Mel Ott Bat Stolen at National

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by pclpads

How diabolical! You should be in the spook biz.

+1

[MGHPro]

Scott
I certainly feel for you. I had a bat stolen off my table in Cleveland 3 years ago. My advice, take these posts down, get them out of google and yahoo searches and wait patiently. Everyone knows what happens and when the person who took it feels like the pressure is off, it will show up one way or another. Whether it's sold locally and then sent in to an auction or authentication, but just try to keep it out of the headlines and let it play out. Mine surfaced almost a year after it was stolen.

In regards to other posts, I can see where you think having off duty security is the answer, but with what these shows cost to do, know one would drop extra money to have security.

I do think the show promoters need to beef up security a lot. I saw security pass by our booth maybe 5 times this week. Plus the security people I saw, didn't look like the would be able to stop a thief if there was a situation.

Hope the bat turns up sooner than later.

[blades3]

Taube is a private business and had his table in the front of the room, which is about as far away from PSA's booth as you could possibly get. PSA takes submissions immediately into the back of its booth and keeps them under lock and key, but this didn't happen anywhere near their booth. I'd like to know when and how this happened (during the show, what distracted him, etc.). I hope the bat turns up, this would be horrible to go through.

[sforaker]

Thanks for the advice and support and thanks to Matt for sharing his experience. To answer some questions that have been raised about how this happened, I had paid for the bat and arranged for Hunt Auctions to hand deliver it to John Taube at the National last Thursday (ironically, to avoid risk of loss via air courier). Hunt in fact delivered it to John and it was in John's possession when it was stolen later that afternoon. John had put it in a bat rack with other bats that were waiting to be authenticated. Apparently it was stolen while he was assisting other customers that afternoon. He noticed it was gone that evening when the show ended for the day and he went to retrieve it for safekeeping overnight. I am hoping that the person that took it comes to their senses and returns it.

Scott

[travrosty]

wow, he put a stack of 50 thousand dollars cash in a non secure bat rack and went to help other people, came back and shockingly the cash is gone. that blows my mind.

[Jlighter]

This guy knew what he was doing, Ott isn't a household name, and to know that this bat is very valuable is not information known by many.

We're you at least able to hold the bat once?

[sforaker]

Jake, I agree with you and hopefully this will help the police narrow the suspects. Though it is possible that it was a random act and the bat stolen out of the rack just happened to be far more valuable than the others, I doubt it. No, I did not even get a chance to hold the bat in my hands ... it went straight from Hunt Auctions to John Taube.

Obviously I wish that that the bat had been handled in a more secure manner. John is an intelligent guy and a good businessman so I am sure that he will learn from this experience and handle such things differently in the future.