Tris Speaker Bat - Making It Clear

[b.heagy]

There is no way in hell, if when they/you re-sold the bat, if it got $29,000, they would have gotten the $$$$$$$, and then b*tched about the LOO after the fact...

How come this wasnt complained about B4 the attempt at re-sale?

I beleive the information that has been brought to light was discovered after the attempt of re-sale. The minimal amount of interest in this piece at auction raised some questions about the bat. Hence all the research after the fact. I would be doing some heavy research if an item I own had the same result.

[jboosted92]

Wouldnt you do some heavy research BEFORE you bought the bat? let alone after....?

I beleive the information that has been brought to light was discovered after the attempt of re-sale. The minimal amount of interest in this piece at auction raised some questions about the bat. Hence all the research after the fact. I would be doing some heavy research if an item I own had the same result.

[b.heagy]

Me personally: yes I would do heavy research with what is available at hand before purchase and see where my comfort level is. I beleive that is the difference the info was not easily/readily available at the time of purchase. I also would not buy a high dollar item without examining it in person either. The comfort level was high due to the letter of opinion. Now there are questions by different experts which does not help the item in any way. The bat has an * if you will. How would you handle this situation if it were you?

[jboosted92]

Well, if Im buying the bat, im buying the bat and the LOO (in this case) meaning, if someone elses "opinion" of it is "XYZ" then im agreeing to the "XYZ"

that simple.

if im p!ssed after the fact, its my own fault.

Me personally: yes I would do heavy research with what is available at hand before purchase and see where my comfort level is. I beleive that is the difference the info was not easily/readily available at the time of purchase. I also would not buy a high dollar item without examining it in person either. The comfort level was high due to the letter of opinion. Now there are questions by different experts which does not help the item in any way. The bat has an * if you will. How would you handle this situation if it were you?

[kingjammy24]

chris,

it sounds like you, mike rose, and mears have spent a great deal of time and effort going over all of the details and have reached an impasse. both camps seem resolute in their respective stances. it seems the only way to get a final resolution would be to engage the legal system. i, as well as many others i'm sure, would be extremely interested to hear how a judge would decide.
that said, i understand that there's been great value to this discussion for the issues it's brought to light for collectors. in that spirit, i'll add some comments.

i don't think there's anyone who would disagree that an authenticator ought to disclose any and all pertinent facts. of course, what facts are or are not pertinent can be subjective. semantics has nothing to do with what's pertinent though. whether you call it a "factory record" or "ledger" or "chicken scratch on paper", if it's pertinent it ought to be disclosed. (by definition a record is anything that's been recorded.) however, this describes what the ideal ought to be, not the reality of how things are.

you said "There was no reason to believe this information would be misrepresented or not disclosed in situations where it existed."
i can't help but disagree to an extent here. in an ideal situation, there would be no reason to believe why this information would not be disclosed. i don't believe this was an ideal situation. specifically, in this case, wasn't bushing's admitted history of failing to disclose pertinent facts a good reason to believe that such information might not be disclosed? when bushing found the joe d. bat and gave it an A10 himself, did he immediately disclose that he also owned it? when mastro posted bushing's bio did dave immediately disclose that parts of the bio were false? how long was that bio up before dave finally "fessed up"? in a june 06 hunt's auction which was authenticated by mears, bushing teamed with hunt's to purchase a brett jersey and put it in the hunt's auction. upon consigning this item, did dave immediately disclose that he was co-consigner? why, after the auction was live, was even dave grob unaware for a brief time that bushing had consigned the item? dave grob had to buy the item and remove it from auction. why did bushing not reveal this pertinent detail to dave grob prior to consigning it? i have to guess that these things just don't occur to bushing or else he would've disclosed them. i don't think it's intentional or malicious. i just think he's "unaware" of many issues. this isn't an attack on bushing, it's simply his track record regarding this specific issue. the issue is someone's failure to disclose all details and i don't think it's entirely coincidental that we're specifically discussing dave bushing. if someone has a history specifically of not disclosing pertinent details, then i fail to see why someone would trust them to do so.

regarding the definition of hobby terms, if mears is going to define terms then, at the very least, they need to disclose these definitions ahead of time. it's somewhat tricky to determine who ought to define terms. personally, i'm a big fan of letting the english language itself define the terms. "game issued" means "issued for a game". "factory record" means a "record created by the factory". proprietary terms ought to be defined by their creators. non-proprietary terms that aren't immediately clear, like "flag tag" ought to be defined by the collecting community.
at the end of the day though, it doesn't really matter WHO defines something as long as they make that definition clear and known to others.
was mears' definition of "factory records" made public at the time you purchased the bat?

rudy.