Issues with a Heritage National Auction Item.

[earlywynnfan]

Originally Posted by Heritage Sports

We have spoken with multiple championship ring experts in the hobby as well as a contact at Jostens regarding this ring. While the prevailing opinion does appear to match the basis of your argument that “Back in the 60's Jostens engraved "JOSTEN" and later on, in the 1970's started to engrave "JOSTENS,” a bit of research has located a number of rings dating from the 1940’s to the late 1960’s that are stamped “JOSTENS,” indicating a rather significant flaw in this opinion. This cannot be explained by anyone with whom we have discussed the matter. In fact, we have also located 1960’s championship rings from the same NFL team and year noted as stamped “JOSTENS” with both 10K and 14K gold. While the issue is being characterized by certain posters on this board as being black-and-white-definitive, it simply is not the case.

We stand by our copy as written and every statement is factually correct. This is Fuzzy Thurston’s ring. It was presented to him for his participation in the 1967 Super Bowl II. It is stamped “Jostens 10K.” It was confiscated by the IRS and consigned to Heritage to recoup back taxes. Here is a link to the full description should you wish to review it: http://sports.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7037&lotNo=80061

We are human and errors will rarely but inevitably occur when dealing with over 10,000 sports lots annually. The Joe Jackson photo that Dan Bretta posted about was pulled from auction and was never sold by Heritage, despite his statement to the contrary. Please feel free to check our nearly 60,000 lots in our completed auction archives to verify. We appreciate the feedback that we receive from knowledgeable hobbyists. We review the information that is provided and we sometimes update a lot when it is deemed as warranted or choose to leave the description as it is when we feel that it is accurate. Heritage Auctions is a service business and we have grown to be the world’s largest collectibles auctioneer over the past 35 years by building trust and providing quality service to the thirty collectible fields in which we work. This will be our last post on this thread but please feel free to email myself or any Heritage sports consignment director should you have any further questions about the Platinum Night event next week.

Instead of pulling the piece, as some suggest, it seems to me there is a very obvious solution to this dilemma: post these findings. If you have located genuine rings that match yours, show us all where. If you have located early rings that says "JOSTENS," then show us where. Take away any 'trust' factor involved, and give every bit of data available, then let the educated public decide. Otherwise, you're asking us to believe your word when the argument against you is not only compelling, some might say it's damning.
Ken
earlywynnfan5@hotmail.com