live/imagevi...=310&lot_qual=