Quote Originally Posted by otismalibu View Post
Yep. It's sad, really. After the fact, it's "look, look...Lou found something that the board members did not!!!"
i have to say greg, nerat's comments left me with the same impression - with a little pouting and sour grapes thrown in as well. frankly, and not to put too fine of a point on it, imo nerat was pretty much saying that the "pros" are now on the job, they now have it covered, and that the armchair authenticators and hobbyists can get back to comparing bottle caps.

also, given that nerat felt compelled to pursue this topic in his blog, i'm equally curious about his following comment as well:

"Keep in mind, Lou Lampson, its (Heritage's) game-used equipment authenticator wasn’t scheduled to come in to their Dallas offices until this week, when he will look at all lots for the May Signature sale.... Was it bad judgment to run with the ads before Lou looked at the helmet? Maybe so, but they did and that was a business decision, but given the strong provenance, I believe it was a calculated risk and the majority of other auction houses probably would have done the same thing."

so let let's see if i've got this straight - lampson is actually heritage's game-used equipment authenticator (which i didn't know), the guy does work for them? yet heritage doesn't run the namath helmet by him before his scheduled trip to dallas, before they publicize the lid as ""arguably the most significant football artifact ever to reach the auction block"? lampson is in the dark as far as this item is concerned? is this what i'm hearing from nerat?

seriously, how does this work? seriously, how does one square this? obviously lampson had access to the same photos heritage included in their publicity ad - obviously lampson could have received more photos from heritage if needed. and obviously getting on a plane to dallas was not needed to determine that this "monumental piece" was not namath's authentic sb3 helmet.

but apparently, according to nerat, that's not how things work in the world of top-tier auction houses, in the world of well-known authenticators. apparently an auction house can't pick up the phone and call it's authenticator to say "hey, we know you will be here in two weeks to do your work on the lots, but how about taking a quick look at some photos of this namath helmet we got our hands on - we think it could be the biggest find of the last twenty years, could bring a boat load at auction and we want to get the word out as soon as possible."

no, apparently things just don't work like that - after all, what could be determined by just looking at some pics....