Announcement for Readers of this Blog

This blog is no longer regularly updated. Kevin Nelson, author of Operation Bullpen: The Inside Story of the Biggest Forgery Scam in American History, now blogs on his website, KevinNelsonWriter.com. If you’d like to read his latest reports on forgery, cars, books, history, and the other topics he writes about, please go there.

You may also contact Nelson at KevinNelsonWriter.com. There is a contact form on the site, and he is happy to respond to all letters, questions, and comments.

Of course, you may continue to order Operation Bullpen through this site. Just click here, and it will take you to the Order form. Operation Bullpen and other books by Nelson may also be ordered at KevinNelsonWriter.com.

Thank you again for visiting our site. Please continue to enjoy the excerpts from Operation Bullpen and other features here, and be sure to visit Nelson at his website, KevinNelsonWriter.com.

Hall of Fame Planning Exhibit on Operation Bullpen

The National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown is planning an exhibit on Operation Bullpen, possibly for next year. I just wrote an article about it for Tuff Stuff and Sports Collector’s Digest, explaining how the FBI and Hall of Fame started working together on the exhibit and how my book, Operation Bullpen, played a part in all of it. One of the things I talk about is how the Mother Teresa baseball (below) may become part of the exhibit, with the general public getting the chance to see it for the first time. There’s also some good stuff in there about how the FBI cracked the case, and you can read it right here.

More Forgeries of Hall of Famers

One of the nice things about blogging software is that it allows you to track the number of hits you receive on your site, and what articles are the most popular. Judging by the number of hits I received on “Forging Hall of Famers,” lots of people enjoyed seeing the fake autographs of Lou Gehrig, Christy Mathewon, Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. By popular demand, then, here are a few more forgeries of Babe Ruth, a combo ball of Willie McCovey and Hank Aaron, and Eddie Murray, all seized by the FBI during Operation Bullpen:

Big Reaction to Operation Bullpen Excerpt in Autograph Magazine

The April issue of Autograph Magazine carried an exclusive excerpt from Operation Bullpen, and it generated a big reaction from readers. Here is a brief sampling of what two people said:

“As a subscriber for a few years now, I found the article on Operation Bullpen outstanding…These ‘authenticators,’ who are mostly ‘opinionators,’ along with Auction LOAs, ineffective postal inspectors and the list goes on, send chills or should to everyone. Autograph should have a standing wall of shame.”—Dennis Bishop, via email

“The current issue of Autograph is excellent. Congratulations. You did incredible work in the right direction and I very much appreciate the quality of the articles, especially the Operation Bullpen case.”—Markus Brandes, Kesswil, Switzerland

The editor, Kimberly Cole, adds: “Thanks to all the readers who in praising the April issue. Operation Bullpen was a particular favorite. The author, Kevin Nelson is hard at work on a follow-up story for us.”

The working title of that piece is “Whistle Blowers: Passionate, Committed, and Out to Stop the Forgers.” I’ve now finished it, and it is scheduled to appear in Autograph in the July issue. Here is a Neil Armstrong forgery on stamps, provided to me by John Reznikoff, who is interviewed for the piece.

Kevin Nelson Interview on ESPN

I appeared on ESPN’s “The Hot List” in an interview about the Operation Bullpen scam. Watch it here.

A Regular Joe

Recently I heard from Travis Roste, who runs joeheavyweight.com, a boxing memorabilia website (“Boxing for the regular Joe,” as he calls it). Travis lives in Minnesota and although we’ve never met, I know he’s an upright guy because he actually asked for permission to post some passages from Operation Bullpen on his site, rather than just going ahead and doing it as many people would. Travis, who has a wife and two daughters, is a crusader against forgeries, but at the moment he has more immediate concerns, as his email explains:

“Hi Kevin. This is Travis. I found another fake Ali signed photo with Ali, George Foreman, and Joe Frazier in it, and I was wondering how many different pictures did Olson fake? [Note: John Olson was a big boxing and Ali forger who has since repented.] I have at least eleven different examples of photos with the Olson fake on it. Plus the Wepner-Ali photo that would make twelve. And I am sure there are more.
“I got laid off from my job a couple weeks ago. I was a shipping specialist for a company, so while looking for a new job, I am working on the website a lot too. I like to write a lot, and have some boxing columns on the website. I envy you a lot since writing is your business. What is it like? See you later, Travis.”

