Should auction houses honor all items that accompany their own LOA?

[SyrNy1960]

Originally Posted by drcy

An important question concerning the gloves is what was the description at the sale. Apparently the sale doesn't guarantee they belonged to the player and say they are going on heresay. If the original auction said pretty much the same ("These are player model gloves, but we don't have proof they were used by the player.), then then that's that. I've read big auction house auction descriptions where they say the believe the bat may have been used by the player or speculate that the memento belonged to the famous person, but they have no definitive proof.

As I said, a collector can't rerwrite what the LOA (or auction description) says.

Years back, I actually consigned to SCGaynor on eBay a football player's shoes that come with letter of provenance from a reputable source (a coach) and were supposedly game used. I'm no game used collector or expert, but a collector specialist of that team said on the GUU board the coach was reputable and honest, though the coach collected the game used shoes (meaning he had a bunch or even mass of them) and it's always possible he could accidentally mix up the player name versus number on the shoes. The coach's letter detailed how he got the shoes from the team and guaranteed they were authentic. I'd seen MEARS give LOAs for shoes with the same provenance/loa, so I figured they too at least thought the provenance credible. However, I searched and searched NLF images to find a match, but couldn't. The problem was I could only find images from some a fraction of the games (I'm not Getty or Corbis search master), the player wore the same brand but changed the style about every other game and he he always heavily taped up his shoes so it was sometimes hard to tell for sure even if he worse the same exact shoes. But I could find neither a photo match or even an exact style match.

In Gaynor eBay auction description, it said the shoes were the correct size and brand, had the correct number handwritten on them, had obvious wear, detailed the LOA from the coach and also included the clipped out auction catalog page where I got them (a reputable enough autograph auction house). But it also specifically gave the strong caveat that, despite searching, no photo matches were found. I thought it gave all the relevant information to bidders, warts and all, good and bad. In fact, i thought it was honest enough it might scare away some bidders.

The funny thing is the shoes sold for much more than I expected. Perhaps the winner was more of an expert and knew more than Gaynor or I, or perhaps the provided paperwork was enough for that collector. Perhaps the winner was able to find a photomatch. I don't know.

But you can bet what I would say in Gaynor's defense if 10 years later someone came back for a refund because "I can't find a photomatch." The shoes were specifically sold under the description that no photomatches were found and bidders should bid with that in consideration.

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