Posted By:
Joe P.New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
Tom glove
story isn't Terrific
By MICHAEL O'KEEFFE
DAILY NEWS SPORTS WRITER
Thursday, December 2nd, 2004
Tucked in among the baseball artifacts for sale today at Sotheby's sports memorabilia auction - Babe Ruth's Louisville Slugger, Lou Gehrig's 1936 Yankee contract, Pee Wee Reese's cap - is a "circa 1969" game-used Tom Seaver mitt, authenticated by the industry's most prominent expert.
But as is often the case in the world of sports memorabilia, the glove that appears in the Sotheby's auction catalogue is not exactly as advertised: It wasn't even made until at least five years after the Mets' first World Series title and may not have even been used by Seaver in a major league game.
Officials from Sotheby's and its partner in the auction, SportsCards Plus of California, told the Daily News they were made aware of the error just before a reporter called to inquire about the Rawlings glove last week. Sotheby's spokesman Matthew Weigman says the auction house then began notifying potential buyers about the error and posted a correction at the pre-sale exhibition last week.
In another industry, the error might be easily dismissed; nobody's perfect, people make mistakes. But in the dog-eat-dog world of sports memorabilia, this fumble has sparked allegations of deceptive advertising and conflicts of interest that make memorabilia a minefield for even the most seasoned collectors.
At the center of the controversy is the glove's authenticator, SCD Authentic, headed by Dave Bushing, widely described by industry insiders as the world's foremost expert on bats and gloves. Bushing's word is gospel when it comes to baseball memorabilia - if he says something is genuine, it is widely accepted as the real McCoy. But Bushing also sells memorabilia he authenticates, and collectors say that gives him an incentive to pump up the value.
"He has so much power, he can buy something at a flea market, slap a letter on it and it becomes a priceless piece of baseball history," says Robert Plancich, a self-appointed industry watchdog, of Bushing.
Bushing says he is not the primary owner of the Seaver glove - he declined to name that person, and Sotheby's and SportsCards Plus won't identify the consigner - but he admits he shopped it to wealthy collectors this year and has a "financial interest" in the glove, raising the question of whether its value was intentionally inflated.
Bushing, who is defended by many industry insiders for providing a valuable authentication service, calls the Seaver error "an honest mistake that has been corrected."
"There was no attempt to defraud anybody," he adds. "I'm not a thief and I'm not a criminal. Everybody and their brother is trying to put bad stuff past us. If they can get a letter from us, they can sell it anywhere. We do make errors, but we are trying to put our best foot forward and make the industry better."
"This would be a pretty crooked industry without Dave Bushing," says Rick Kohl, a Florida dealer who briefly owned the Seaver glove this year.
A New York collector who requested anonymity agrees that Bushing has helped police the unregulated industry. But the memorabilia business is built in part on inference and speculation and is far from being an exact science: For example, the description of a bat offered by AmericanMemorabilia.com through Dec. 9 suggests the bat was used by Ty Cobb sometime between 1911 and 1916.
AmericanMemorabilia.com president Victor Moreno says the description is based on Bushing's letter of authenticity, which calls the item a "Ty Cobb game used Louisville Slugger decal bat."
But when pressed, Bushing acknowledges there's no proof the bat was ever within 500 miles of the Georgia Peach; it simply matches most of the specifications of bats used by Cobb.
"There's no evidence it wasn't used by Cobb," he says. "That's standard fare in the industry. This is an industry based on leaps of faith. If that wasn't standard, there wouldn't be any market at all."
In April, Bushing sold a bat he claims was used by Joe DiMaggio during his 56-game hitting streak for $345,000 at an auction conducted by MastroNet Inc., even though many top collectors and experts believed the evidence was pretty weak that it was actually a streak bat.
Plancich says the industry turns a blind eye to questionable authentication practices because the major auction houses profit from them: sales prices remain high, celebrities flock to auctions and collections stay valuable. "If (authenticators) go down, their collections become suspicious," says Plancich, the founder of Collectors Alliance for Reform and Disciplinary Sanctions.
The Seaver error burns glove expert Dennis Esken, another Bushing critic, because it's so obvious: the glove has a large "R" near the thumb of the Rawlings-made glove, which indicates it wasn't available until at least the 1975 season, and four dots along the thumb, which mean it wasn't made until 1978, when Seaver was with the Reds. To glove collectors, that is a tell-tale clue, as obvious an indicator of the glove's true age as the big fins on a 1955 Chevy.
"This is the guy who is supposed to be a world-class expert?" Esken says.
Joe Phillips, the editor of "The Glove Collector" newsletter who advises Bushing, says the glove is confusing because it is a "hybrid" that includes features from early and late '70s gloves. But Bob Clevenhagen, Rawlings' senior glove designer, says that isn't so: "There's nothing special about this glove," Clevenhagen says. "There's nothing hybrid about it."
Clevenhagen, who reviewed a picture of the glove on the Sotheby's Web site, says the glove doesn't even look used. "The pocket doesn't even look like there's ever been a ball in it," he says. "It doesn't look game-used to me."
Seaver himself says the glove was probably never even used in an actual Major League Baseball game. He told the Daily News he doesn't remember the specific glove but that his guess is that he used it to shag flies and then autographed it and donated it to a charity.
Despite the new light shed on the glove, SportsCard Plus auction director Dan Imler says there are no plans to reduce its estimated $8,000-10,000 value.
"The estimate was conservative to begin with, based on the Tucked in among the baseball artifacts for sale today at Sotheby's sports memorabilia auction - Babe Ruth's Louisville Slugger, Lou Gehrig's 1936 Yankee contract, Pee Wee Reese's cap - is a "circa 1969" game-used Tom Seaver mitt, authenticated by the industry's most prominent expert.1969 assumption," Imler says. "We believe this still an accurate estimate."
12-02-2004, 09:45 PM
Anyone for a Tom Seaver's 1969 Game Used Mitt. - No Reserve
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