kingjammy24
05-06-2008, 06:03 PM
CONTROVERSY FITS LIKE GLOVE.
DiMaggio mitt at center of latest memorabilia firestorm
BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Sunday, May 8th 2005, 1:05AM
Pockets bulging with cash, checkbooks and credit cards, memorabilia collectors flocked to New York from every corner of Baseball Nation in 1999 to battle over the legendary collection put up for sale by Yankee minority owner Barry Halper.
Serious collectors wanted a piece of the treasure trove Halper had accumulated during 50 years of wheeling and dealing, and the weeklong auction racked up $25 million from the sale of everything from a Ty Cobb jersey to a jar of Vaseline autographed by Gaylord Perry.
North Carolina collector Ralph Perullo arrived at Sotheby's with his eye on Lot No. 1118, advertised as the Rawlings Red Rolfe glove used by the great Joe DiMaggio during the late 1930s. Joltin' Joe even vouched for the glove himself: It was accompanied by an index card that said, "This glove was used in my first years as a Yankee - Joe DiMaggio."
But Perullo says he backed off bidding on the mitt after running into glove expert Dennis Esken at Sotheby's. Esken told Perullo the glove, despite the Hall of Famer's blessing, wasn't even manufactured until 1954 - three years after Joltin' Joe retired. One tell-tale clue: The glove had lacing through the fingers, a sure sign it was a postwar model.
"If Joe were standing next to me, I'd shake his hand and tell him he was a hell of a ballplayer," says Esken, regarded as the nation's top authority on baseball mitts. "I'd also tell him he's no glove expert."
Even more infuriating, says Esken, the misidentified glove remained on the trading circuit long after the Halper sale, passed along like a rare painting, picking up a letter of authenticity from the hobby's most influential evaluators, Dave Bushing and Dan Knoll, whose seal of approval can make or break an item's sale price. All told, the glove was sold at least three times and brought in thousands of dollars before finally being pulled off the market in 2003. In December, it was returned to Sotheby's, the auction house that originally sold it.
"Bad pieces that continue to circulate through the hobby - that's a major problem," says Josh Evans, president of Lelands, another prominent sports auction house. "People don't want to take the financial hit, so these things continue to go round and round."
But in the world of sports memorabilia, nothing is ever straightforward. Although his name is on the certficate that accompanied the glove at auctions in 2001 and 2002, Knoll says he never even examined the glove. "I'm not qualified to render an opinion on that," Knoll says. "Ask me about jerseys."
Bushing, meanwhile, has long denied authenticating the seven gloves offered in the Halper auction, although the dealer hired to oversee the massive sale says he did.
"No letters came from us on Barry Halper gloves. We're listed in the front of the catalogue as doing hats and bats," Bushing said in a recent interview published by Sports Collectors Digest.
But Robert Edwards Auction president Rob Lifson, the veteran memorabilia dealer hired by Sotheby's to work the sale, insists that Bushing authenticated all the gloves in the Halper auction. Bushing was not credited for examining gloves in the catalogue, Lifson adds, because the huge auction - it had more than 2,400 lots - included only a handful of gloves.
The DiMaggio glove is not the most expensive glove purchased in the Halper auction - that honor went to the buyer of a Lou Gehrig glove that went for $385,000, and to Billy Crystal, who paid $239,000 for a questionable Mickey Mantle glove - but it may its most controversial.
"It shows you what is wrong with the hobby," Esken says. "This is not a hobby, it's a business, dictated by a few individuals who determine what is real and what it's worth. If it was real, it would have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A lot of people knew that - but apparently not everybody."
The Upper Deck trading card company paid $34,500 for the glove that September day in 1999, then awarded it to the winner of a promotional contest, who in turn placed the glove in a 2001 Robert Edward Auction sale. It turned up again in a 2002 auction conducted by MastroNet, the $30 million-a -year sports memorabilia giant. MastroNet president Doug Allen says he asked the buyer to return the glove in 2003, after a knowledegable collector who had been reviewing old catalogues notified the company about a potential problem.
After determining the glove wasn't manufactured until the 1950s, MastroNet says it reimbursed its customer.
"If the guy got his money back, what does it matter now?" Allen asks.
It matters, says self-appointed memorabilia watchdog Robert Plancich, because the obviously misidentified glove remained on the market long after the Halper auction, thanks in part to Bushing and Knoll, who provided a letter of authenticity accompanying the 2001 sale by Robert Edward Auction and the 2002 MastroNet sale.
Powerful figures in memorabilia, the pair's opinion is widely regarded as gospel; dealers say they can't get top dollar for their items unless they are accompanied by a Bushing and Knoll certificate.
