[sports-rings]

This evening I sent an email to Bill Huggins that there is a ring in his auction that is a fake 1949 Yankee Ring.

Here is a copy of the letter. I hope Huggins and Scott will take the ring out of their auction and the purpose of this email is to warn other collectors that this ring is out there and this is the 2nd auction where the consigner has attempted to sell this bogus item.

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Hi Bill,

we have spoken in the past about rings and did not see eye to eye on some rings that you decided to keep in your auction.

I am writing to help you out and hopefully you can agree that the following ring has issues and I am looking out for your company's best interest and trying to help you avoid selling a ring that is not real.

The Ed Lopat 1949 ring is an obvious fake ring.

it is fake because a real 1949 ring has a completely different shank.

the person that made this ring (It was Irv Learner and his associates) did not do proper research and thought that the 1949 ring must have the same shank as all the Yankee championship rings from the 1950's.

In fact, that is incorrect. the 1949 ring had a different shank.

I am enclosing two pictures: The lower left ring is the item in your auction. The item on the lower right is a ring I own. Every 1949 Yankee ring I have ever seen has had this shank.

If you don't believe me, please check with any other ring expert.

The two I could recommend are:

Scott Welkowsky
TJ Kaye.

if you need their contact information, please let me know.

by the way, every time I see that "BALFOUR 14K" mark where the 14K almost touches the "Balfour", it is the same mark that you see when Irv Lerner sells his fake Yankee salesman sample rings. I have never seen that exact mark on any of the real Yankee rings, only the fake ones and the ones that Irv sells.

This ring in your auction was submitted to the Robert Edwards auction and was ultimately rejected and withdrawn from the auction due to the issues I mentioned above.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I will be publishing this letter on net54baseball.com to warn others about the ring and to give them the heads up should this ring continue in your auction or wind up for sale someone else.

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I want to just clarify that Irv Lerner, a well known baseball card collector and author, and a collector known as the "Ring Man" has been selling fake rings for several years. If anyone doubts this, I can send you a pdf of his newsletters where he boasts the ability to make many superbowl and Yankee rings with any name and number on the shank,

Furthermore, if Irv would like to sue me I would welcome the opportunity to go through the discovery process and find out where all those salesman sample rings come from that he sells that never look 100% correct or as good as real salesman samples