Barry Halper was a fraud

EchoCanyon

incredible article -- WOW

RookieWax

Just another reminder for me why I have always stayed away from "authentic' or "game-used' autographs and memorabilia. There is no way you are ever going to know if its for real.

MBMiller25

Would like to read the article, but am not going to subscribe to Post to read article.

Dpeck100

I read it from the link posted without subscribing.

Thanks for posting that is wild.

Ironmanfan

<< <i>Would like to read the article, but am not going to subscribe to Post to read article. >>



I read it; no subscription necessary

I've lost all respect for Halper (I've read all this stuff before)

IMF

Dboneesq

I've read articles over the past several years about many of Halper's "authentic" items. I remember back in the 80's reading articles about and seeing pictures of his collection. I was amazed at what he had. Looks like the SOB was a damn fraud! What a shame.

mcadams

Seems that the Post story makes some HUGE leaps.

1) For instance, all that Halper claimed was that he bought the Jackson memorabilia from his mother in the 50's. The article claims that that couldn't have happened because some fibers in the jersey weren't made until the 40's and 50's. Well actually, the fibers comment doesn't dispel any of the story that Halper told.
2) Next is the story about acquiring Foxx signature while at Miami, which the Post says is impossible because Foxx wasn't coaching there at the time. If I think back to my college days, I saw old sports coaches on campus quite frequently. Just because Foxx didn't coach there anymore...that doesn't by itself make Halper's comment a lie...that he got Foxx signature while at Miami. Still very plausable in my opinion.
3) Lastly- There were numerous mentions of thefts from public libraries. But did anyone ever see Halper steal anything from a library? No. Has anyone else ever been convicted of stealing those items from libraries and doing so because Halper paid them to? No. All this indicates is that Halper probably got hoodwinked by a theif at some point and bought some items, not knowing that they were stolen.

None of the Post's claims would hold up in court. Its just a hit piece with unconnected dots.

1acid

Wow, incerdible story thanks for the link...

mcadams

<< <i>Would like to read the article, but am not going to subscribe to Post to read article. >>



The sad reality is there are no good NEWSpapers based in NY anymore. The NY Times is a complete joke until they rid the place of the stench of Paul Krugman and his one-sided fact-less views of the world.

stevek

<<< The lineup of those he duped includes baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and actor Billy Crystal, who plunked down $239,000 for a 1960 Mickey Mantle glove that experts say wasn't made until 1964 at the earliest. >>>

I wonder if the glove is in Billy's trashcan yet or not?

MBMiller25

Must be bacause I am on my IPAD, trying to sell me the Post App.

EchoCanyon

<< <i>Must be bacause I am on my IPAD, trying to sell me the Post App. >>



Yeah, that's total BS on the Post's part -- you cannot access nypost.com (weird), they want you to buy the app -- on any other computer/laptop, you can access it.

stevek

<<< "It seems like Barry Halper was the Madoff of memorabilia," he said. >>>

Planemonkey

At first glance I thought this was about Bryce Harper.

YogiBerraFan

<< <i><<< The lineup of those he duped includes baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and actor Billy Crystal, who plunked down $239,000 for a 1960 Mickey Mantle glove that experts say wasn't made until 1964 at the earliest. >>>

I wonder if the glove is in Billy's trashcan yet or not? >>



He must be mad and brokenhearted. He was very proud of that glove.

YogiBerraFan

What about all of these baseball card pulls with game used jersey pieces that people have been getting big money for all these years. Could any of the jerseys have come from this bum? Are vintage jersey card values going to take a dive?

Toro

NFL.com Auctions, NBA.com auctions and any 3rd party that has exclusive rights to team used memorabilia(Steiner). Those are some trusty resources for game used.

1acid

<< <i>What about all of these baseball card pulls with game used jersey pieces that people have been getting big money for all these years. Could any of the jerseys have come from this bum? Are vintage jersey card values going to take a dive? >>



- I thought the same thing whilst browsing thru the A&G thread.... viery interesting needless to say, thanksfor the other link to the hall of shame website,nice stuff..

pmcollectour

Thanks for sharing.

TheBusiness

<< <i>Just another reminder for me why I have always stayed away from "authentic' or "game-used' autographs and memorabilia. There is no way you are ever going to know if its for real. >>


I hear this a lot from people who don't collect/deal in autographs or memorabilia, but if you know what you're doing you can be as sure as you can with just about anything else.

MULLINS5

e i, e i, oh. and in his fraud he had a bat. e i, e i, oh.

jasoneggert

I bought this book at Costco years ago (looks like the mantle glove is right n the outer box!.

