A Word of Caution Re: Hinek Collection Items

[Bernie J. Gernay]

Pat, please take the advice of Jim (gridman80).....

people seem to make judgements in these posts without complete knowledge of the facts.

That Elway in AMI is the same one that we sold to Dave O'Brien who purchased it for the sole reason of consigning it to them. You are clueless to your posts once again.

[EndzoneSports]

And the hits just keep on coming...

http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/A...ction_ID=26441

I'm guessing that with the annotated "Pro Sports Investments hologram" this would now be four (and counting) ?!?

In all sense of fairness, it was brought to my attention that this may very well indeed be a re-listing of one of the same that we've already discussed and not an additional jersey. It has been reported to me, though unconfirmable, that this is the jersey that was purchased by the eBay underbidder (Dave O'Brien). which has been hastily consigned for AMIs auction. Though I got no sense that an immediate resale was pending when I last spoke with Dave, it is possible since, he:

• Bought this illicitly (in violation of eBay rules which prohibit offers to buy or sell listed items outside of the eBay Web site) at a price well below the going market rate for a legitimate Elway game-used jersey and wants to make a tidy profit, AND/OR
• Considering the issues raised in this thread, he just wants to get out from underneath a jersey that he no longer feels comfortable with as quickly as possible.

If this is his indeed his jersey (and I have no confirmation that it is indeed the case), then I can only surmise what his motives might be. I am aware that Dave at least follows this forum, if not actively participates, as it was his reading of one of my posts that generated this whole topic to begin with. It is possible that he might be then willing/able to confirm that this is indeed his consignment.

Best regards,

[EndzoneSports]

Pat, please take the advice of Jim (gridman80).....

That Elway in AMI is the same one that we sold to Dave O'Brien who purchased it for the sole reason of consigning it to them. You are clueless to your posts once again.

Bernie:

... and here I thought you'd given up on this forum.

Since you prefer to deal in facts, let me address a couple in response to your posting:

• My post stated "I'm "guessing" that... this would now be four." There was no statement of fact nor presumption of knowledge in this statement. I stated that I was guessing.
• The point of this posting was to factually point out to others that there was a fourth listing (attributed to PSI), not necessarily a fourth jersey.
• Of the three jerseys in question, two were sold to clients of mine--Steve and Tom--for whom I have contact information (and valid reasons to protect their interest, as I value those with whom I do business). The 3rd jersey, belonging to Dave may very well be the one at AMI, however, as I do not have a relationship with Dave and AMI us under no obligation to divulge the identity of it's consignors, I guess I have just reason to be "clueless" in this area.

Short of that, as I have stated in the past, if and when I am found to be wrong/misstated/misunderstood I will be the first to stand up (as I did in my previous post) and admit my mistakes or explain my position more clearly, etc. I will not, however, cower just because someone defensively and condescendingly dismisses anything I post as a collection of untruths.

To clear one final topic, I did receive your phone message last week. Just so that you are aware, sense I don't keep the same hours as the rest of the world, my voice mail picks up all incoming calls and without caller ID, if all you do is hang up, I really have no idea how many times you may or may not be trying to call. While I can appreciate what appeared to be an "olive branch", I still don't feel comfortable that while getting mired down in whose facts were straight and whose facts were skewed, what seemed to get lost in the shuffle is that this whole flap arose over simply trying to elicit public answers to two simple questions related to authenticity and ethics. To date, those questions have still gone publicly unanswered (though privately, I believe that both Tom and Steve are as "at peace" with their respective situations as they can be under the circumstances, which was my ultimate goal). I had honestly not intended to pick up a phone and return a call until this matter had been addressed. I now may have reason to do otherwise...

In recently investigating/addressing a completely unrelated matter for forum moderator Eric, I stumbled upon something that may or may not be related and/or of interest. While I am assuming that you have likely now divested your inventory of all Elway jerseys from this Hinek collection purchase, if my theory holds water, it could very well apply to others that you and Lou may have purchased/be holding. If interested in discussing, LMK...

Regards,

[EndzoneSports]

As a follow-up to this thread, on March 27th, I received an unsolicited e-mail from the Hinek's (who happened upon this thread via a Google search). In part, the e-mail stated the following:

"I read about [the] "Hinek collection"... We have never sold any memorabilia to anyone. I would be interested in talking to you about this Elway jersey situation. Please email me your number"

In a follow-up phone conversation with the Hineks on 4/2, it was clarified that Bronco does indeed have memorabilia in his possession that was acquired during his tenure as the 49ers equipment manager (1984-'97) as well as older items that were acquired by Broncos' father, Frank, who was the Raiders' equip. mngr. (1960-'62).

It was stated that none of these personal items are available for sale and none ever have been made available for sale to the collecting public--to Bernie Gernay, Lou Lampson, or anyone else--specifically any quantity of John Elway jerseys.

It was also clarified that Broncos' name will indeed appear on any number of legitimate 49ers' LOAs, but only in his official capacity for items that originated from the team.

Whether or not this information is of value must be assessed individually. As with any assertion on the part of one party that is denied by another, one must weigh the credibility of each claim. In this case, is more credence likely to be give to the statements of Bernie Gernay/Lou Lampson or those of Bronco Hinek?

Additionally, as a follow-up to our phone conversation w/ Hinek, a quick search seemed to indicate that such claims are not only related to the Elway jerseys previously noted... See http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/A...ction_ID=27123


Regards,

[Eric]

Wow

This is certainly interesting.

Can we make a little cheat sheet for this thread.
Is there a master list of the items attributed ot the Bronco Hinek collection that we can look at right here?

Perhaps we can run the list by Mr. Hinek to see what he has to say about it.

