Issues with a Heritage National Auction Item.

[Heritage Sports]

Thank you for the continued interest in this Platinum Night auction. We are extremely proud of the sale and remain very grateful to our consignors who have chosen our service above the many others to present some of the most important privately owned sporting artifacts in the world.

With that gratitude comes a very serious responsibility, and even though the consignor for this ring is the United States government we at Heritage believe we owe them the same due diligence we provide to our good friends within the hobby. This ring was presented to the IRS as Thurston’s Super Bowl II ring, and that is how it was presented to us. If this proves to be inaccurate, Heritage will make the necessary adjustments to the auction copy and to any bidding thus far.

I hope the board will forgive us when we say that our response to this matter cannot be dictated by its timetable, but rather by the progression of our own investigation, which reveals a matter quite a bit more complicated than that which has been described here. We have located “Jostens” (as opposed to “Josten”) stamping on a number of pre-1970 rings. We have also located both 10k and 14k examples of otherwise identical/period Championship rings. We are working with one of the leading Championship ring experts in the hobby to get to the bottom of the issue.

Rest assured that if there is indeed an issue with the listing that needs to be updated, then we will inform the bidders and update the listing accordingly. So stay tuned, and, again, thanks so much for keeping Heritage on your radar. I hope to meet many of you at the National next week, so please do come by and introduce yourselves. And please help out the Ronald McDonald House of Chicago with a $100 donation if you would like to join us for the Platinum Night auction on Thursday August 4th. It’s going to be one of the biggest hobby events of the year.