Last nite after the Manny Ramirez jersey ended I forwarded all of the comments from members of this board and the letter I posted to the high bidder. After reviewing everybody's opinion, he has decided to pass on the purchase of this jersey. He has forwarded payment information to me and SCDA will be purchasing this jersey. It will remain in our inventory as an exemplar and will never be issued again for public sale. If at any time members of this board would like to review this jersey, it will be made available.
Vikes asked the question of how many other defaced tagged jerseys we have authenticated. Being an honest and fair question, I spent the better part of the morning reviewing all of the tags of the jerseys we have authenticated since January 1st of 2004. This was for the jerseys in our retail database and for approximately 90% of the auction work we have done. I did not have photos of approximately 10% of the work we had completed in 2004 as those auction houses chose not to include photos with the finished letter. Those items were inspected by SCDA members, but the photographs were taken by the auction houses. The statistical data is in our database, but images of the items are not. FYI, as of January 1, 2005, all auction house items are photographed and added to our database. Although there may be some omissions, it is highly accurate and we try to capture everything. We currently have 12,000 + images in our jersey database and I have reviewed them all. The next question will be, how did you look through 12,000 images in the morning? Our data base has a search feature and I searched by tag. This narrowed the search and made it possible to complete in a few hours.
The search revealed that we had one Atlanta Braves jersey with an X on it. A board member pointed out that this was done by the Atlanta Braves for charity auction items. I thank that member for the information. I will forward this tag to any interested board members if they provide me an email address.
The second jersey in our database with an X was the Barry Bonds Russell jersey with the letter from the Louisville Slugger employee. This Barry Bonds jersey has been discussed in this forum. The Louisville Slugger confirmed that he obtained this jersey directly from the San Francisco Giants equipment manager. A letter from him stating that was included with the jersey. All facts and problems of the Bonds jersey were stated in the letter for the buyer to view.
I am very confident that there were no additional cut, x outed, marked in red, or other Russell tags with signs of defacing that recieved letters from SCDA.
Regarding our database, I will be at the National Convention in Chicago and would be willing to schedule a private meeting with Vikes or any and all parties interested in verifying the data we have in our possession.
I am currently in the process of completing our population report for jerseys and will be reviewing all of the letters and jerseys authenticated by us. If at that time another Russell tag with marking surfaces, I will make those findings public. If the members of this board know of additional letters issued by SCDA that are in error , please contact me at kinunent@hotmail.com
I want to thank you for your constant reviews, answers, corrections, and everything else you do in regard to authentication of game used memorabilia.
I have been in this business for many years and I must state unequivocally that your company is most diligent authenticating company I have ever seen.
Most of the top authenticators in this business would not have taken the time or efforts to correct their mistakes, let alone even admit to these. A lot of them just try and sweep the mistakes under the rug, especially autograph authenticators.
The few mistakes made by SCDA are small in comparison to the many that others have made, and yours is the only company I know of that I personally would use.
I commend you and your company for your honesty and integrity.
Thank you for your kind words and compliments. This forum has mainly focused on the errors made by our company which is why the majority of our posts have been in review of opinions we have already issued. Although important, criticism and concerns regarding authenticity, conflict of interest, etc. are not the only topics of discussion that should be addressed towards MEARS.
Dave Grob has been a leader on this board in sharing his information and answering questions. I view this a positve dialog and wish the direction of this forum would have stayed more along those lines. Please don't misconstrue that to mean that the criticism of SCDA should stop, I just feel this forum could have been used for more informational topics.
We also have a very talented staff that constantly work to research and improve our database so that more accurate opinions can be given. Several weeks ago Dave Bushing made a break through discovery on a tagging variation of a Rawlings jersey. This tag was found on a high profile Hall of Fame jersey. The confirmation of the existance of this tag variation along with verification of its issuance allowed us to render a favorable opinion on this basketball jersey.
