MEARS Mumbo-Jumbo?

[aeneas01]

some members may already know that mears recently got their hands on an odd "maravich warm up jacket" that sold on ebay for $199 - apparently mears made the seller an after-auction offer she couldn't refuse much to the dismay of the actual auction winner (who promptly lodged a complaint).

anyway, once mears took ownership of the jacket they wasted no time listing it in their current auction as a "1974 Pete Maravich Inaugural Season New Orleans Jazz Game Worn Warm Up Jacket". further, while mears was at it, they went ahead and wrote a letter on the thing giving it a "final grade" of "mears authentic" despite the fact that they admitted to not being able to find any evidence whatsoever that marivich (or any other new orleans jazz player for that matter) ever wore such a warm up jacket.

as to the mumbo-jumbo, here is what mears has included in their item description:

"At this time, MEARS was not able to find a photo of Maravich wearing this exact jacket. Additionally, we could find NO image of an early 1974 Jazz jacket worn by ANY player... Although unsuccessful in our attempts to find an exact photo match, what the above (research) did provide us was style matches of Jackets worn by the Jazz from 1975-78. This did not match any of those styles. So with the Sand Knit tag dating ending in 1974 and no early 1974 images found of any Jazz player wearing a warm-up jacket, we are confident in our 1974 dating."

can any forum member tell me what on earth this means? further, does any forum member believe that this mumbo-jumbo supports mears' claim that this "maravich" jacket is "game worn" or "authentic"?

mears goes onto to say that, for purposes of comparison and authentication, they have also examined the following "sand Knit products worn during the mid 1970s": 1975 bulls sloan, 1975 bulls pondexter, 1970s celtics havlicek and 1975 jazz maravich. but what mears suspiciously fails to mention is that all of these items have something in common that the maravich doesn't: team exclusivity tags. i mean are you kidding me? good grief.

heck, this is so reminiscent of the jim brown "gamer" which mears owned, which they awarded an a10, even though it was never fitted with the all-important blepp-coombs tag - something which mears failed to mention at that time as well. correct me if i'm wrong, but shouldn't one of the most important jobs mears performs during their authentication process be to ensure that, at the very least, tagging is correct and consistent with other known exemplars from the era in question?

here's a look at some other warm up jackets from the same era as the "maravich" jacket - they all have the same sand-knit style tagging as the "maravich" but they also all have team exclusivity tags as well (interestingly, bushing was involved in the evaluation of several of the following items):














here's a maravich new orleans jazz game worn jersey that sold at auction which is from the same period as the "maravich" jacket - yet unlike the "maravich" jacket, the jersey has a team exclusivity tag (from the lot description: Both a "Sand-Knit 44" label and Sand-Knit exclusivity label are located on the left front tail.):





and here are some other game worn items from the same era, all with team exclusivity tags (note: a few of the following items have what may be transitional sand-knit tagging from the era in question):




















so what does mears have on their hands? mears has admitted they can find no evidence whatsoever that any jazz player ever wore such a jacket. further, the lack of a team exclusivity tagging casts extreme doubt on its authenticity. yet mears has given it a thumbs up, has written an loa for it, and claims that it's an authentic gamer. could the sky-high prices maravich items have fetched recently have anything to do with this?

sand-knit obviously manufactured authentic garments for retail sale (the recent jack lambert jersey is a good example). sand-knit obviously also made salesman samples. this "maravich" jacket could easily be such an item, even probable, given the lack of team exclusivity tagging that was prevalent during that era.

whatever the case, the fact that mears clearly made no mention of the lack of team exclusivity tagging, especially considering this tagging was present on all of the exemplars they claimed to have referenced in their lot description, makes this whole thing smack of something far from above board. mears is supposed to be the good guys, the guys that are transparent, the guys that help collectors, not the guys that take collectors for a ride.

[otismalibu]

Robert,

You clearly have an axe to grind with MEARS

A picture is worth a thousand words. Obviously, no picture. Maybe more than a thousand words.

The next auction house to cut & paste Wiki for their item description should be publicly caned.

This is my favorite part.

Although unsuccessful in our attempts to find an exact photo match, what the above (research) did provide us was style matches of Jackets worn by the Jazz from 1975-78.

Read that 3 times and you'll suffer a Percy Harvin. So they style matched it to something that doesn't match. Brilliant!

Somewhere, Lou Lampson is laughing so hard, he just blew a seam out of his plaid shirt. A shirt, I might ad, that I've style matched to one that Sean Connery wore during an ET interview in 1986. Thus making Lou Lampson, everyone's favorite James Bond.

[aeneas01]

Robert, You clearly have an axe to grind with MEARS

actually, i really don't have a beef with the guys at mears - in fact i like dave grob quite a bit (even tho i'm sure i make it pretty tough for him to feel the same about me!), the work, effort and info he puts into his articles is just first-rate. but when i come across something like this, it's just too hard to ignore!

as far as their style-match claims are concerned, it would be interesting to see what they came up with given some of their other style-match work (the portland beavers shirt comes to mind (the collar wasn't even close), some of their barry bonds style-matches also come to mind (claimed that a butterfly cut was a match even tho barry sported set-in sleeves), etc.). can't begin to imagine what their idea of a style-match to this jacket might be....

fwiw, here's their maravich jacket sans a team exclusivity tag:



...

[otismalibu]

actually, i really don't have a beef with the guys at mears

I was quoting another board member, from another thread.

[Jags Fan Dan]

I won a 1994 Packers jersey from Mears and the "style matches" they sent to me with the jersey were all from 1993 when the Packers wore their own franchise 75th anniversary patches, versus the NFL 75th patch on the 1994 jersey.

[33bird]

I could be wrong, but I highly doubt Dave Grob had anything to do with this Maravich jacket. I think he sticks to baseball. My guess is this is their other guys.

[cohibasmoker]

Here's the link to the original auction and seller feedback. Seems the Seller didn't honor the sale.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...T#ht_500wt_966

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...e=VIP:feedback

Jim

[otismalibu]

decided not to honor final bid, raw deal!!! Buyer: bkbnts (413) Oct-20-10 13:20

Reply by betsha1917 (Oct-25-10 19:29):
Item was not what it seemed. Didn't want to send you something listed wrong.

[CollectGU]

Here's the link to the original auction and seller feedback. Seems the Seller didn't honor the sale.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...T#ht_500wt_966

http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAP...e=VIP:feedback

Jim

It says in ther description that it is from the collection of a MEARS staffer so it is likely that one of the MEARS staff offered more than $200 final bid from ebay after the auction ended. I wonder what staff member and what they paid for the jersey to make the owner refuse to sell it to the ebay winner.

Dave

[BU54CB]

I'm curious how it was listed wrong or the item wasn't "as it seemed."