"If these guys are this sloppy with a DiMaggio glove - something that is a real piece of American history - then how much time do they spend on less significant items?" asks Plancich, who says he founded the Collectors Alliance for Reform and Disciplinary Sanctions to protect consumers against memorabilia fraud. "This brings into question every item they have supposedly painstakingly authenticated."
The glove finally made its way back to Sotheby's in December. Even though virtually everyone involved in the mitt's travels now agrees that it's a '50s glove and not used by DiMaggio in a major league game, spokesman Matthew Weigman won't say if the Upper East Side auction house plans to seek compensation from Halper, who is ill and unavailable for comment. But in March, Weigman says, Sotheby's asked Bob Clevenhagen, the Rawlings senior glove designer, for his opinion.
"To anybody who knows anything about gloves, it's black-and-white," Clevenhagen says. "This glove was made in the '50s."
Upper Deck spokesman Don Williams says the company relied on Bushing's expertise before it bought the glove. Bushing, who also bid on behalf of the company when it spent $332,500 at the Halper sale for a Ty Cobb jersey, assured the company the glove was genuine, Williams says. "We acted on the advice of Bushing and Sotheby's."
"These guys aren't qualified," Esken says. "They spend more time marketing themselves as experts than doing research."
Bushing did not return phone calls from the Daily News. His partner, Knoll, however, says he didn't intend to mislead by signing off on a glove he never examined; his name and Bushing's appear on the certificates they issue because they are partners. Earlier this year, however, SCD Authentic, the firm headed by Bushing, reviewed its practices, and the company will now issue signatures only from authenticators who actually reviewed the items. "If I look at something and sign it, I want to really examine it," Knoll says. "I want to feel good about it."
Joe Phillips, the editor of The Glove Collector newsletter and a Bushing collaborator, says it's not kosher for an authenticator to put his name behind an item he never examined.
"I wouldn't sign off on anything I didn't look at," Phillips says. "If the guy is going to authenticate, he should at least do the research."
Plancich says when he discussed the DiMaggio glove with Bushing a few years ago, the authenticator told him the glove was insignificant. " 'The value is the letter,' " Plancich remembers Bushing telling him. "You can always get another glove.'"
Bushing's credibility has been questioned during the past few years thanks to several embarrassing blunders. Most recently, as the Daily News reported in December, he identified a barely-used Tom Seaver glove made in the mid-'70s as "circa 1969," which would have connected the mitt to the Miracle Mets' World Series victory and boosted its value substantially. Sotheby's and its partner, SportsCards Plus, notified potential buyers of the error on the eve of their auction.
In addition, Bushing came under fire earlier this year after he acknowledged he had not actually received the master's degree that had been included for years in his biography on MastroNet's Web site.
Still, Bushing has legions of supporters who say his work has helped clean up an industry plagued by fraud and ripoffs. MastroNet's Allen says Bushing and Knoll shouldn't be judged on a handful of mistakes. "Dave and Dan have written letters for hundreds of items in our auctions," he says. "I still believe they are the best."
Phillips and Allen speculate that the problems with the DiMaggio glove began when someone at Sotheby's put the Joe DiMaggio index card with the wrong glove. Sotheby's Weigman says he can't comment until the auction house completes its investigation. But that explanation doesn't fully satisfy: The mix-up theory doesn't make sense because there was no 1950s DiMaggio glove offered at the Halper auction. It also doesn't explain how the mistake wasn't caught before the auction began, or how the glove was allowed to remain in circulation for years after the Halper sale.
One thing is certain: Joe DiMaggio was no glove expert. Even his longtime attorney, Morris Engelberg, says the Yankee Clipper was an undependable source.
"You think Joe ever looked at that glove? He wouldn't know the difference," Engelberg says. "Barry (Halper) would buy him a nice dinner and he'd sign anything. Joe didn't know what he was signing half of the time. It didn't mean anything to him."
Besides the bogus early career DiMaggio glove, at least three gloves offered in the Halper auction were misidentified. Here's a look:
As the Daily News first reported, a Mickey Mantle glove advertised as "circa 1960" and purchased by "61*" director Billy Crystal for $239,000 turned out to be from his injury-plagued 1966 season, not the height of his career.
Sotheby's also refunded $71,000 to a collector who thought he was buying a Cy Young glove but instead got a glove from the pitcher's grandson.
A Yogi Berra glove advertised in the catalogue as a model that "could only be ordered by Berra" was really a cheap store model made in South Korea in the 1970s, a decade after Berra retired, according to glove expert Dennis Esken. Spokesman Matthew Weigman says Sotheby's has not received any complaints about the catcher's mitt, including from Berra, who attended the auction preview.
