Another stolen photo from NYPL hits eBay!

[RickGallway]

Stolen NYPL Photo of Baseball Pioneer Al Reach Appears for Sale on eBay

http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=8564

What a shame!

[tcdyess]

I think it is down already.

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by tcdyess

I think it is down already.

Not true.

[thetruthisoutthere]

The auction is still active on Ebay.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/150654498423...84.m1423.l2649

[tcdyess]

I stand corrected...

[prewarsports]

The weirdest thing about all of this is that the person who cares the most about this stuff is NOT the NYPL. Sort of like the HOF issue with stolen August Hermann stuff. I wish they would come out and announce their intentions to either go after this stuff or not. That way us as collectors can have some type of closure and know whether we should be looking for this stuff or if we are going to see the same people 10 years from now spending time locating this stuff and the NYPL or the HOF not really caring about it either way.

[michael3322]

I agree that the NYPL's lack of clarity over whether or not it is aggressively seeking the return of these items is highly problematic.

Can't eBay be contacted and an official request made to be to end the auction? As far as I know, eBay can't knowingly facilitate the sale of stolen property. Does anyone else have a greater understanding of eBay's policies?

http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/items-ov.html

If the auction is allowed to proceed to its conclusion, the message will be that those who have acquired stolen NYPL items can brazenly use eBay to profit from the sale of these items.

I guess even if eBay won't allow this auction, the seller can always go to Coach's Corner Sports Auctions...

Hopefully the seller will do the right thing and bring a positive conclusion to this otherwise unfortunate situation.

[tcdyess]

Ok, now it is down....

[Brendan]

It was removed by the seller. Either he changed his mind about selling it after seeing that people know where it came from or he worked a side deal.

[philliesphan]

providing the item to the FBI for their analysis of the item.

Ultimately, unless NYPL will make an affirmative title claim here, it seems very difficult to imagine a scenario that they FBI can come to any conclusion other than the item is consistent with items taken from the collection, but otherwise unable to state definitively that the item was inventoried, removed and is thus is stolen goods.

[steve B]

And that makes a great argument for libraries and archives to scan as much as possible and catalog it better. With a scan they'd be able to get closer to knowing for sure it was theirs. Even if not used online, good scans would allow access without needing to risk the originals in any way.


Steve B

[michael3322]

Steve makes an excellent point.

Not only does scanning ensure that libraries/museums have a record of what items are theirs in cases like these, scanning would allow some of this rare material to be made available on the web for baseball historians and enthusiasts.

The Library of Congress website has, for example, Spalding Baseball Guides from 1889-1939, digitized and freely available to read.

Those gems of baseball history that reside in libraries and never get read should be scanned and uploaded to websites, however the resources to do so are often unavailable. That would be a great volunteer project, if it could be coordinated properly...

[drc]

I'm sure the NYCPL has volunteers. Someone here could volunteer to scan and document, and it would look good on his hobby resume.

Trivia: The NYC Public Library is the second largest in the world. The first is the Library of Congress.