Heritage Auction problem

[David Atkatz]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Yeah, no doubt, but did Halper know his items were fraudulent? Did someone sell him the Jackson Jersey and Halper made up the story about how he got it still believing the jersey to be legit? I think he got stuff from Al Stump who we now know was forging Ty Cobb items...did Halper know that? There was a lot of bad stuff in his collection, but I think at the time he sold it we can't be sure that he knew it was bad. Did he know that items he was buying were stolen from the Hall of Fame or the NYPL?

Did he know that the 500 HR sheet he claimed to have had signed in-person bore the same Ruth forgery as other items in his collection, such as the "Ruth's hair" piece?

I could go on. Was a very successful New Jersey businessman really as gullible and innocent as you'd like to believe?

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

Did he know that the 500 HR sheet he claimed to have had signed in-person bore the same Ruth forgery as other items in his collection, such as the "Ruth's hair" piece?

I could go on. Was a very successful New Jersey businessman really as gullible and innocent as you'd like to believe?

David, I don't find him to be innocent at all...he was without a doubt a liar, a lot of the rest is up for speculation and hard to prove now that he's dead. I just think (my opinion) that he is not in the same league with the Cooperstown forger. Most of Halper's crap was pretty easily detected to be crap with a little homework.

[David Atkatz]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

David, I don't find him to be innocent at all...he was without a doubt a liar, a lot of the rest is up for speculation and hard to prove now that he's dead. I just think (my opinion) that he is not in the same league with the Cooperstown forger. Most of Halper's crap was pretty easily detected to be crap with a little homework.

Halper was certainly not in the same league as the Cooperstown forger skill-wise, knowledge of baseball history-wise, and, most importantly, intelligence-wise. But (in my opinion), he is (was) every bit as much as a crook.

[RichardSimon]

Leon - why do you keep saying I am working with him?
Are you quoted in various other blogs on the internet? I assume so.
Are you giving an opinion on various cards when people ask you about them? I assume so.
Do you consider that you are working in conjunction with those people who ask you for a quote or your opinion on cards?
If you consider those things to be working with someone tell me because our definitions are different in this matter.

[travrosty]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jewell

Believing that someone did something is one thing, but taking action based only on allegations is wrong. "you are an associate of Richard Jewell? Well, he is allegedly the olympic park bomber so I can't let you rent this townhouse from me." What kind b.s. is that?

Auction houses need to either take away "allegedly" or apologize for taking those actions based only on allegations. But have a spine one way or the other.

so allegedly is good enough for heritage? They can run their auction house the way they want, yes, they can. That's what the original criticism was all about. Many thought they weren't running it in a particularly fair way.

For that people got banned, and I think Heritage discussing the specifics of why people got banned privately with Leon isn't right or fair for a professional auction house to do. They either need to post it openly for all so we can defend ourselves, or keep quiet.

Remember, whatever Ivy says is on behalf of Heritage and if I was Ivy and someone asked me (remember, I am heritage) exactly the circumstances why someone had their account banned, the proper answer for me would have been

I am sorry but I cant discuss company policy and private bidder information and communications with you.

Can I just call up any auction house and ask questions of any bidder they have and what this bidder, said, has done and what their emails say? I don't care if they release emails, but do it out in the open so everyone can decide.

I said they lied when they posted auction items open for live bidding that said "jsa auction loa" when even by their own admission, Heritage said the loa's wren't issued yet.

Saying something that ain't true is lying. When they ignored me I went to the top, Steve Ivy, Chairman and CEO, and I got no response, then I was banned.

Jonathan already said why we were banned. Evidently you wanted the dirt and the "real" story. Well if you did, ask them to have Jonathan put it all out here for everyone, because if they just tell you only, and you say you agree with Heritage that they did the right thing, then you let people draw their own conclusions without THEM having any of the facts- only based on the fact that "if leon agrees, then they must have did something bad".

Poor way to do it by a professional auction house.

[Wite3]

How about this take on Peter Nash...

This is just speculation but makes a weird kind of sense...

ALLEGEDLY,

He is a business man who is trying to get rid of the competition...maybe he is outing fraud as a means to increase his profit. If he can become the best supplier of faked, inaccurate, and fraudulent material, then he will make the most money. A little bit of misdirection on his part will create a better business and profit margin for his "stuff." Sort of like the cigarette companies giving millions of dollars to cancer research or the mob setting up orphanages.