DiMaggio mitt at center of latest memorabilia firestorm
BY MICHAEL O'KEEFFE DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Sunday, May 8th 2005, 1:05AM
Pockets bulging with cash, checkbooks and credit cards, memorabilia collectors flocked to New York from every corner of Baseball Nation in 1999 to battle over the legendary collection put up for sale by Yankee minority owner Barry Halper.
Serious collectors wanted a piece of the treasure trove Halper had accumulated during 50 years of wheeling and dealing, and the weeklong auction racked up $25 million from the sale of everything from a Ty Cobb jersey to a jar of Vaseline autographed by Gaylord Perry.
North Carolina collector Ralph Perullo arrived at Sotheby's with his eye on Lot No. 1118, advertised as the Rawlings Red Rolfe glove used by the great Joe DiMaggio during the late 1930s. Joltin' Joe even vouched for the glove himself: It was accompanied by an index card that said, "This glove was used in my first years as a Yankee - Joe DiMaggio."
But Perullo says he backed off bidding on the mitt after running into glove expert Dennis Esken at Sotheby's. Esken told Perullo the glove, despite the Hall of Famer's blessing, wasn't even manufactured until 1954 - three years after Joltin' Joe retired. One tell-tale clue: The glove had lacing through the fingers, a sure sign it was a postwar model.
"If Joe were standing next to me, I'd shake his hand and tell him he was a hell of a ballplayer," says Esken, regarded as the nation's top authority on baseball mitts. "I'd also tell him he's no glove expert."
Even more infuriating, says Esken, the misidentified glove remained on the trading circuit long after the Halper sale, passed along like a rare painting, picking up a letter of authenticity from the hobby's most influential evaluators, Dave Bushing and Dan Knoll, whose seal of approval can make or break an item's sale price. All told, the glove was sold at least three times and brought in thousands of dollars before finally being pulled off the market in 2003. In December, it was returned to Sotheby's, the auction house that originally sold it.
"Bad pieces that continue to circulate through the hobby - that's a major problem," says Josh Evans, president of Lelands, another prominent sports auction house. "People don't want to take the financial hit, so these things continue to go round and round."
But in the world of sports memorabilia, nothing is ever straightforward. Although his name is on the certficate that accompanied the glove at auctions in 2001 and 2002, Knoll says he never even examined the glove. "I'm not qualified to render an opinion on that," Knoll says. "Ask me about jerseys."
Bushing, meanwhile, has long denied authenticating the seven gloves offered in the Halper auction, although the dealer hired to oversee the massive sale says he did.
"No letters came from us on Barry Halper gloves. We're listed in the front of the catalogue as doing hats and bats," Bushing said in a recent interview published by Sports Collectors Digest.
But Robert Edwards Auction president Rob Lifson, the veteran memorabilia dealer hired by Sotheby's to work the sale, insists that Bushing authenticated all the gloves in the Halper auction. Bushing was not credited for examining gloves in the catalogue, Lifson adds, because the huge auction - it had more than 2,400 lots - included only a handful of gloves.
The DiMaggio glove is not the most expensive glove purchased in the Halper auction - that honor went to the buyer of a Lou Gehrig glove that went for $385,000, and to Billy Crystal, who paid $239,000 for a questionable Mickey Mantle glove - but it may its most controversial.
"It shows you what is wrong with the hobby," Esken says. "This is not a hobby, it's a business, dictated by a few individuals who determine what is real and what it's worth. If it was real, it would have sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A lot of people knew that - but apparently not everybody."
The Upper Deck trading card company paid $34,500 for the glove that September day in 1999, then awarded it to the winner of a promotional contest, who in turn placed the glove in a 2001 Robert Edward Auction sale. It turned up again in a 2002 auction conducted by MastroNet, the $30 million-a -year sports memorabilia giant. MastroNet president Doug Allen says he asked the buyer to return the glove in 2003, after a knowledegable collector who had been reviewing old catalogues notified the company about a potential problem.
After determining the glove wasn't manufactured until the 1950s, MastroNet says it reimbursed its customer.
"If the guy got his money back, what does it matter now?" Allen asks.
It matters, says self-appointed memorabilia watchdog Robert Plancich, because the obviously misidentified glove remained on the market long after the Halper auction, thanks in part to Bushing and Knoll, who provided a letter of authenticity accompanying the 2001 sale by Robert Edward Auction and the 2002 MastroNet sale.
Powerful figures in memorabilia, the pair's opinion is widely regarded as gospel; dealers say they can't get top dollar for their items unless they are accompanied by a Bushing and Knoll certificate.
