I thought I would share a little bit of information with collectors of my experience over the last week.

First off, those that purchase items like everyone says do your homework on anything you buy. The MLB holo helps with that but also makes some not interested in the history of their item, they just want to make sure it was used which is great. Ive been consolidating my collection over the last few months and heading in certain directions to try to help with space and displays.

Next, don't be discouraged by the mlb authenticated "issued" items, but yes do your homework. Some items will show no use and some will show a ton of use. I decided to photomatch some of my bats over the last week and I have 4 issued photomatched hr bats and 1 was a players first playoff hit and hr bat that was authenticated as issued 3 days after the bat cracked. With helmets the majority are going to authenticated as issued since most get authenticated after the game. An "issued" bat could of been used by a different player, cracked in batting practice(but possibly used the week prior), the authenticator just didn't see the bat crack, or many other possibilities. With jerseys its a little tougher because the jersey could just be issued with no use and jerseys are harder to photomatch. Some teams have better authenticators than others as well, as a Cubs collector the Chicago Cubs has by far one of the worst authenticating programs in baseball. As many of you can see there is a ton of jerseys/bats on ebay and hitting auctions that are authenticated as issued with a ton of use, but the question is when on the jerseys because most are authenticated as seasons end so you cant look the week before to match thread pulls, pinstripes, ect. This has made me hesitant on buying Cubs items from their historic season last year which that shouldn't I should just do more homework.

I'll give you a great example, after the playoffs the Cubs listed a bunch of bats with one being a Jorge Soler "issued" NLCS game 3 bat. Another collector did his homework on this bat which was used for Soler's 1st playoff hit and 2 HRs, one of the HRs being from the Cubs record breaking 6 HRs in NLDS Game 3, the bat cracked NLDS Game 4 and was authenticated as "issued" NLCS Game 3. The bat sold for $680, if the bat was authenticated as game used NLDS Game 4 I see this bat easily reaching 1K. I also occasionly see teams listing authenticated "issued" items as used, I'm not sure how they can get away with that. Now with mlb blacking out the holo on mlb auctions, they are just going overboard. MLB authenticators just shouldn't be someone involved with law off the streets, these employees should be people that are interested in preserving baseball history and every team should have the system down by now. In the past week I have found between 5-10 mlb holo mistakes whether its player, inning, or even game. If MLB stands behind their holo so much this should be a flawless program, I understand humans make mistakes but over the years Ive found over atleast 100 mistakes. If I messed up that much at my job I would of been gone after number 2 or 3, its not like baseball is a fast paced game and Ive seen at games teams have multiple authenticators at each game. I wouldn't be so irritated with this if after showing mlb video evidence to have to holo changed it wasn't like asking them for a million dollar check. I have heard a rumor that all teams should be scanning the barcode on jerseys this season for every game the jersey is worn which will be a huge help with jerseys. Don't get me wrong I love collecting but don't tell me that I'm buying a Mike Trout game used bat because the holo says so then the video evidence shows another player breaking the bat(just an example). Now days you pay for the hologram so mlb should be doing everything they can to make this system perfect, even if that means putting someone from mlb right behind an authenticator for assistance. Okay onto the next topic, finding so many mlb mistakes just starts to irritate you after awhile.

After collecting bats for 15 years you think I would have noticed something like this but the issue has never popped up until this week. Whenver I'm matching bats the majority of the time when I'm watching video of the game before the same bat is used at some point in the game, but that wasn't the case. I'm not sure what the mark is called but I'm going to call it a factory mark for the discussion. On blonde bats its usually just a permanent mark which are obviously in different locations making a different permanent mark. On dark bats a shape is usually cut out, circle, diamond, rectangle,ect with a permanent mark. Well I had always believed that a player using the same brand bats would have the same location of cutout but different marks. I always photomatch the bats themselves but never worry about the "factory mark" but that's not the case. When you lay a bunch of bats, same brand,style, color out of the same player this is very easy to see and the 2 bats that made me notice this both were diamond shape cutouts old hickorys with a mark but one was on the opposite side of the bat. This is something that I should of noticed years ago but I usually just photomatch the barrel, pine tar, ect and now Ive found a new "mark" that you can photomatch to.

Enough of the book, just thought I would share my week of photomatching expierence.