Evans responds to Bushing

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Posted By: Josh Evans

I read the recent post of Dave Bushing on this forum with mixture of both amusement and anger
Because Dave has lashed out at me personally and publicly I will reply to him/you in the same form.

To add to your list of shortcomings I will now add paranoia
It seems that you Mr. Bushing are of the opinion that I am the lynchpin in the recent furor over your business practices

You have opined that I am “personal friends” of the New York Daily News writers that have blasted you publicly. I assume you are referring to the writers of the recent New York Daily News articles on you, Michael O’Keefe and Bill Madden. While I wish this were the case (ahhh to be able to influence the press) this is simply not true and actually quite funny. Not that this is any of your business, I have never even met Michael O’Keefe (at least not that I know of). I may have met Bill Madden once in my life (he is a hobbyist), but this could have been around the time of my Bar Mitvah or at least a decade or so ago. I have spoken to each of them on the phone a handful of times (we spoke of nothing “personal” by the way); I provided background to a few of their stories on a variety of topics (mostly not about you Dave).

As for the reason they are not writing about myself or Lelands, that you would have to ask them. But you will notice they are not going after any of the other auction houses or authenticators either. Are they “personal friends” with the other auction house owners they do not mention or are they “personal friends” with authenticators John Taube and Steve Grad? Gee Dave, maybe they are going where the biggest problems are.

If I were to render an opinion as to why they do not attack Lelands (although this will sound self serving) it is that they do not need to. We go after ourselves. Most in the industry (who I assume these writers speak to for their content) know our track record. They know that we not only stand behind everything we sell but we own up to mistakes quickly, affirmatively and fairly whereas in the case of the Joe DiMaggio Bat debacle you Mr. Bushing did not and still have not.

You still just don’t get it. The way you handled that situation was flat out wrong. You used your relationship with the winning bidder, your influence as a grader and your influence within the industry to act on a litany of conflicts of interest. And you and your partner earned hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it. That sale should never have gone through as after the full information came out the bat was not the same animal that was sold. At the time you graded it a “10” while now there are significant questions as to what it truly is. I am not saying it was not used in the streak (although I have my doubts) but it is definitely not an unblemished, 100%, “10 of 10” entity. Especially not when the streak element depends upon the following info raised from some of your friends and your own partner: it depends somewhat upon the dating of when the Henrich’s lived in the house it came out of (oh please), the memory of a very old Tommy Henrich who previously did not say it was the streak bat and whose family was cut into the profits only after it became a streak bat, and the word of a company executive who has been selling hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of bats out the back door of H&B since the 1980s. And the coup de grace, at what point and by whom was that bat professionally restored.

You say that we at Lelands have a conflict of interest by authenticating our own stuff. Wow that is a head spinner. Well then every dealer that sells something, every collector that sells something going back to the dawn of time is in this same conflict. Christ, when my Dad sold his AMC Gremlin (crappy car) and told the guy it was in good condition (it was) he was in a conflict of interest. YES!!! But that is why we do not pose ourselves as a third party, a disinterested party, to help us to sell our stuff.

We at Lelands.com are an auction house that does not use nor need third party authentication services to sell our stuff (the only major sports auction house in the country that can say this). We don’t need to because we know more than the authenticators (and with a little help from our friends at times). We do not cower behind the expertise of third party authenticators who many times do not have the knowledge, the expertise or the STAKE in the stuff to provide the necessary opinion. It is us that refunds the money when we make mistakes, and pulls the lots when the calls come in from people that might now something that we did not. We are the ones with our names on the door, on the catalogue, and on the business cards. Wait, to put it more clearly that is MY NAME Joshua Leland Evans on the door and my partner Michael Heffner who is and feels a part of that name every bit as much as I do because we built this together. We built it from a flea market operation to a $15,000,000 a year enterprise that although flawed is something that we take daily pride in.

