Braves want Heritage to pull Hank Aaron items from auction

[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.