I always loved looking through it and seeing the amazing collectables that were part of the Halper Collection. Kind of disappoints me to know we were duped, and I am only out the $20 the book cost. Imagine having put down hundreds of thousands of dollars on something only to find out years later it was fake.

-Jason

cards651

Mr. mcadams -

It looks like Jackson played from 1908 to 1920 - Shoeless Joe Facts

The Post article stated - "Tests showed the White Sox logo contained acrylic dye that was created in 1941, and the fibers used to affix it to the jersey were made of a polyester not introduced until the 1950s."

How could a jersey purported to be from the early 1900's contain materials invented in the mid-1900's?

Thanks to the OP for this informative article. Wow. - Kevin M.

MeteoriteGuy

<< <i>Mr. mcadams -

It looks like Jackson played from 1908 to 1920 - Shoeless Joe Facts

The Post article stated - "Tests showed the White Sox logo contained acrylic dye that was created in 1941, and the fibers used to affix it to the jersey were made of a polyester not introduced until the 1950s."

How could a jersey purported to be from the early 1900's contain materials invented in the mid-1900's?

Thanks to the OP for this informative article. Wow. - Kevin M. >>




mcadams didn't say they were real, just noted the tests do not disprove Halpers story, which is that he got them from the widow in the 50s. I use to handle a few estate sales and you did often find the family was wrong on history. Like toys from their childhood that were made decades later. Not saying Halpers did or didn't, but mcadams is correct in that, with the evidence presented in the article, you would be unlikely to get a convection on anything other then having owed stolen (and likely authentic) memoribilia. Which interestingly, our national museums are full of.

Even like the Mantle jersey...it isn't a rookie jersey, or Mantles, but Halpers story was not proven incorrect.

The truth is likely somewhere in the middle in the grand scene.

Clear Skies,
Mark

cards651

Good points, Mark. - Kevin

gonzer

<< <i>Seems that the Post story makes some HUGE leaps. None of the Post's claims would hold up in court. Its just a hit piece with unconnected dots. >>



A very rational point of view. Lawyer, law student?

ken61

I don't know who doctored the alleged Jackson uniform but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't the widow.

mcadams

<< <i>

<< <i>Seems that the Post story makes some HUGE leaps. None of the Post's claims would hold up in court. Its just a hit piece with unconnected dots. >>



A very rational point of view. Lawyer, law student? >>



No. I just lived in NY for several years and I know how both the Post and the NY Times love to create headlines without fully fleshing their stories/facts out first. There could very well be a smoking gun here, but the Post sure didn't find it, if it exists. Just inneundo and finger pointing from a paper with a history of hit jobs.

And meteoriteguy was correct about the Jackson angle. The Post seemed to think their their fiber analysis disproved Halper's story about the acquisition of the jersey, which in fact it didn't do. The Post should have focused their energy on proving that Halper KNOWINGLY sold fake memorabilia or that he was directly involved in the theft of memorabilia. It didn't seem like they did either of those.

NickM

mcadams - other articles about the documents stolen from the public libraries indicate that there were clear library markings on them (cataloguing) - and there are pictures of some of these. If any of Halper's stuff had those markings, he had to know he was buying stolen property.

Nick

bigjed

Peter Nash is the author of this article and it appears on his website, then later appeared on Deadspin. This article was posted on July 6th. The Post picked it up weeks later. I doubt it was written intending for the Post to publish it. Peter Nash has spent a considerable amount of time and energy writing about Halper and his "junk". He has proven Barry actually had two different tales on how he acquired the jersey; one from Jackson's widow and I can not recall the other story. The other story did appear in print based on an interview with Halper.

As far as the Ty Cobb gun, Ron Cobb did a fantastic piece proving that to be a fake and proved Ty Cobb biographer to be a fraud. And the other jerseys mentioned in the article, they have all been disproven as well by the likes of Dave Grob and such.

I would assume since Nash wrote this article for his website and since he has already spent time debunking the Jackson jersey, he just didn't repeat it in this article.

As far as whether he knowingly sold fakes, Nash has never stated that. What is known is: 1) Halper had a lot of fake items in his collection (along with a lot of incredible items as well), 2) Halper had a lot of stolen items in his collection, 3) Halper has fabricated stories on how he acquired items in his collection, some items have multiple stories, 4) Halper received a lot of money auctioning/selling off his fake items (as well as genuine items).

Anything beyond that is uncertain.

thenavarro

For the poster that has the catalog, I'm curious as to who the authenticators were for the Sotheby's sale. Also, does it list the sports staff for Sotherby's at that time?