Our track record not our reputation should stand as a symbol, the ultimate symbol of what we are and what we have done in our 15 plus years of running sports auctions. Remember, Lelands is the model that most of not all the current auction houses today used to create their businesses. There was a Lelands before there was an auction house gleam in the late great Don Steinbach’s eyes. Any reader of this is welcome to pay the postage and I will gladly send a set of the dozens of catalogues we have put out dating back to 1988. This is some years before when you Dave Bushing were hanging out at Art Jaffe’s authenticating as real a fake Joe Jackson bat that was the tip of the Johnny Fang iceberg that all those fake Louisville Slugger‘s came from. You probably remember that I actually screamed in frustration while you laughed foolishly at the prospect that the bat was fake. I will never forget as Dan Knoll (your now partner) and I went down in the elevator shaking our heads at your naiveté.

There was no industry back in the early 1980s when I started in sports memorabilia. There were no books. WE made the mistakes, corrected them, and moved forward. And when you snidely accuse of me of “fraud” in my authentication of a Joe DiMaggio glove that I erred on remember it was Dan Knoll that sold me that glove that he got from his buddy Tony Cocchi. And where is Dan while you take all the heat. Where is Dan while Troy Kanunen takes all the heat? I remember Troy as the guy that used to carry Dan’s bags around for him. Not Troy as some big wig (yes that word again) who is running the show at SCDA while conflicts abound and you hide behind rhetoric.

But I am not the one waging this campaign against you Dave. Look around you. It is the industry on this forum. Be it a slice of that life it is still a representative sample of the hobby that made us wealthy. And whether or not you realize it you have a responsibility to these people. So get rid of your conflicts and stop pussy footing around about the degree you do or do not have from whatever school you went to (Columbia? As in Bogotá?) and get rid of your conflicts. If you want to be a dealer fine; if you want to be an authenticator fine; you want to be a grader fine. But not all three.

And get your head out of your ass and realize that I am not the cause of your problems, and neither is Robert Plainchich, and neither is the New York Daily News. YOU ARE!!!
Yes you are going to make mistakes, I make them every day. Just own up to them and just don’t say you own to them. If you did, that DiMaggio bat would not be sold, at least not for a half a million dollars. Just own up to who you are, and what you are in this little hobby of ours.

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Posted By: Jim Parks

I keep on seeing the "A10" grade referenced, but where does it state that the DiMaggio bat graded an A10? I could not find it in the original auction catalog.

It seems as though many people feel that the bat probably came from the time of Joe's hitting streak, but wouldn't an A10 designation mean that the provenance is iron clan?

Is there a website somewhere that explains the different bat grades?

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Posted By: Adam J. Moraine

You go, Josh! ...... You Da man!

Best regards,

Adam J. Moraine
Des Moines, Iowa

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Josh, with all respect, I don't think any sane person would ever consider Bushing and his bunch to be more reputable than Leland's. No need to respond to Bushing's bull, in my opinion. His conflict of interest, his stretching of the truth, his Master's Degree that is not a Master's Degree (too busy printing money to finish that pesky thesis) have rendered his credibility worthless to me.

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Posted By: jay behrens

so how is it that an auction house that self authenicates doesn't have a conflict of interest? As Josh pointed out, everyone has a conflict of interest when selling something they own. Going after Bushing on conflict of interest is ridiculous.

As to the A10 grade, it is the grade that SCDA gave the bat. As Lee, Dan and myself said after our visit, there is no way we would have given it that grade, but it's their reps on line, so it's their call.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

I think Jim Parks posting above has a very valid question -

"Is there a website somewhere that explains the different bat grades?"

Is the "A" scale grading an industry standard or is it something developed by a certain group of authenticators. In any case there should be some type of documented/published scale that lists the criteria for each grade. I hate to use card authenticating/grading companies as a comparison but PSA, SGC and other reputable authenticating/grading companies post their standards.

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Posted By: PASJD

The issue is not conflict-of-interest, it is DISCLOSURE of all potential conflicts-of-interest that might bear on a buyer's decision. If an auction house relies on an authentication provided by a third-party authenticator, but does not disclose the fact that the authenticator owns or has a financial interest in the item, then in my opinion the buyer has not been apprised of a material fact. I do not see any comparable issues as Josh has described the way Leland's works.