"If these guys are this sloppy with a DiMaggio glove - something that is a real piece of American history - then how much time do they spend on less significant items?" asks Plancich, who says he founded the Collectors Alliance for Reform and Disciplinary Sanctions to protect consumers against memorabilia fraud. "This brings into question every item they have supposedly painstakingly authenticated."
The glove finally made its way back to Sotheby's in December. Even though virtually everyone involved in the mitt's travels now agrees that it's a '50s glove and not used by DiMaggio in a major league game, spokesman Matthew Weigman won't say if the Upper East Side auction house plans to seek compensation from Halper, who is ill and unavailable for comment. But in March, Weigman says, Sotheby's asked Bob Clevenhagen, the Rawlings senior glove designer, for his opinion.
"To anybody who knows anything about gloves, it's black-and-white," Clevenhagen says. "This glove was made in the '50s."
Upper Deck spokesman Don Williams says the company relied on Bushing's expertise before it bought the glove. Bushing, who also bid on behalf of the company when it spent $332,500 at the Halper sale for a Ty Cobb jersey, assured the company the glove was genuine, Williams says. "We acted on the advice of Bushing and Sotheby's."
"These guys aren't qualified," Esken says. "They spend more time marketing themselves as experts than doing research."
Bushing did not return phone calls from the Daily News. His partner, Knoll, however, says he didn't intend to mislead by signing off on a glove he never examined; his name and Bushing's appear on the certificates they issue because they are partners. Earlier this year, however, SCD Authentic, the firm headed by Bushing, reviewed its practices, and the company will now issue signatures only from authenticators who actually reviewed the items. "If I look at something and sign it, I want to really examine it," Knoll says. "I want to feel good about it."
Joe Phillips, the editor of The Glove Collector newsletter and a Bushing collaborator, says it's not kosher for an authenticator to put his name behind an item he never examined.
"I wouldn't sign off on anything I didn't look at," Phillips says. "If the guy is going to authenticate, he should at least do the research."
Plancich says when he discussed the DiMaggio glove with Bushing a few years ago, the authenticator told him the glove was insignificant. " 'The value is the letter,' " Plancich remembers Bushing telling him. "You can always get another glove.'"
Bushing's credibility has been questioned during the past few years thanks to several embarrassing blunders. Most recently, as the Daily News reported in December, he identified a barely-used Tom Seaver glove made in the mid-'70s as "circa 1969," which would have connected the mitt to the Miracle Mets' World Series victory and boosted its value substantially. Sotheby's and its partner, SportsCards Plus, notified potential buyers of the error on the eve of their auction.
In addition, Bushing came under fire earlier this year after he acknowledged he had not actually received the master's degree that had been included for years in his biography on MastroNet's Web site.
Still, Bushing has legions of supporters who say his work has helped clean up an industry plagued by fraud and ripoffs. MastroNet's Allen says Bushing and Knoll shouldn't be judged on a handful of mistakes. "Dave and Dan have written letters for hundreds of items in our auctions," he says. "I still believe they are the best."
Phillips and Allen speculate that the problems with the DiMaggio glove began when someone at Sotheby's put the Joe DiMaggio index card with the wrong glove. Sotheby's Weigman says he can't comment until the auction house completes its investigation. But that explanation doesn't fully satisfy: The mix-up theory doesn't make sense because there was no 1950s DiMaggio glove offered at the Halper auction. It also doesn't explain how the mistake wasn't caught before the auction began, or how the glove was allowed to remain in circulation for years after the Halper sale.
One thing is certain: Joe DiMaggio was no glove expert. Even his longtime attorney, Morris Engelberg, says the Yankee Clipper was an undependable source.
"You think Joe ever looked at that glove? He wouldn't know the difference," Engelberg says. "Barry (Halper) would buy him a nice dinner and he'd sign anything. Joe didn't know what he was signing half of the time. It didn't mean anything to him."
Besides the bogus early career DiMaggio glove, at least three gloves offered in the Halper auction were misidentified. Here's a look:
As the Daily News first reported, a Mickey Mantle glove advertised as "circa 1960" and purchased by "61*" director Billy Crystal for $239,000 turned out to be from his injury-plagued 1966 season, not the height of his career.
Sotheby's also refunded $71,000 to a collector who thought he was buying a Cy Young glove but instead got a glove from the pitcher's grandson.
A Yogi Berra glove advertised in the catalogue as a model that "could only be ordered by Berra" was really a cheap store model made in South Korea in the 1970s, a decade after Berra retired, according to glove expert Dennis Esken. Spokesman Matthew Weigman says Sotheby's has not received any complaints about the catcher's mitt, including from Berra, who attended the auction preview.