Send these Coaches to the showers!

Sports Collector's Digest, known as "SCD" to collectors, is a widely read and well respected collecting magazine. It has just one problem: it accepts advertising from The Coach's Corner, an auction we see as possible one of the most inept, if not outright negligent sales venues we've ever encountered.

Though we certainly aren't experts in the field of cards, pennants, and other such collectibles, a five-minte visit to the Coach's Corner March sale revealed quite a number of pieces we wouldn't use to line a bird cage. For example, the Beatles signed album above realized $1,458. Do you see any signatures in their super-sharp image? Nope. An authentic signed album would bring abut $75,000. This buyer either got a heck of a deal, or a useless piece of old cardboard. The Andrew Jackson shows complete ineptitude on the part of the auctioneers: even novice collectors know that land grants signed after 1832 are almost as a rule secretarially-signed. This beauty brought $599. The John Wilkes Booth signature (which brought $1,702) and the Babe Ruth baseball ($1,074) are pathetic forgeries and a waste of a good baseball, at the very least.

Many of these items are supported by certificates of authenticity issued by STAT Authentics and "forensics examiner" Christopher Morales. We can find absolutely no reference to STAT anywhere, but Mr. Morales' reputation as a "competent" examiner is well-known to collectors worldwide. We suggest that their certificates accompany their certified atographs at the bottom of Polly the Parrot's bird cage.

The Coach's Corner offers in the area of 4,000 lots of autographs, signed bats and balls, cards, and so on on a regular basis, and has been a huge buyer of advertising space in SCD. And we all know that magazines depend on advertising space for a vital portion of their income. SCD has been advised on numerous occasions of the spurious material offered by sellers advertising within its pages and has chosen to do nothing.

Perhaps that august publication would be well advised to remember the old adage: "If you lie down with dogs, you'll wake up with fleas".