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Posted By: Richard Simon

I have known Josh and Mike Hefner for many, many years. I can state that in my opinion they work harder to have a "clean" catalog than anyone that is has been my experience to know.
---

I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
Unknown author
--
We made a promise. We swore we'd always remember.
No retreat baby, no surrender.
The Boss

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Posted By: jay behrens

the grading scale is SCDA's creation. The have a checklist they go thru when authenticating an item and based on that checklist a grade is given. This checklist is included as part of the LOO. Too bad the card slabbers don't do this so we know why our cards get hammered.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

Jay,

Do you know if the "A" scale criteria is published? If so can you please tell me where to find the standards. If the information is not published can you please contact the SCDA people and request that they publish the information. You have a rapport with the people from SCDA so I think that they may respond to you better than someone they don't know.

Thanks!

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Posted By: jay behrens

SCDA is very open about the grading standard. It's something that was recently implemneted and I beleive the DiMaggio bat was the first item they used the grading scale with. Drop me an email and I'll give you an email address for SCDA. For some reason, I cannnot click names and get the email function to work here.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Josh--Seems like this is a good topic for one of your future columns in SCD or are topics like this verboten. How about a column on Coach's Corner?

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Posted By: Richard Simon

Jay - do you mean a column about the biggest advertiser in SCD? Never happen.

I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.
Unknown author
--
We made a promise. We swore we'd always remember.
No retreat baby, no surrender.
The Boss

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Posted By: Jay Miller

I guess moral outrage has its limits. Why would Josh agree to do a column if he were limited on who he could write about? If that were the case I see no upside.

Josh--why did you agree to do that column?

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Posted By: Julie

This is a second-generation photograph of Joe Jackson, with a Cleveland cap on. It was printed by George Brace (died late '90s at 89)in the 1950s or '60s, and his name, and two number zip code appear on the back. The photographer is unknown, but an excellent guess is that it's from the files of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Date: around 1914--you can see that by his face.

To win this photo from Leland's I had to bid against a lot of feebles who thought, because Leland's told them so, that it was an ORIGINAL BRACE PHOTO of Joe jackson with the White Sox.


This is a (cropped) original photo of Moses Fleetwood Walker I won from Mastronet. It was presented in the catalogue about 1 inch square, with a phony, neat, paper frame around it (hiding the true battered mount), that could have been made anytime betweern 1882-1982. The photo dates from 1882. When asked for provenance (which was important, because the photo was reprinted for a yearbook in 1902), Struss called David Rudd, and said he had a 10X microscope (possibly to be confused with a magnifying glass), and what should he look for? "Fibres," said David. Struss thought he saw fibres, and finally took the phony paper frame off,sent me a scan, and I bought it. When it arrived, I bought myself a 100X microscope, and saw "fibres" for myself.


Four of my favorite collectibles come from these two auction houses, but--I don't trust EITHER of them as far as I could throw a grown man, which is nowhere.l

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Posted By: Julie, This Is Shocking! -- Are You Saying

Again Julie, masterful images.

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Posted By: JimB

Soon after David Hall started PSA, the conflict of interest question was raised and he sold his entire collection.
JimB

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Posted By: Greg Ecklund

Didn't he have his own collection graded by his own company though, including a '52 Topps Mantle that "just happened" to be a 10? Hard to believe that the graders didn't know that they were grading the boss's collection.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that is my understanding.

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Posted By: Anonymous

Hall sold his collection in the mid 90s during the first graded card boom. But immediately proceeding the sale of the collection Collectors Universe aquired Superior Sports and became a major player in the auction business specializing in PSA graded cards.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

This information is available from SCDA in a brochure that I was given on my trip to Chicago.

SCD Authentic Bat Grading Criteria

A10: 100% documented and authenticated bat
Factory production details of the bat has been compared to known records and have been determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics of the bat have been examined and heavy signs of use and other combined traits of the player are present. A bat being graded A-10 also has rock solid provenance and history. This documentation in the form of side writing, vault marking, or ironclad letter of provenance.

A9: Strong documentation and authenticated bat
Factory production details of the bat has been compared to known records and have been determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics of the bat have been examined and heavy signs of use and other combined traits of the player are present. Documentation comes in the form of verifiable team letter, indesputable photographic evidence, charity auction letter, scout/major league employee letter, teammate, family member/spouse, coach, umpire, or executive, or vintage characteristics unique to that particular player are present and easily distinguishable.

A8: Authenticated bat with heavy use and multiple player characteristics present
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics of the bat have been examined and heavy signs of use and other combined traits of the player are present.