Mike

JMDVM

<< <i>Would like to read the article, but am not going to subscribe to Post to read article. >>



You don't have to subscribe to the Post in order to read the articles.

divecchia

Wow, incredible...

Donato

aro13

Mike - In the auction catalogues there is a separate book entitled "Information". For specialists in charge it lists David Goodwillie, Robert Edward Lifson (Senior Consultant) and Tom D'Alonzo. In the note about uniforms it says that Grey Flannel has authenticated all uniforms and apparel (excluding most baseball hats).

rbdjr1

<< <i>For the poster that has the catalog, I'm curious as to who the authenticators were for the Sotheby's sale. Also, does it list the sports staff for Sotherby's at that time? Mike >>



Abby of NCIS

Cooptown

<< <i>I bought this book at Costco years ago (looks like the mantle glove is right n the outer box!.

I always loved looking through it and seeing the amazing collectables that were part of the Halper Collection. Kind of disappoints me to know we were duped, and I am only out the $20 the book cost. Imagine having put down hundreds of thousands of dollars on something only to find out years later it was fake.

-Jason

>>



Funny you posted this....

I have been cleaning out and trying to sell a lot of my collection. I only focus now on items signed by baseball HOFers. This past weekend I tackled my office closet, and came across this catalog. Decided I definitely did not need this anymore, as most of it is garbage. Decided to throw it away. Let me know if anyone wants it (I think I actually paid $15-$20 for this puppy on ebay....talk about a bad investment) although shipping it would not be cheap. Could go media mail.

stown

<< <i>As far as whether he knowingly sold fakes, Nash has never stated that. What is known is: 1) Halper had a lot of fake items in his collection (along with a lot of incredible items as well), 2) Halper had a lot of stolen items in his collection, 3) Halper has fabricated stories on how he acquired items in his collection, some items have multiple stories, 4) Halper received a lot of money auctioning/selling off his fake items (as well as genuine items). >>



Accurate cliff notes version post of the day!

bishop

wikipedia...pete nice

Mdube16

I posted this on another forum...but:

As luck would have it, I have the University of Miami yearbooks from 1956-1958. While there are no pictures of Halper, the 1957 yearbook clearly shows that Foxx was there in 1957. It shows several pictures of Foxx and the text says that the team was working out in the spring trying to improve on its 1956 record. The 1958 book says that new coach Whitey Campbell took over for Foxx in 1958.

Anyway...looks like the author has at least this fact wrong.

TheCARDKid

Who would fake a Joe Jackson jersey in the 40's or 50's?

-It's funny because it seems like the article doesn't disprove that he knew family members, team mates, etc decades ago.

-It seems like he acquired a lot of stuff in a low period for collectibles. I.e., after players wore it, or owned it. But before conventions or price guides started popping up in the 70's. Huge grey area, no mans land. Who else was collecting jerseys or saving letters in the 50's?

-With so many items, it seems like you're bound to have some fakes. Why wasn't the same fiber analysis, jersey analysis done before these things went to auction?

bigjed

Here is what the author has previously posted on the Foxx/University of Miami/Halper issue.

The entire article appears here.

http://haulsofshame.com/blog/?p=3167

...But Halper’s conflicting stories regarding the 500 HR Club sheet don’t just end with Babe Ruth. It appears that there are just as many questions regarding his story about securing the signatures of Jimmie Foxx and Mel Ott on the sheet. In 1989, Halper told the story in his own words for a commercially released documentary about his collection, available today as a DVD, entitled, The Ultimate Baseball Collection. Halper said:

“One interesting facet of my collecting happened at the University of Miami when I came home one Christmas time and I took an autographed sheet from my scrapbook, I had Babe Ruth on it, that was the only signature on it. Now, at the University of Miami my baseball coach was Jimmie Foxx, Double-X, the Hall of Famer, and I told Jimmy about it and he said to bring it back when you come home from Christmas, and when I brought it down there he said that Mel Ott was going to visit with him the next day, why don’t you wait til tomorrow and we’ll both sign it, and he’s the one who put the seed in my head, he said then you’ll have all three guys who hit 500 home runs, because it was Ruth, Mel Ott and Jimmie Foxx at that time, this is 1957, and they both signed it with the same pen, so now I have Ruth, Foxx and Ott….”

