Barry Halper

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Posted By: Zach

In the mail today I revieved my copy of the Barry Halper collection series of three books. He had one amazing collection..almost like his own hall of fame. My question is where did he get all of this stuff and how did he store it ? Did he have rooms in his house dedecated to displaying his collection and where did he get some of this stuff..like a Dummy Hoy jersey, an Anson jersey, a 1933 Goudey Lajoie signed and dated, a 1933 Goudey leo D. His collection was amazing. Also does anyone know the total some of what his collection brought in ?

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Posted By: Marc S.

His collection was primarily stored in his basement. His very high dollar cards were in bank vault storage - but most everything else was in his basement. He did have some HOF'ers windowvane on his roof, though - I remember that. The bottom of his pool was adorned with a Yankees logo. He had one closet in his basement that had a computerized motor rack [like at a dry cleaner] with all of his HOF jerseys in there.

His baseball card sets were primarily in pages stored on one massive wall - page after page after hundreds of pages. He had most of his stuff "accessible". E.G. if you were a guest in his home, nothing was behind glass. This included his Joe Jackson signed ball, all of his autographed balls, and so much other stuff. My favorite memory of visiting his house was actually having Barry take Black Betsy off of a bat rack on the ceiling and handing it to me to swing. He was such a fun and happy guy - a true collector that really loved much about the hobby.

~ms

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Posted By: DJ

The collection brought in a total of $21,812,573. If you like the catalog, you have to purchase a VHS copy (find one)of "The Ultimate Baseball Memorabilia Collection" that was produced by Cabin Fever in 1991 and takes you through a virtual tour of his collection. You will salivate as I have as he takes you into his basement and shows you the amazing items with fantastic stories on how he acquired them.

DJ

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Am I correct in remembering that someone has now said that most of his old baseball jerseys were NOT authentic??

Or maybe they were real jerseys... but could not actually be traced back to certain players??

I know I read it somewhere... but can't remember if it was proven or was some allegation by Richard Plancich.

Anyone know anything more about this?

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Posted By: JimB

I believe that Sotheby's auction brought in somewhere over $20 million. Some was sold to the Hall of Fame before that auction and many of the less valuable pieces were sold on ebay. I don't know what the grand total was, but some others might. As a partial owner of the Yankees, that must have opened a lot of doors for him for relatively modern stuff.
JimB

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Posted By: T206Collector

...didn't Joe Dimaggio once go hang out in his basement and just sign anything Halper handed him? I think he had that kind of relationship with a lot of Yankees and other players.

Reminds me of a baseball card store in Santa Barbara, CA during the summer of 1994. I walked in, and the store owner was just speechless because Wayne Gretsky had just been there with the owner of the Kings -- and Gretsky just started signing everything in the store with his likeness on it. I recall going over to the wall and seeing a Gretsky signature on a magazine cut out at that had his picture on it that was taped to the wall.

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Posted By: DJ

The total was: $21,812,573.

I've had the pleasure of talking to Halper on several occasions. It's been about six years and a newspaper article said that he could not be commented because his health wasn't good.

I never heard anything about the uniforms being fraudulent. Almost all the items were obtained in person (in the video, he traded Mattingly an actual game used Gehrig glove for a bat) or from the family members. He was persistent and back then, nobody put a dollar sign to anything. It was just 'junk'. It's amazing how things have changed. Try asking a player for their jersey today. Heck, try asking for their autograph.

DJ

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Here it is (I knew I wasn't crazy):

http://www.network54.com/Forum/message?forumid=153652&messageid=1105857322&lp=1105901051

The head of a major auction house says they were fake.

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Posted By: Hal Lewis

Anybody know anything about this "Pug Winkler" guy who supposedly manufactured all of these fake vintage jerseys???

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Posted By: Aaron

DJ, thanks for the tip. I just bought a copy of the tape on Amazon. One of my earliest collecting experiences was buying an issue of the Smithsonian back in 1986 or 1987 (about) that had a cover story on Halper's collection. I was absolutely fascinated, re-reading the article countless times and meticulously searching the photos for every bit of detail I could identify. I had no idea this video existed and am ecstatic about seeing it.

Anyone else know of any great pictorial books or magazines or videos featuring prominent sports-related collections?

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Posted By: Adam J. Moraine

Simply put, is THE MAN. No one comes close to being the collector that Barry is. Barry collected as a youth, and for the most part as he became wealthier, he acquired more high dollar stuff. He came from a well-to-do family. His grandfather, owned a fleet of distributing trucks. Halper later became close personal friends with Joe DiMaggio, who was quite often, a regular at Barry's New Jersey home. his Southeby's Auction, generated 25 MILLION DOLLARS. His collection included nearly 1,000 game used jerseys,400 bats, EVERY baseball set EVER PRODUCED, as well as THOUSANDS of autographs,and pieces of memorabilia, and artifacts known to our game. His collection included 1,000 autographs of his favorite baseball player of all-time George Herman "Babe" Ruth.

Best Regards,

Adam J. Moraine

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Posted By: DJ

Happy to help out. I've watched this documentary at least a hundred times and own several items featured in the video. A note about the books- When they first came out, you could purchase them for $70 (which I did) and after the auction, Sotheby's made the catalogs available to the book stores at a retail price of around $8-10 and that edition (same books) included a price list of what everything sold for.

Thankfully I didn't know (nor really care) about the jerseys. The guy's name was 'Pug'? Geez, go figure. I guess even 'the man' makes an occasional mistake here and there.

DJ

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Posted By: barrysloate

I was fortunate to be able to catalog the Halper collection during most of 1999 at Sotheby's. It was stored in its entirety at their warehouse at 110th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, and I have to say it was one of the most memorable projects in all my years in the hobby. Barry had an enormous and diverse collection of memorabilia; not all of it was museum quality and his cards were mostly sold off beforehand, but his historic material was truly wonderful. I was in charge of cataloguing primarily his 19th century pieces, and it was just great. Rob Lifson headed the project and they couldn't have picked a better person to do it, nor could I have found a better person to work with. It was amazing how even-tempered he was despite all the pressures and people tugging at him from every direction at once. That was a once in a lifetime for me. I had never seen Halper's collection before and within a year I felt I knew it as well as anyone. They assembled a great team and at times there could be a dozen people working at the same time for weeks on end. Imagine a collection so large that it took a team over six months to write it up!