1933-35 NY Giants signed ball...really?

[sports-rings]

I had seen somewhere before on the internet that people have brought up the following troubling fact: a firm such as PSA or JSA can't possiby inspect all the pieces with the necessary quality needed when you divide the amount of time they spend authenticating an auction by the number of pieces. It worked out to way less than 1 minute per piece.

[MEARSAUCTIONS]

For our August Auction, Jimmy Spence himself personally conducted the authentication in our offices. He flew in during July. We had approximately 200-250 lots from that session appear in our August auction, with some additional lots being placed in September. A very high percentage of the lots were of the Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Lou Burdette type of nature signatures. For those that are wondering, Jimmy personally inspects each and every signature, and uses his references library quite extensively.

We have staffers available to assist Jimmy with the processing of the items, which aids in the efficiency.

We were billed for a full day, and although he had a couple of soda's, I don't recall him taking a lunch break, but we did stop at McDonalds for breakfast after I picked him up from his hotel.

I can speak first hand to the challenges of getting an autograph authentication session correct. But, with a proper system in place, the job can be completed 100% accurately. For this auction, we did not follow our own protocol, and a mistake was made. I am thankful when issues are brought to light so that we can correct any mistakes. And, as always, if a mistake was made and found out to be our error, one week, one month, one year later, MEARS will always do the right thing and issue a full refund.

Regards,


Troy R. Kinunen/MEARS

[Duluth Eskimo]

Although we have commented on the ball and I feel most are clubhouse, I feel Troy has been very up front and honest about the situation. He did not have to go in to this detail. All one can ask is that if there is situation that arises, the company issues a full refund. That is all you can ask for.

If a person plans on paying big money for an item, they themselves should feel comfortable with the item and never rely on some "third party" to convince them. Use it as a tool, nothing more. Too many people see PSA or JSA as the end all because they are too lazy to do their homework. I feel both PSA and JSA do a good job overall. With that said, "their opinion" is just an opinion. Not a guarantee.

[perezfan]

Troy is a class act to come on and explain the situation in such nice detail.

Nice job by Mears... I wish they all exhibited this type of integrity.

[RichardSimon]

I agree. I am glad to see that there is not another auction company that uses scans with third party authenticators.
While scans can certainly be useful, I cannot see how an authenticator would write out a COA based on their viewing of a scan.
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[sports-rings]

Thanks Troy,

I apprecaite your insight!