Wright Letters

[benjulmag]

Thanks for the response and the link to Guggenheim case. I do find it very interesting.

I don't mean to offend by mentioning the instance of stolen WWII art. I brought it up merely to make a legal point. I lost family members in the Holocaust and would never intentionally make reference to that event in a disrespectful manner.

My understanding (or, depending on one's perspective, lack of) of the law is not based, as you imply, on learning how to buy stolen baseball items without having to worry of having to return it at some future date. I would never knowingly acquire an item I have reasonable grounds to believe is stolen, period. What I know about the law is based on my training as an attorney.

Our views of things are based in part on our experiences. Mine, in regard to the way many institutions treat collections entrusted to them, is not overly positive. Much of the Burdick collection (housed in the Metropolitan) has been stolen. Years ago when I was viewing it I noticed the Lajoie card (a really nice example) literally tangling by a single strand of adhesive tape. No one was watching me and had I been so inclined, I could have easily removed it from its page and walked off with it. At the conclusion of my visit, I went to the room attendant, told him of the significant value of that card (at the time $6,000), and implored him to take better actions to safeguard it. He asked me to write him a note to that effect and he would act on it. So I wrote a note identifying the card and its value. Flash forward now six months when a good friend of mine went to view the collection. When I asked him how his visit went, he told me of the strangest occurrence -- that when he viewed the Lajoie, he noticed a note in the page identifying the card as having a value of $6,000. So, six months later, it was still attached to that same single strand but now had a note telling everybody how valuable it was.

Or take the vaunted NYPL. Recently one of its stolen baseball documents was recovered by the FBI. I have been told that close to one year after being informed of the whereabouts of the item, the NYPL has yet to initiate contact to have the item returned.

The point is that many institutions take terrible measures to safeguard their collections, or fail to take reasonable actions to locate their stolen property, or fail to publicize that which is stolen so good faith third party purchasers don't get burned later down the road. Yes, as a collector of 19th century memorabilia, one can argue I have a certain bias toward good faith third party purchasers. But if I'm willing to do my part to pull my head of the sand with that which I am comtemplating acquiring, I don't think its asking too much for institutions to help me by making it easier to identify their stolen items or to know that there is a question of ownership for a particular item.