(The following is a re-blog of an item that appears on my other site, Kaplan’s Korner, regarding recent allegations made by Peter J. Nash in a New York Post story against the late Barry Halper, one of the biggest names in the sports memorabilia world.)
I heard about this issue on WINS on Monday while getting ready for work and was instantly angered.
According to a tease before a commercial break, a late prominent NJ baseball memorabilia collector was accused of fraud, according to an article in the New York Post. For me, this could only refer to one man — Barry Halper, who died in December, 2005. And since Halper was a former resident of the paper’s readership area and a posthumous inductee into the MetroWest Jewish Sports Hall of Fame — not to mention his general standing as one of the best at what he did — I stayed glued to the radio until the story came on. Of course, given the Post‘s reputation — especially in light of the recent Rupert Murdoch situations — I knew not to accept anything at face value, especially when whittled down to a sound-bite.
The first thing I did upon arriving at the office was looked up the Post piece on-line. “Treasure trove is baseball’s history in the faking: Ruled foul: Shock as top collector is revealed as scammer-abilia king,” read the headline in typical Post hyperbole. The “article” carried a byline from Peter J. Nash and Brad Hamilton.
Hamilton, is a staff reporter for the publication; Nash is not. In fact, Nash is the founder of a website titled “Hauls of Shame” and author of a “soon-to-be published” book titled Hauls of Shame: The Cooperstown Conspiracy and the Madoff of Memorabilia. (It’s interesting to note that this is not the same title as listed on Nash’s website, making one wonder if the “Madoff” reference has any specific meaning or is just meant to inflame and garner more publicity.) But until you get to the end of the Post piece, you probably assumed that Nash is a writer for the newspaper. Well, you know what they say about assuming. How is this not a conflict of interest? Going solely by the website, it’s unclear where this article appeared in the print edition: News? Sports? Opinion? Buried on page 37? Multiple emails to Hamilton asking for edification have gone unanswered.
Why did this story break now? What’s timely ab out it? Is there new evidence to back up Nash’s long-standing accusations? Surely this had larger implications and would be carried by other members of the media.
Nothing. Not the NY Times, not the NY Daily News, not the Star-Ledger.Not Sports Illustrated. The only sites where you can read about this are those sites that linked to the original Post article. So it appears he’s just trying to garner some attention for his book project.
I wasn’t even going to blog about this. I didn’t want to dignify the story with space here, but Barry Halper’s family is understandably angry by the accusations and wanted to set the record straight. Mark Healey at BaseballDigest.com wrote this piece yesterday, which included a letter by Halper’s son, Jason, and picking apart Nash’s allegations. Jason Halper’s letter appears below.
On July 24, the New York Post published an article about my late father, Barry Halper, and his collection of baseball memorabilia. The article, to put it mildly, was a full and unprovoked assault on my father’s character and reputation. Coming on the heels of the Murdoch family’s testimony about their journalism practices in Great Britain, it was remarkable that the Murdoch-owned Post would publish such an article without informing its readers that it was written by a freelancer who is involved in a long-running litigation with a memorabilia auction house that represented my father.
In fact, Peter Nash, who is identified by the Post only as working on an upcoming book about baseball memorabilia, has admitted in publicly-filed court papers to committing fraud against that auction house. More troubling is the fact that an outstanding warrant for Mr. Nash’s arrest exists related to a $760,000 judgment against him, and, according to Sports Illustrated, he has been investigated by the FBI for selling forged memorabilia items. In his testimony in the litigation with the auction house, Mr. Nash invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to dozens of questions about his memorabilia transactions to avoid incriminating himself. There could hardly be a less credible “journalist.”
Yet, this did not stop the Post from allowing Mr. Nash to accuse my father, based largely on faceless sources (or in some cases no sources), of being a “con artist,” that my father “allegedly paid people to back his lies,” and that my father is “the primary suspect in a notorious heist of the New York Public Library’s Fifth Avenue branch.” Those accusations are beyond ridiculous.
My father was one of the first people to gather baseball memorabilia into a collection, and if he didn’t invent the hobby, he was certainly among the first, going back to the 1940s. His boyish enthusiasm for any great “find” never waned, and he was a beloved figure on the baseball scene not only for his collection of more than a million items, but for his love of the hunt, and the stories behind his acquisitions. As his reputation and collection grew, he began hearing from people all over the country with unusual items, and as the hobby developed and prices became associated with artifacts, he was sought after for his willingness to purchase goods.
