By Peter J. Nash
December 5, 2014
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When a man walked onto the set of Antiques Roadshow in 2011 with an alleged 1961 Willie Mays uniform in his hands, Heritage Auction Galleries’ consignment director Mike Gutierrez was stunned by its pristine condition and told the owner it “would grade a 9 or a 10″ as he appraised the garment at “$25,000-$35,000.” A year later the same guy strolled into the Las Vegas store of the Pawn Stars with his family heirloom and offered the jersey to Corey Harrison for $45,000 but was met with skepticism from his employee, Austin “Chumlee” Russell, who told him, “Just because it was in your family doesn’t make it real.” Chumlee also doubted that Mays ever wore the uniform and made the observation: “This doesn’t look game worn, Willie Mays was a bad-ass he was slidin’ around the dirt and the grass. I imagine there would be a bunch of stains on it.”
But despite Chum’s observations and doubts, Corey cut a deal for the uniform and snagged it for $31,000. The pawn-shop purchase made headlines and the alleged Mays gem was promoted everywhere from the Huffington Post to USAToday. By the time two writers from TheOnlineSeller.com visited the Vegas pawn-shop in April of 2013, the Mays jersey already had a price tag of $80,000 attached to it. When a member of the “Game Used Universe” forum visited the pawn shop this past May it was still priced at $80,000.
Earlier this week that same Mays jersey appeared for sale at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills with the consignor advertised as “The World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop” and the uniform went on the block receiving only eight bids and according to sports auction director, Dan Nelles, sold for $19,200. New evidence, however, shows that the uniform is not genuine and suggests that the Pawn Stars could have saved 31-grand and avoided selling the fake if they had just listened to Chumlee whose healthy skepticism on the History Channel episode mirrored the thoughts of uniform expert and historian, Dave Grob, who told Hauls of Shame on Tuesday that the uniform was bogus and never worn by Mays. According to Grob, the uniform is nothing but a Spalding salesman’s sample with minimal value. Grob, the senior uniform authenticator at MEARS, knows a thing or two about evaluating Mays garments as he just recently shot down an alleged $675,000 1951 Willie Mays rookie jersey as a fake and spurred on a lawsuit filed last month against the estate of deceased collector Barry Halper.
As for the Pawn Stars‘ bogus Mays uniform, Grob elaborated on his opinion for us and also furnished visual evidence. Grob stated: ”Like I have always said, you have to go into this physical and intellectual process asking yourself two questions: What am I seeing that I should not be seeing? What am I not seeing that I should? Of course, in order to ask and answer these questions, your study and analysis has to be well grounded in knowing what “right should (look) like” as well as appropriate contemporary information and references to support your subsequent observations and findings.”
Grob added, “In this case I saw the outline of a tag, and it’s of tag that should not be present on a uniform ordered by the club for player use. The missing tag is a fabric content tag found on salesman’s samples. This tagging allowed the salesman to reference to fabric content (indicative of the quality of the garment) as the product was being marketed or showcased. Over the years I have purchased a number of these salesman samples to augment my on hand uniform exemplar library, and the enclosed graphic includes one such offering.”
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Expert and historian Dave Grob gave us an illustration identifying the Pawn Stars' uniform as a salesman's sample never worn by Mays. The flannel jersey retained the remnants of a tag that was removed and was only used on samples. Grob provided an image of a sample in his exemplar collection for comparison (right).
Using his experience with other garments and exemplars Grob also told us, “When you combine this information, with what was said to be the current condition of the uniform, as well as the irregularities with the supplemental information chain stitched into the tail of the garment as compared to period Spalding products for the San Francisco Giants, I don’t know how you come to any other objectively defendable position or opinion other than the uniform being a salesman sample.”
In conclusion Grob summed up the TV journey of the Mays uniform saying, “In short, someone took off a tag, someone took it to someone claiming to be an expert, and someone got taken.” Grob was not the only person in the uniform community who questioned whether the Mays jersey was a salesman’s sample. Phil Wood, a long-time uniform collector and Washington Nationals broadcaster, told us, “I saw that show and commented to my wife that it was a salesman’s sample.”
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Heritage consignment director and Antiques Roadshow appraiser Mike Gutierrez (right) authenticated and appraised the bogus Mays jersey at $25-35,000 on a 2011 PBS episode.
The Mays uniform was first examined and appraised by Heritage’s Mike Guiterrez at an Antiques Roadshow event on August 6, 2011, and was then presented by the same owner, identified only as “John,” on a Pawn Stars episode called “Free Willie” that aired in August of 2012. When the jersey and pants were presented for sale to the shop for $45,000, Corey Harrison told the seller “I’m gonna need some proof before I shell out that kind of money” and he called in local memorabilia dealer Jeremy Brown, of Ultimate Sports Cards and Memorabilia, to examine the uniform. Brown noticed the “immaculate condition” of the garment and suggested that the uniform lacked evidence of “game use” and concluded that it was “game issued.” He told the seller, “Although it can’t be proven that this is a game used jersey, this is a 100% authentic jersey that Willie Mays was issued.” Brown was correct in his determination that the uniform lacked game use, but that was because it was a salesman’s sample that had never been issued to Mays.
