Shedding some light on the Lou Lampson saga

[darylv1]

This is kind of a continuation of a thread I started in the Current Auction Items section regarding the 1989 Road Schmidt jersey with the Lou Lampson LOA that was ultimately pulled from Vintage Authentics auction. I wanted to post this here, however, under a new thread because I felt that the content was interesting and important enough and I wanted to make sure everyone had the opportunity to read it, and maybe help me understand it...

In case you hadn't read that original thread, here's a quick background. I emailed Steve Jensen of Vintage Authentics, as I'm sure other folks did too, regarding the 1989 Schmidt Road jersey with the Lampson LOA and the problems that it had. Steve did reply and they pulled the item from the auction.

Now on to the good part:

When Steve replied that the jersey had been pulled, I replied back, first thanking him, then basically asking him what the deal was with Lou Lampson writing LOAs for everything under the sun.

I'll paraphrase his response (last time I put the exact text of an email in a thread, it got removed)...

He said that Lou was not to blame. Steve said that Lou does authenticate the items, but it is bestowed upon the auction house to do the LOA and have them signed by Lou. This is the part I don't understand - He said that just because an item has a Lou Lampson LOA, that doesn't necessarily mean that he actually passed the item.

I don't get it?!?! Just because an item has a Lampson LOA doesn't mean that he passed the item? Someone please help me make sense of that...

Daryl

[sammy]

It's called damage control.

Lou Lampson is as skilled at authenticating game worn items, as Donald Frangipani is at authenticating autographs.

I'm surprised his LOAs are still allowed on eBay.

These should be banned too.

[Steve Jensen]

The authentication process we conduct with Lou Lampson is as follows:

1. Lou looks at each item and fills out an evaluation form with all of his findings for the item and initials the form.

2. When an item is passed, we put a numbered hologram on the item and create an loa with the final grade taken from Lou's evaluation form. items that fail do not get a hologram. The comments/descriptions are taken directly from his notes.

3. we log each numbered/authenticated item into a database so we can trace back to any item lou has authenticated under our umbrella if need be.

4. we create the LOA's for Lou to sign off on. the loa has a numbered hologram matching it to the one on the jersey to prevent cert swapping.

the schmidt jersey was a mistake as Lou had filled out the Eval form with a grade but when it got to style match, he realized that it was not a match and "x'ed" out the eval form indicating we were not to run with that jersey. we missed that.

As far as the comment i made about "just because there may be an LOA signed by Lou doesn't mean he actually passed it" We've had many submissions that have come with auction house letters signed by Lou that he failed while authenticating for us so i have seen it first hand time and time again. The only thing i can say is that each auction house has their own set of policies and procedures. without documenting what is good and bad at the time of authentication there could easily be mistakes made from the time an item is authenticated to the time Lou signs the final LOA. It is the Auction house's responsibility to make sure only the good items are signed off on. The one good thing that came out of the Schmidt mistake is that we are going to tweak the process a bit to make it better. ie. authenticate, style match, assign final grade, sign the eval form after a passing grade has been assigned. we won't have him sign the eval form if it fails.

As far as the "Lou passes everything under the sun" comment, that is far from the truth. if we have 250 game used items in an auction, i'd say 70-100 get shot down.

Best Regards,
Steve Jensen
www.vintageauthentics.com (http://www.vintageauthentics.com)

[darylv1]

Steve,
2 things -
First, thank you for the great response. I, and I'm sure many others, (aside from how we feel about Lou Lampson) appreciate the professional way you've handled this.

Second, I am happy to see that your company is actually using the specific Schmidt incident as a learning experience, and something to build on.

Thank you!
Daryl