It seems that fellow board member and Sports Collectors Digest columnist Chris Nerat is a little disgusted with some of the fellow posters on this site. You can read it on his blog here: www.sportscollectorsdigest.com

Well, I decided to email a response to his blog and here is what I emailed him.

Chris, I just finished reading your blog about some of the cowardly talk on the gamusedforum.com website. I'm not going to trash Heritage for jumping the gun and advertising an item that appeared to have rock solid provenance but Heritage probably should have done a little fact checking themselves before promoting an item like this before the collecting community. By taking a little amount of time and cross checking the helmet it would have saved them from this embarrassing situation. Mistakes happen, but with an item such as the Namath helmet they should have realized that it would have been scrutinized.

My problem with your column is that you state that some posters on the forum are way out of line, some are cowards and some are instigators and are bad for the hobby. Yes, there are some overzealous posters on there but with the many fake items that have been sold at auction through supposedly reputable auction houses after being authenticated by supposedly reputable authenticators I believe the collecting public has grown tired of seeing collectors being ripped off for the sake of pure profit for certain auction houses and authenticators.

How can someone such as yourself actually call someone out as a coward and bad for the hobby when the company you work for continues to business withCoach's Corner Sports Auctions? I'm sure you have heard all the complaints about authenticity with Coach's Corners items. It seems Coach's Corner has a never ending supply of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Cy Young and even Josh Gibson signed items. Some of the most knowledgeable and experienced autograph and memorabilia collectors in the collecting community have never even seen a genuine Josh Gibson signed item but Coach's Corner seems to find one to auction every other month. When Coach's Corner does sell these items why do they always sell at just a fraction of what the same item would sell for in say a Robert Edwards auction?

I know you frequent the message boards such as as the one for the basis of your column as well as the Net 54 Vintage Baseball Card Forum where posters have continued to ask for a response to this but no one from SCD has ever been man enough to step up and respond. In fact there was an outstanding thread that has received over 700 post that questions SCD and their relationship with Coach's Corner. I'm sure you have seen it but in case you haven't here is a link to it. http://www.network54.com/Forum/153652/thread/1201896466/last-1205088768/Open+letter+to+STAT+and+Christopher+Morales This is just one of the many threads where posters have questions SCD's motives.

Why hasn't there been a response from someone associated with Sports Collectors Digest? It is the "voice of the hobby" isn't it? I can tell you, it's money. If it wasn't for the monthly 20-25 pages of advertising that SCD gets from Coach's Corner I highly doubt that publication would continue to be in business. I am a current subscriber for now but I find it embarrassing that you can call someone out for being a coward and being bad for the hobby when the publication that you write for has done so much damage and continues to further damage the hobby each and every month.

I look forward to your response.

We will see if Chris Nerat isn't the coward that he claims some on here to be and responds to this very important question.