A photo of this tag, along with an explanation and history will be featured on the soon to launch MEARS website. As we move forward, the staff of MEARS looks forward to concentrating on the positive and educational aspects of the hobby.
For all of the readers that enjoy serving as watch dogs, we will still entertain all criticism levied.
I am new to this forum and I want to make my first posting. I was the seller of this jersey on ebay. I have been a game used bat collector for many years. Along the way I have picked up a few jerseys of players I like. I purchased this jersey about two years ago from a company from Milwaukee. I am sorry I cant remember the name of the firm. (I did send the Cert. to SCDA with the jersey)
I want you to know that I hold Troy, David and SCDA in the highest regard. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is how you handle it when you do that makes you what you are. If you want to believe it or not they are the backbone of our hobby and this "industry". Troy emailed me to let me know that SCDA would be buying the jersey. Would any of the armchair authenticators do that? I truely doubt it.
For those of you who "knew" this could be a bad jersey not one of you sent me, the seller, an email. Not one of you contacted ebay that the jersey could be bad. Instead of talking among your peers educate others. I didnt even know this web site was here until today and I have owned 10 stores in the midwest and been a collector for over 25 years!
I'm not looking for a fight. But I wanted to ask you about your comments from the other day.
Troy wrote: "This forum has mainly focused on the errors made by our company which is why the majority of our posts have been in review of opinions we have already issued. Although important, criticism and concerns regarding authenticity, conflict of interest, etc. are not the only topics of discussion that should be addressed towards MEARS...Please don't misconstrue that to mean that the criticism of SCDA should stop, I just feel this forum could have been used for more informational topics."
Here's my question- what is more informational to a collector who spends thousands of dollars per item than to know if the person offering their opinion has a conflict of interest, a financial interest in the item, or even knows what they're talking about?
What exactly would be a better use of this forum? Interested in your thoughts.
If you re read my post, I said all of those things were important and I did not ask for those types of concerns or criticisms to stop. If that is the only area of concern for you as a collector, then network54 has been a great source to address those concerns.
What I feel has not occured was information exchange between collectors. As MEARS moves forward, I am going to continue to address problems mentioned above, but I am also going to educate collectors of Sports Memorabiiia.
Troy - - - - - - could it be that you are just focusing more on a certain type of post/thread? There are several threads (of a certain kind) that necessitate your attention and, often, your response/comment. - - - - - But, if you read the whole forum on a regular basis, I think you'll find that there is plenty of general information sharing, discussion, sharing of photos, talking about desired items, and even banter. - - - - - I respect your opinion, but I think perhaps your view is biased because you are compelled to deal with a lot of the threads that address authentication mistakes. With the exception of a few threads that have spiralled into insanityville, the vast majority of this forum is extremely informative and thought-provoking.
I might have to side with Troy on this one. Go back a couple of pages into the discussion forum and look at how many requests for information get only one or two replies (and some go unanswered) while the authenticator bashing threads go on and on. Not to mention the AMI silliness that has taken up so many postings the last few days.
I have nothing against the constructive dialog like we had about the x'ed out tagging and other things, but the majority of the posts are not about those types of issues. If we want the hobby to improve, then it is up to us a community to do more than just point out areaswhich need improvement. Make a suggestion or two. Troy and I have had a great ongoing email dialog regarding ways that MEARS can take pre-emtive measure to correct some problems that have occured for all authenicators in the the past.
I applaud Troy's actions regarding this Manny jersey, bacause it accomplished several things:
1. It acknowledged an error (something many other authenicators are unwilling to do).
2. It removed the jersey from circulation.
3. Troy has promised to make photos of it available in the MEARS database to educate future consumers.
Businesses are not measured by how many mistakes they make, but by how they remedy those mistakes.
In the opinion the best to things to happen in this industry recently are Robert Edwards Auctions conflict of interest policy and the core values expressed upon the foundation of MEARS. If these corporate philosophies were to become the standard in this industry things would be much better for the consumer and the hobby would become a much stonger place to do business.