When illness beset my father later in his life, he agreed to put his massive collection up for auction rather than have his family burdened with the estate issues. When certain items were said to be replicas and not originals, he either did not sell them or he expressly relabled them as replicas without dispute. This includes the Ty Cobb, Pud Galvin, Mickey Mantle, and Babe Ruth uniforms referenced by Mr. Nash in his article. In fact, many of the items identified in Mr. Nash’s article, such as the Ty Cobb shotgun, were not sold at all by my father. Evidently, Mr. Nash did not want such facts to get in the way of his public smear campaign.
In all events, my father did not collect memorabilia for the money – he was a very successful businessman and a minority owner of the New York Yankees. And he certainly would have never done anything to compromise his reputation. Was my father ever “had” over the years? My father was not a forensic expert and he never claimed to be an authenticator, and he certainly may have been gullible when he was presented with exciting finds. My father’s collection had literally over a million items and spanned over 50 years of collecting. It is therefore quite possible that some of the items he purchased over the years would not pass today’s forensic tests. That is not unusual for collections of my father’s size, baseball or otherwise. But did my father ever knowingly participate in a fraud, as Mr. Nash now claims? Hardly. If anything, my father was the victim of fraud from people with a good story, anxious to receive a payment. My father had a good heart, and he tended to believe people. This was, after all, a hobby, not a business to him, and his collection was all about showing off historical items and telling the stories behind them.
Contrary to Mr. Nash’s accusations in his article, the FBI has never “carted away photos and documents from Halper’s collection that were allegedly swiped from the Boston Public Library.” That is an outright lie. Mr. Nash also states that my father’s “1846 Knickerbocker baseball may be a phony” – and that the letter from Alexander Cartwright (the “father of baseball”) that accompanied the ball in my father’s 1999 Sotheby’s auction “was stolen from archives in Hawaii.” Those accusations are also pure nonsense. Indeed, Mr. Nash and the Post fail to inform their readers that the 1846 Knickerbocker baseball was purchased by my father directly from the Cartwright family, was described in the Sotheby’s catalog as “The Cartwright Family Baseball,” and was accompanied by a description stating that “there is no way we can be certain” that the ball was from 1846. As for the letter from Cartwright that accompanied the ball, Mr. Nash omits the fact that my father purchased that letter from Josh Evans, an auctioneer – who is quoted favorably elsewhere in Mr. Nash’s article. If the Cartwright letter was stolen, as Mr. Nash now claims, perhaps Mr. Nash should ask Mr. Evans where he got it from.
In addition, Mr. Nash’s article grossly inflates the monies paid for my father’s collection at the Sotheby’s auction and by Major League Baseball. Mr. Nash even concocts bizarre tales like a two-way mirror in our home to spy on visitors. That is another lie. I lived in that house for 20 years. There was no two-way mirror.
Mr. Nash identifies other items from my father’s collection – mainly older uniforms and Ty Cobb-related items that my father purchased from Cobb’s biographer – that he claims are not authentic. I am not qualified to comment on whether century-old uniforms or diaries are authentic or not, but my father believed Cobb’s biographer (why wouldn’t he?). When purchasing Cobb items (or any other items) my father did not bring items to laboratories to conduct forensic tests. He trusted people. And it is important to note that to the extent any items identified by Mr. Nash were actually sold through Sotheby’s or to Major League Baseball, those items were openly documented, cataloged, and reviewed by authenticators, not by my father. If anyone had any questions or doubts about a particular item, they could have simply raised those questions at the time the items were sold in 1999 – as opposed to 12 years after the fact, when my father is no longer around to defend himself.
In short, Mr. Nash’s article in the Post is a sad attempt to discredit the achievements and reputation of a man who devoted a great portion of his life to baseball and the memorabilia of the game, for the pure joy of collecting. My father was a sincere person who never knowingly misled anyone. Mr. Nash refers to my father, apparently in the hope of selling books, as the “Madoff of Memorabilia.” That is outrageous. Such a title is ironic, given that Mr. Nash is the one who has readily admitted in court papers to committing fraud. To the extent that there were any authentication issues with certain items in my father’s collection, such issues can and should be established by clear evidence – not by malicious accusations from a biased fugitive like Mr. Nash.
(In the interest of fairness, Nash posted a response on his website, which you can read here.)
Do I think that the possibility exists that Halper might have unwittingly bought items that were not as represented? Yes, I do. It’s unfortunately the nature of the hobby — not just in sports, but for anything collectible — that some unethical types will try to put something over on an unsuspecting buyer; even experts can be fooled.
Given Barry Halper’s considerable reputation as an all-around mensch, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to Nash, who has exhibited enough questionable behavior (as pointed out in the Halper letter), subterfuge, and equivocation to cast suspicion on his claims.
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