Braves want Heritage to pull Hank Aaron items from auction

[swarmee]

Weird; I would figure the statute of limitations on theft in Georgia would be too long to have any kind of claim to the items, if they were taken 50 years ago and transferred ownership 8 years ago.
Or do the Braves claim they also own (or had in team storage the same bases)?

It wouldn't surprise me if the Baseball Hall of Fame was sent the wrong base either, if the original Braves employee planned to keep them all for himself.

[cgjackson222]

Very interesting:

"The Atlanta Braves remain deeply concerned with Heritage’s lack of diligence and complete failure to authenticate the Disputed Items," the letter said. "We are conducting an investigation into the authenticity of the remaining Disputed Items and into how Heritage and any other party came into possession of them. If any of the Disputed Items are found to have been acquired illegally, they are the rightful property of the Atlanta Braves and should be returned to the Atlanta Braves immediately.

"And if any of the Disputed Items are found to be inauthentic, Heritage’s sale of the fraudulent items would negatively impact the value of the actual items, causing irreparable harm to the Atlanta Braves by potentially diminishing the financial and historic value of the sports memorabilia at issue."

Strong words. Not a good look for Heritage if any of the Braves' claims turn out to be true.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by cgjackson222

Very interesting:

"The Atlanta Braves remain deeply concerned with Heritage’s lack of diligence and complete failure to authenticate the Disputed Items," the letter said. "We are conducting an investigation into the authenticity of the remaining Disputed Items and into how Heritage and any other party came into possession of them. If any of the Disputed Items are found to have been acquired illegally, they are the rightful property of the Atlanta Braves and should be returned to the Atlanta Braves immediately.

"And if any of the Disputed Items are found to be inauthentic, Heritage’s sale of the fraudulent items would negatively impact the value of the actual items, causing irreparable harm to the Atlanta Braves by potentially diminishing the financial and historic value of the sports memorabilia at issue."

Strong words. Not a good look for Heritage if any of the Braves' claims turn out to be true.

I think Heritage just needs to bite the bullet on this one and take the loss, whatever it may be.

Will do more harm to them if they follow through with the auction.

Not sure they should just hand them over to the Braves either, as they are just a consignee and not the owner of the items in question either. Have the Braves deal directly with the consignor and not Heritage.

Also, if these are actually legit, is it entirely possible, all of these items would have been lost to time if the groundskeeper in question didn't bag up all these items and curate them for the last 50 years?

This is 1974 we're talking about. There was no known collectible market for bases at the time that I'm aware of. Teams weren't pulling every piece of memorabilia they could think of to sell on the secondary market, or even to put it in the stadium museum.

Braves want them NOW...but did they want them in 1974?

Also, Braves don't seem to be sure if they are "real" or "inauthentic"...but they want them "returned" to them either way. Do the Braves claim to have the "real" bases or not?

So many questions.....so much I don't know and never will.

[roarfrom34]

and to further complicate matters, Lelands auctioned off what was supposed to be 2nd base from the historic 715 game over 20 years ago:

https://lelands.com/bids/second-base...h-homerun-game

[CardPadre]

Originally Posted by roarfrom34

and to further complicate matters, Lelands auctioned off what was supposed to be 2nd base from the historic 715 game over 20 years ago:

https://lelands.com/bids/second-base...h-homerun-game

That's wild. They didn't even bother to offer any provenance, the nice decorating job removes all doubt, lol.



.

[BillyCoxDodgers3B]

I have owned precious few game used items. I am very thankful that my area of interest is only in players who were personal friends and other obscure guys that absolutely nobody would waste their time on forging.

There are extremely skilled craftsmen out there for the big boy material, which reminds me, why haven't we heard anything more about Henkel et al?

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by CardPadre

That's wild. They didn't even bother to offer any provenance, the nice decorating job removes all doubt, lol.



.

https://auction.lelands.com/bids/bidplace?itemid=12242


I think that should be the link to the actual listing and realized price.

Jeez, I know that was 22 years ago now, and Lelands is generally reputable...but that's a "Coach's Corner" quality level listing.

The faith based collectibles economy has always been strong.

[yanks12025]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I think Heritage just needs to bite the bullet on this one and take the loss, whatever it may be.

Will do more harm to them if they follow through with the auction.

Not sure they should just hand them over to the Braves either, as they are just a consignee and not the owner of the items in question either. Have the Braves deal directly with the consignor and not Heritage.

Also, if these are actually legit, is it entirely possible, all of these items would have been lost to time if the groundskeeper in question didn't bag up all these items and curate them for the last 50 years?

This is 1974 we're talking about. There was no known collectible market for bases at the time that I'm aware of. Teams weren't pulling every piece of memorabilia they could think of to sell on the secondary market, or even to put it in the stadium museum.