But there’s another huge problem with Halper’s story. The registrar’s office at the University of Miami says Halper first enrolled at the school in September of 1957. Foxx only coached the Miami team during the ‘55-’56 and ‘56-’57 seasons, and was no longer the coach by the time Halper enrolled at the school. For the 1958 season Foxx left Florida and was employed by the Minneapolis Millers, a Triple A farm club for the Boston Red Sox. Halper is also absent from all of the University of Miami baseball rosters for the years he attended the school from late 1957 to 1959.

We contacted one of Foxx’s former players, Sheldon Dunkel of Coral Gables, Florida, and asked if Barry Halper had ever been one of his teammates. Dunkel responded, “Barry Halper? No, I know who I played with and there’s never been a Barry Halper who pitched for us. I was captain in ‘58 and I played every inning of every game for three years. I can tell you first hand he did not pitch at U of M.” Dunkel should know, under Jimmie Foxx’s stewardship in 1957 he set an NCAA fielding record for fewest errors by a second baseman...

If the author is correct, Foxx left Miami around June 1957. Halper enrolled at Miami in September 1957 and stated the sheet was signed in December 1957/January 1958.

baseballfan

wow!!! you never know

pmcollectour

Mastronet auctioned off some Nebraska Cornhuskers college football jerseys over ten years ago. They came directly
from a guy who got them from the 25 year equipment manager for the Huskers football team.

After a guy and I bought some of the jerseys from that auction, we found out that a few of the items didn't match up.

It wasn't Mastros fault, and it wasn't the equipment managers fault, but the guy who played the middle man had a lot to be desired.

He opened up a bar right next to the football stadium with all this memorabilia. His bar folded in a few years. Karma I guess.

He claimed a lot of the stuff was game used. Some of the stuff never entered the game. There were a lot of back-up jerseys and back
up footballs. Also, some of the jerseys simply didn't photo or fabric match. Some of the jerseys lettering on the unis was off when compared to television evidence. So it was a mess. Always do your due diligence.

wallst32

<< <i>

<< <i>Just another reminder for me why I have always stayed away from "authentic' or "game-used' autographs and memorabilia. There is no way you are ever going to know if its for real. >>


I hear this a lot from people who don't collect/deal in autographs or memorabilia, but if you know what you're doing you can be as sure as you can with just about anything else. >>



Halper's name was pretty well respected, so wouldn't that "be as sure as you can"?

This is what happens when a community accepts a person's OPINION as FACT. I get all my autos in person; it obviously limits the size of my collection, but at least I'm 100% certain they are legitimate.

mikeschmidt

Peter Nash, a significant contributor to this article, has legal issues involving fraud of his own:

NY Daily News Article regarding Nash, Corey Shanus and Mastro

mcadams

Man....I thought REA was the gold standard. Who can you trust?

cardsnbeads

Interesting article. I am not shocked by it. Halper was a serial liar. His Shoeless Joe story seemed like a load of crap that nobody should have believed.

TheBusiness

<< <i>

<< <i>

<< <i>Just another reminder for me why I have always stayed away from "authentic' or "game-used' autographs and memorabilia. There is no way you are ever going to know if its for real. >>


I hear this a lot from people who don't collect/deal in autographs or memorabilia, but if you know what you're doing you can be as sure as you can with just about anything else. >>



Halper's name was pretty well respected, so wouldn't that "be as sure as you can"?

This is what happens when a community accepts a person's OPINION as FACT. I get all my autos in person; it obviously limits the size of my collection, but at least I'm 100% certain they are legitimate. >>

No, getting something in person would be "as sure as you can". The next best thing would be buying from someone like UDA who has athletes signing exclusively for them and who does a good job of making sure any item they attach their hologram to was actually signed by the guy who they're guaranteeing it was. For long dead guys' autos, the best you can do is PSA/DNA or JSA.

72skywalker

I know this is the wrong forum but since we are on the subject of Barry Halper, I am trying to get rid of a DVD called The ultimate Baseball Collectors Collection with 2 movies on it. One movie is called Collecting America and the 2nd is called the Ulitmate Baseball Memorbilia which features Barry Halper's collection. It is still pretty interesting. If anyone is interested i could let it go for $5.00 plus $1.50 shipping. Please PM me if interested. Thanks.

stown

<< <i>Peter Nash, a significant contributor to this article, has legal issues involving fraud of his own:

NY Daily News Article regarding Nash, Corey Shanus and Mastro >>



Good to see Journalists avoid the potential of having a conflict of interest. Helps keep their words objective and without personal biases.

Heh.

GDM67

<< <i>Peter Nash, a significant contributor to this article, has legal issues involving fraud of his own:

NY Daily News Article regarding Nash, Corey Shanus and Mastro >>



Similarly

Doesn't change any of his Halper info but it's worth taking into account.