Eric

[EndzoneSports]

Eric:

Unless others with knowledge of specific instances will come forward with this information, the "master list" appears to be limited to those items covered in this thread. They are as follows:

• Elway #1 - Sold via Historic Auctions to a Denver-area collector
• Elway #2 - Listed on eBay. Auction ended w/ jersey having not met reserve. Subsequently sold to eBay high bidder, another Denver-area collector
• Elway #3 - Sold to an underbidder of the afore mentioned eBay auction. This jersey was "flipped", being listed in AMIs 3/16/06 auction; purchased by AMI bidder #2304 (http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/A...ction_ID=26441)
• Marino - Listed in AMIs 4/7/06 auction; purchased by AMI bidder #5312 (http://www.americanmemorabilia.com/A...ction_ID=27123).

It should also be noted (again), that this is not to be construed as a question of the legitimacy of these items. Each item must be assesed on its own merits and should stand on its own, regardless of claims of provenance. This is an issue primarily of provenance. What level of importance the collector places in this provenance is really up to each individual.

Regards,

[Eric]

Shouldn't we add to the list these Montana and rice jerseys from the below post in the thread I have linked here
Eric

http://www.gameuseduniverse.com/vb_f...ighlight=hinek

posted by silverschmidts

Re: Elway jersey on eBay look familiar?!?
I am the buyer of the Elway jersey from PSI. I've also recently purchased some other items from PSI, including a Rice 49ers gamer from an Ebay auction that closed a couple of days ago and a Montana gamer that PSI sold to me as an underbidder in a similar Ebay auction that ended last month. I submitted the Elway jersey to EndZoneSports because nobody knows Broncos jerseys better than Patrick Scoggins. Patrick thought the jersey looked OK and wrote a letter of opinion for me. However, now it has come to my attention that PSI has recently put at least two other nearly identical Elway road mid 1980s jerseys into the market, including the one that was sold in the Historic Auctions sale last fall. My question to everyone is: do any of you have experience in dealing with PSI (Bernie Gurnay) and can he be trusted with all of these Montana, Rice, and Elway jerseys he's been putting in the market? He claims he got them from Bronco Hinek, the former 49ers equipment manager. However, the sheer volume of product raises major suspicions in my view. For example, could he possibly have 3 genuine Elway 1985-86 road jerseys? (A 4th one was recently sold in the Broadway Rick's auction; I have no idea where that one came from). I tried to contact Bernie today with these concerns and haven't heard back from him yet. -If anyone has any thoughts on this, I'd be grateful. -Steve Silverman

[Eric]

I went back and re-read this thread and thought something Rudy had posted last year might help identify problematic pieces.

I don't know the answer to this- How rare is it for an elway to be missing the nylon tag? What about Montana jerseys? Would Mr. Hinek be able to answer that?

Now that Mr. Hinek has said that he did not sell these items, do the facts below become more relevant?
Eric

I think that all of these revelations necessitate the mentioning of a previous thread. This previous thread discusses 2 PSI "80's Montana" jerseys on Ebay:
http://www.gameuseduniverse.com/vb_f...read.php?t=746

I bring up this thread because of the striking similarities with the Elway.
Specifically:
1) 2 "late 80's" Montana jerseys sold by PSI on Ebay in the same week. Both are void of the 100% Nylon tag, just like these Elway jerseys.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=8739034776

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=8739034612

2) At the very same Historic Auctions auction that the PSI Elway was sold at, an "80's Montana" without the 100% Nylon tag was also sold and was authenticated by PSI:
http://www.historicauctions.com/inde...uctionID=31398

Note: All 3 jerseys show the exact same font for the "#1" (the font I kept questioning). All 3 jerseys show an abundant excess of material after the final 3rd sleeve stripe. That is to say, all 3 appear identical.

It's an incredibly similar situation to these Elways; 3 80's Montana jerseys, all lacking the 100% Nylon tag, all authenticated by PSI, 2 of them sold by PSI directly on Ebay and one at the very same Historic Auctions auction as the Elway.

Additionally, I believe I was contacted by the buyer for one of these Montana jerseys and he mentioned that he was told that it came from Bronco Hinek. This buyer is a Forum member.

I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm simply bringing to light what seems to be, in my opinion, some interesting similarities between the PSI Montana jerseys and the PSI Elway jerseys.

Rudy.

[silverschmidts]

Having just now seen all of these posts on this important topic (the topic is important to me because I am the owner of one of the Elway jerseys in question), let me at least offer one piece of data to the discussion. I have not received any contact from Bernie in many months regarding this matter. IN other words, his claim that he and I exchanged messages about this recently is inaccurate. I do intend to talk to Bernie about the matter, however, because it does trouble me greatly that Bronco Hinek denies being the source of the jersey I purchased. I agree with the oft-stated adage that a jersey must speak for itself, but I also believe that every piece of information is potentially important when trying to assess authenticity. In this case, there was a very specific form of provenance attributed to the jersey and I relied on that attribution in part (though not solely) in making my buying decision. So, what I really want to know now is whether the jersey I bought came originally from Bronco Hinek or not. Bernie claims Bronco sold him the jersey (along with others); Bronco claims he didn't sell any jerseys to Bernie, Lou Lampson, or anyone else. If Bernie was untruthful to me about this transaction, it angers me greatly and obviously undermines my faith in the legitmacy of the jersey. On the other hand, maybe Mr. Hinek is not being truthful. Maybe he feels embarrassed to be the source of these jerseys (after all, he may have acquired them from players with the understanding that they were meant to be mementos and not mere commodities for resale). I don't know what the "truth" is in this instance, but I do know that Bernie has not contacted me as he stated in one of his posts early on in this thread. --Steve

[Eric]

Bernie's post mentioning he spoke to you is from Feb 2006...