Braves want them NOW...but did they want them in 1974?

Also, Braves don't seem to be sure if they are "real" or "inauthentic"...but they want them "returned" to them either way. Do the Braves claim to have the "real" bases or not?

So many questions.....so much I don't know and never will.

Not sure how it does more harm following thru with the auctions especially on the jerseys. No one knows the ownership and what happened on items from 50-70 years ago. So I think the Braves claims are just BS and they want to get the items without spending money to get them back.

But dealing with the bases, they should probably be pulled because now because of the one in the HOF and the other possible lelands one puts the heritage ones into more question.

[oldjudge]

This should be an easy decision for HA. Pulls the items, return them to the consignor, and tell him they would be happy to rerun them once ownership is cleared up. It makes no sense to waste corporate resources and time fighting a battle with a MLB baseball team. With the provenance of the items now tarnished their realizations will be depressed even if HA was to prevail.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by swarmee

It wouldn't surprise me if the Baseball Hall of Fame was sent the wrong base either, if the original Braves employee planned to keep them all for himself.

I think there's a relatively high possibility of that being the case.

Here's the lot of bases in question. Was harder to find then I expected. I haven't a clue if they are legit or not.

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...iption-071515#

[CardPadre]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

I think there's a relatively high possibility of that being the case.

Here's the lot of bases in question. Was harder to find then I expected. I haven't a clue if they are legit or not.

https://sports.ha.com/itm/baseball-c...iption-071515#

The HOF says they got the base directly from Hank Aaron in 1982. That’s as good a story as any here.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by CardPadre

The HOF says they got the base directly from Hank Aaron in 1982. That’s as good a story as any here.

Somebody gave Hank Aaron a base. I doubt he dug it out of the ground himself.

The HOF could very well have the real base...they just as easily could not.

Yeah, I'm cynical. I've seen too many items in museums and personal collections, obtained from the athlete themselves, that don't pass the sniff test.

Nat Fleischer ran The Ring Boxing Museum and had a ton of gloves on display going back to the 1950's and 60's that were given to him by the boxers themselves from various "important" fights. Half of them weren't even the right brand of glove LOL.

I don't think it's any type of purposeful deception from these athletes. This stuff wasn't even worth anything back in the day. I just don't think they were hung up on the accuracy of such things, as we are today. Especially since this has become a "business" as such.

[MantleMarisFordBerra]

Very interesting.

This reminds me of the mystery of Roberto Clemente’s 3000th hit bat. Here’s an incredibly fascinating piece from ESPN that strongly hints Clemente himself told at least three different people that he was giving them the bat he got his 3,000th hit with:

http://https://www.espn.com/espn/sto...o-clemente-bat

[gonefishin]

I'm not a legal expert by any stretch, but would someone please explain to me how a groundskeeper could just remove the bases, etc. and keep them as his own? I don't get it - was he stealing the bases? I'm guessing his job description explained what he was responsible for doing, but just taking things home and keeping them sounds illegal to me - but again - I don't know. It's not like the bags were thrown in the garbage and he picked them out of the dumpster while dumpster diving. I think he realized some sort monetary value and basically stole the items from the braves. I kind of base it on this train of thought: "An employee is prohibited from removing any items belonging to the company and taking them home as their possession".

Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like they stole the bases from the Braves organization. In this case, possession does not mean ownership.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by gonefishin

I'm not a legal expert by any stretch, but would someone please explain to me how a groundskeeper could just remove the bases, etc. and keep them as his own? I don't get it - was he stealing the bases? I'm guessing his job description explained what he was responsible for doing, but just taking things home and keeping them sounds illegal to me - but again - I don't know. It's not like the bags were thrown in the garbage and he picked them out of the dumpster while dumpster diving. I think he realized some sort monetary value and basically stole the items from the braves. I kind of base it on this train of thought: "An employee is prohibited from removing any items belonging to the company and taking them home as their possession".

Maybe I'm wrong, but it sounds like they stole the bases from the Braves organization. In this case, possession does not mean ownership.

All that sounds reasonable, though I imagine it could be argued by the descendants of the groundskeeper that disposing of old/used equipment and supplies was part of the description of his job…..and that keeping or donating stuff may actually have been one of the perks of the job.

All that said, a lot must be taken on faith here. Who’s to say these bases weren’t from 1973 or 1975 or an entirely different set of bases from 1974. The provenance in the listing isn’t entirely forthcoming beyond somebody who knew somebody, who was somebody, who wrote something on a box that had some stuff in it.

Is the story real? Maybe. The value I guess is in how many people with deep pockets can you convince of this.