marking your items

[mbenga28]

have any of you marked your items for security purposes in the event they get stolen, and could be identified if they reappear on the open market? if you did, how did you mark them?

[sox83cubs84]

have any of you marked your items for security purposes in the event they get stolen, and could be identified if they reappear on the open market? if you did, how did you mark them?

Here's how NOT to do it: 30 or so years ago, an east coast collector who happened upon a 1968 Braves road flannel of Hank Aaron chose to remove and re-sew three of the 4 tail tags into different locations on the tail for just that purpose. Of coure, he seriously devalued the jersey by doing that. The altered jersey was photographed by me for the MEARS database when I was employed there. It's counterpart, the other, UNaltered 1968 Braves Aaron flannel (both of these also being worn in 1969) will likely appear in an upcoming Huggins & Scott auction. The correct arrangement for tail tagging is on the H&S piece.

On a much lower dollar level, one of my fellow ballhawks, Rich Buhrke, sold a number of pre-1990 BP baseballs to several people in the area. The balls were marked with an ink dot between two seams so Rich could determine whther or not the baseballs were being sold for profit (he sold them under the pretense that they were going to be used for play in various leagues, and most of his buyers flat out lied about their intentions)
When he saw one being sold that was marked, the buyer was cut off from buying anything more.

Dave M.
Chicago area

[skinsfan0521]

I haven't done this, but I've heard of people marking something in an inconspicuous spot in invisible ink (can only be seen under black light).

Seems like a reasonable way to do it, but the only way to tell if it was the same jersey would be to have the jersey in hand and have a black light.

[legaleagle92481]

i would be careful about marking things you could accidentally damage and devalue the item. here is what i do and to me this is the best method. i do not store my coas and my items together in the same location and by that i mean address. a great place for coas is a bank deposit box or a private storage facility. this way if i were to be robbed i am protected. it is very hard to sell an item without the coa and if i saw it at auction i would take legal action and have the coa to back me up that it is mine. how else would i have the coa? it works for me because i buy items only from the huge companies like jo, mei gray etc and their items all come with coas with matching holograms or that refer to the hologram number on the item and the only other stuff i have are in person autographs and if someone steals those they are hard to resell anyway.