Just a thought.

Joshua

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by Wite3

How about this take on Peter Nash...

This is just speculation but makes a weird kind of sense...

ALLEGEDLY,

He is a business man who is trying to get rid of the competition...maybe he is outing fraud as a means to increase his profit. If he can become the best supplier of faked, inaccurate, and fraudulent material, then he will make the most money. A little bit of misdirection on his part will create a better business and profit margin for his "stuff." Sort of like the cigarette companies giving millions of dollars to cancer research or the mob setting up orphanages.

Just a thought.

Joshua

He is under so much scrutiny right now I don't think he would dare...I think the simplest explanation is that he got caught and is now trying to take down everyone with him.

[travrosty]

have a super day,

just thought it was a no tolerance policy and not a sliding scale, whatever, moving on.

the reason haulsofshame deserves peoples support is that it is one of the biggest, most aggresive website trying to combat the problems in the hobby.

Most people agree the hobby is suffering from forgeries in the autograph realm, helped along by tpa's and auction houses that either trust the tpa's or don't do their own investigations into the fakes, reprints, preprints, autopens, secretarials, stamps, reproductions, copies, laser copies, etc.

A lot of collectors won't even mention a TPA name online for fear of reprisal. Or an auction house. You do and you get banned from an auction house, pigeonholed, castigated, harangued, and worse. People will ask you to leave the hobby if you hate it that much. They ask you why you don't want to help the TPA's to make the hobby better, but if helping them pass a stamped Campanella signature is helping the TPA's, then count me out. It's a closed loop system. You aren't invited to help the TPA's get better. They are comfortable with what they are doing now.

People putting their neck on the line by standing up to subpar authentication and auction house policies are trying to HELP the hobby. Would Heritage have done anything about the premature "auction loa" listings if we just gave up after the first round of a ten round bout? NO, hauls of shame keeps hammering, collectors keep hammering, and it took a nash article on a ty cobb ball that had one of these auction loa when there wasn't one - for Heritage to FINALLY do something, and then act like this was some type of a new problem, and they will fix it for the good of the hobby and that they never posted and item with a premature auciton loa that was up for live bidding. (not true and we proved it and posted the weekly internet auctions where that was happening on numerous occasions.) I threw up my lunch.

I love the hobby, I hate the system of backdoor authentication based on who is submitting, the limited or non existant expertise in many areas (boxing anyone?) that promulgate the growing population of these preprints, forgeries and secretarials that are increasingly showing up in a slab with many humming the same chorus, that it is encapsulated for unquestioned authenticity.

The tpa's website say that, along with the tagline that they have pooled together the world's experts. Did they really search over the whole world? Why is everyone from the U.S. then? Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

The people who work there keep saying the same thing over and over again. That is you see an LOA from them, you can be assured you are getting the real deal, an authentic autograph. Oh please!

How many websites out there are trying to combat the fakes and stolen stuff? Not many, Hauls of shame does, and I support any effort that does. I commend Richard Simon for supporting these efforts too.

[travrosty]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

Halper was certainly not in the same league as the Cooperstown forger skill-wise, knowledge of baseball history-wise, and, most importantly, intelligence-wise. But (in my opinion), he is (was) every bit as much as a crook.

Halper said that he got ruth's auto in person on babe ruth day when Halper was a kid , then he said his dad gave him the sheet with ruth's auto already on it.

then they find an envelope and letter with (incredibly) the same type of ruth's signature on it. Jsa calls it a non-malicious secretarial ruth signature.

Halper says he played baseball at miami with foxx as his coach. proven to be impossible as foxx left before halper enrolled, and none of the teammates remember halper as he never played basebal there and is not pictured with the team in any photograph.

Halper then says his coach Foxx asked him to come into the office with the sheet because Ott was visiting tomorrow so he brought the sheet into his office for Foxx and Ott to sign.

In another story halper says that he brought the sheet to the field to have Foxx sign it.

Halper had stories on how he obtained both mantles rookie jersey and reggie jackson's rookie jersey. He used these provenance stories to bolster the jerseys until he talked up mantle and reggie and convinced them that this was their rookie jersey and had them sign letters to that effect. Then he dropped his original provenance stories and used mantles and jackson's own signed letters as provenance and Jackson's jersey even had the wrong number on it.

Whether he knew mantles and jackson jersey were definitely fake I don't know, but he knew how to upgrade provenance, that's for sure.