A7: Authenticated bat with moderate/medium use and exhibits player characteristics
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics of the bat have been examined and moderate/medium signs of use and other combined traits of the player are present.

A6: authenticated bat with light use and some or no player characteristics
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics of the bat have been examined and show light signs of use with some or no player traits present.

A5: Authenticated bat with noted proems of usage or player characteristics
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics have been examined and negative traits are present. This includes no game use, one or more layers of wood missing from the bat, damage affecting label or factory signature, water damage, screws or nails applied by someone other than the batboy.

A4: Authenticated bat with additional noted problems of usage and/or player characteristics
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics have been examined and negative traits are present. This includes but is not limited to three or more layers of wood missing from the bat, heavy damage affecting label, and factory signature or model number. Heavy signs of water damage on barrel, knob or handle. Uniform number may not be correct for the player model.

A3: Authenticated bat not entirely matching facotry records or having major usage or player characteristics problems
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to have discrepancies with known records. Examples are the bat exhibits a length, weight, model or labeling period that is not recorded via factory records. Excessive negative physical traits are present.

A2: Authenticated bat with no factory records
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to have no matching characteristics. Manufacturing characteristics are present, but cannot be verified via know factory records. Player characteristics may be present.

A1: Authenticated bat from unknown company matching some known player characteristics
Factory production details of the bat have been compared to known records and determined to have no matching characteristics. No known manufacturing characteristics are present and cannot be verified via known factory records. Some player characteristics may be present. Usually reserved for bats from unknown or obscure companies.

Half Point: Half points may be added or subtracted from a given grade based on the following circumstances: measuring degrees of usage/lack of use, number of positive player characteristics or missing trait(s), amounts of negative use/abuse, and for the inclusion of a pinpointed bat order specific to one order of bats sent to a player recorded via the factory records.

Dan

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Posted By: Howie

I ran the standards through spellchecker and they look okay to me.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Huh?

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Posted By: Anonymous

Dan,

THANK YOU!!!


A10: 100% documented and authenticated bat
Factory production details of the bat has been compared to known records and have been determined to perfectly match recorded length, weight, model, and proper labeling period. Physical characteristics of the bat have been examined and heavy signs of use and other combined traits of the player are present. A bat being graded A-10 also has rock solid provenance and history. This documentation in the form of side writing, vault marking, or ironclad letter of provenance.


Perhaps the rock was igneous, perhaps pumice, scoria or basalt. Ok, enough facetiousness.

Again, Dan - Thank You for providing this information.

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Posted By: PASJD

Presumably Dave Bushing's position is that the combination of the objective information indicating that the bat belonged to DiMaggio and that it had been used in a game, and Henrich's in-person vouching for it being a streak bat, justified the A10 rating. It would have been interesting to know if a neutral party (i.e., an authentication expert with no financial interest in the bat) would have believed Henrich based on the same information he and his family provided, but I guess we will never know.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Like Jay, Lee and I have already said, none of us would have given this an A-10. I would have given it an A-9 based on Henrich's age and the fact that he really has never mentioned the bat before. But with all that said and having read Henrich's book and having done futher research on Henrich in other sources I could find nothing anywhere where you could question the man's integrity. I think the biggest problem that I have with the bat is that it was repaired and Henrich doesn't remember who repaired it for him. The bat is still plausible to me because it matches factory records, and you have Henrich's word. It's just not what I consider to be "rock solid" provenance.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

Is Bushing's Master's Degree an A-9 or A-10?

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Posted By: Julie

right before I graduated from college), we all worked on our own projects, and occasionally read what we had written aloud to the class. Mine was very well recieved, and subsequently published in "Mademoiselle" magazine, which just quit publication about 8-10 years ago. (Julie Mayer, 1960, "Sybils")

To use whatever credit this may give me as a writing critic (I also taught freshman college English, as well as literature), I don't think Mr. Bushing is an outstanding writer in any way. Nothing I have ever read that he wrote has made me sit up and take notice.

My 2 cents worth, and I know some of you think I write in "code," rather than English!

I don't believe this has anything to do with his capabilities as an authenticator, which I think have been sufficiently questioned by others.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

So, Julie, what you're saying is that Bushing's Master's is actually an A-8?

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Posted By: Julie

writer. No, he doesn't.