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Pawn Stars tweeted a picture of the "Old Man" flashing his signature glare with the caption: "That moment when someone tries to sneak something fake past you." The seller known only as "John" did just that on the "Free Willie" episode (left) where he sold his uniform fake for $31,000.
Julien’s, which bills itself as “The Auction House to the Stars,” was informed of Dave Grob’s findings and sports director Dan Nelles told us, “We verify the authenticity of all of our items and we had three different people examine the uniform and none of them told us it was a salesman’s sample. We also relied on the Antiques Roadshow appraisal and the Pawn Stars provenance.” We asked Nelles to identify the experts or authenticators who examined the uniform but he declined to divulge names. In its lot description the auction house did say, “We cannot definitively state whether this particular uniform was worn by Mays in game action.” The uniform was accompanied only by a letter of authenticity from “The World famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop.”
Hauls of Shame called Jeremy Brown at his memorabilia store in Las Vegas to ask if he knew of any other experts who examined the uniform and what his background was in regard to uniform authentications. Brown did not return several calls to his shop.
Laura Herlovich, the public relations representative for the Pawn Stars cast, passed along our inquiries about the Mays uniform to Rick and Corey Harrison and Chumlee. We asked the cast for the identity of the seller and the experts who examined the uniform as well as asking whether the store would contact the auction house and offer a refund to the winning bidder. The cast of the popular cable show failed to respond to our request and say whether they will seek a refund from the man who sold the garment on the History Chanel episode. It is also unclear whether any third-party questioned the authenticity of the uniform since its acquisition and also unclear why the Las Vegas store and Julien’s Auctions didn’t retain the services of a skilled expert like Dave Grob who evaluates uniforms for the authentication company MEARS. Grob has authenticated the most valuable uniforms in the hobby including the record breaking 1920 Babe Ruth jersey that was purchased by movie mogul Thomas Tull for $4.4 million.
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Pawn Stars expert Jeremy Brown (left) authenticated the bogus Mays jersey that sold at Julien's Auctions for $19,200. Expert Dave Grob is considered the authority on uniforms and authenticated the record breaking $4.4million Babe Ruth jersey.
The initial authentication and appraisal conducted on the set of Antiques Roadshow gave the Mays uniform instant credibility that it never deserved. Appraiser Mike Gutierrez’ observations that the jersey was in such pristine condition should have warranted a closer examination of the garment but it only gave the seller additional cache to market the uniform for sale. We called the Antiques Roadshow office at WGBH in Boston and asked show publicist Hannah Auerbach if she was aware of other Roadshow episodes where a non-genuine artifacts were authenticated and appraised as the genuine article? Auerbach told us she was not aware of a similar situation and could only cite instances where some appraised items ended up selling for lower prices due to market fluctuations, but not because they were fraudulent like the Mays uniform. Auerbach also noted that appraiser Mike Gutierrez is not on the current roster of appraisers on tour for 2014. Dave Grob told us the Mays salesman sample was worth between $2,000-$3,000 as opposed to the $35,000 appraised value assigned by Gutierrez. For comparison, SCP Auctions is currently offering a genuine 1967 Mays road uniform graded “A-10″ by Grob and MEARS which already has a bid of $35,433 with one day left in the auction.
At the time the uniform was sold on Pawn Stars in 2012, Yahoo Sports baseball editor, Dave Brown, recalled the uniform’s prior appearance on PBS and wrote in his column, “The seller didn’t say so on Pawn Stars, but I found an earlier video of him taking the jersey to Antiques Roadshow…Man, Roadshow and Pawn Stars? This dude is a trollop when it comes to reality show finds, isn’t he? He didn’t need to get top dollar. He just needed to be on TV so we could all watch him get appraisals. I feel so … used.” Brown also raised the issue of the uniform’s authenticity and noted Chumlee’s skepticism stating, “It’s not impossible to fake something like this — especially now, when there’s a strong market for legitimate reproductions. Also, as Chumley cautioned, the uniform looked almost too pristine to be 50 years old, and to have been used in games by Willie Mays.”
Ironically, 24 hours after they sold the fake Mays jersey in Beverly Hills, the Pawn Stars Twitter feed posted a message stating “What it looks like when someone tries to sneak something fake past you.” The Tweet was accompanied by a photo of store patriarch Richard “Old Man” Harrison flashing his signature glare of disapproval usually directed at his son, grandson and Chumlee. Safe to say the “Old Man” won’t be happy when he hears how Corey got ripped off and how the store subsequently sold a bonafide fake at auction (at a $10,000 loss). This time, however, the Pawn Stars won’t be able to blame Chumlee.