And this is what I said in reply:

“Travis, I’m sorry to hear about you being laid off. That’s pretty discouraging. I don’t think I’ve ever known a time where so many people I know are without work, including lots of writers. The writing biz is about as crappy as everything else at the moment. I have two book proposals sitting in the offices of New York publishers-and that’s what they’re doing: sitting. Anything having to do with the printed word is being hit hard and publishers do not appear to be buying much of anything from writers, as far as I can tell.
“The best thing about writing is that I get to do what I love and connect with people like you. Don’t get discouraged. Take care of those girls, and we’ll get more into those Ali fakes at a later date. Kevin.”
P.S. For anyone else caught in Travis’s situation, you may want to check out an article I wrote for and about unemployed fathers some years ago, during our last recession. It’s called “Coping at Home After Losing a Job,” and it’s the second article on the list at dadmag.com. Read it here.

Autograph Excerpt from Operation Bullpen

Autograph Magazine is running an excerpt from Operation Bullpen: The Inside Story of the Biggest Forgery Scam in American History in its current issue. Read it here.

Forging Hall of Famers

I enjoyed Scott Kelnhofer’s interview with the authenticator James Spence in the latest Sports Collectors Digest, especially this exchange:

SCD: Are you still seeing items on the market from the forgers that were convicted as part of the FBI’s Operation Bullpen?
James Spence: That stuff still comes in on a daily basis. In a sad sense, it’s profitable for us to knock this stuff down. When it gets back into the hands of some collectors, they might not destroy it or be able to get their money back, so they might try to pass it along to another unsuspecting party. I can’t put a big X through the signature. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with the legal issues that would come with that. Those items will always be out there, because I don’t know of anybody having this big bonfire where they’re putting all this bad stuff.

SCD: Are you surprised anymore by anything you see in terms of forgeries?
James Spence: I don’t think there’s any level that hasn’t been hit. We saw a bad Bob Feller autograph recently. Who would have thought that? We receive, on a daily basis, items that indicate just how bad it is out there. Whatever can be sold in bulk or where people can make money, you’ll find problems.

The Bullpen gang did indeed forge Feller and every other Hall of Famer of note, and as Spence notes, these counterfeits are still bought and sold every day despite the bust of the ring in 1999. Here are three previously unpublished fake Hall of Fame baseballs, probably done by Greg Marino, the ring’s “master forger” as the media always referred to him:

Lou Gehrig

Christy Mathewson

Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and 500 HR Club

From “Dilbert”

An Impeccable Source

I’ll be honest: I figured I’d write Operation Bullpen, and that would be the end of my involvement with forgers and fake memorabilia. It hasn’t worked out that way, and I couldn’t be happier about it. I’m still writing about forgers and counterfeiter dealers and all the wacky things they do. Wacky? Well, if you’ve just bought a signed Elvis Presley guitar that you thought was real and it turned out to be fake, that’s not too wacky. You’ve been ripped off, and you have a right to be steamed about it.

But there is an undeniably wacky element to the counterfeit memorabilia trade, and it can be quite entertaining at times. I was chatting with Rob Lifson of Robert Edward Auctions, and he told me the story of a guy who was looking to consign a game-used Mariano Rivera jersey that had been smuggled out of the Yankees clubhouse. With the names and places redacted the way they do in sensitive government documents, here is what the guy wrote to Lifson:

“Rob, Are you interested in a 2001 GU Rivera Home pinstripe? I got the jersey from XXX who told me the shirt was smuggled by an ‘impeccable source he could not name’ out of the clubhouse past George in 2003. He gave me a letter on XXX stationnary [sic] which I will find if necessary. I’ve known XXX for about 15 years (he lives near me at XXX) and if he tells me he knows firsthand it came from the clubhouse, I trust him 100%.”

Lifson replied that he was going to have to pass on the jersey because of potential authenticity and “title issues.” “Smuggled’ sounds like a potential title issue,” he said diplomatically. Besides, Lifson added, all Yankee jerseys from this period have to be sold and documented through Steiner Sports, which has an exclusive arrangement with the team to sell game-used Yankee stuff. Given how the jersey was obtained, it’s a sure bet that Steiner would frown on such a sale.

“I understand,” the guy wrote back to Lifson after hearing the bad news. “You are correct. I was told that it was not unusual for Rivera to help out poor young Latin players by giving them his equipment which they flip [to anyone but Steiner] for cash.” He added, “If I decide to sell it I know just the person.”

That person was not Lifson, but the market for game-used Mariano Rivera jerseys is such that the guy no doubt did eventually find a less scrupulous dealer for it, and lots of buying interest too. In any event, that’s one of the reasons I keep coming back to the memorabilia game and all the players in it. An “impeccable” source who steals things—sometimes you just gotta laugh.

Exclusive Interview with John Adams

Humor, By Kevin Nelson

Thanks to the assistance of our favorite portal into the spirit world, SeancesRUs, we recently obtained an exclusive interview with John Adams, the second president of the United States who died in 1826. But politics and the new administration in Washington were not on his mind, as one might expect. Instead, one of America’s Founding Fathers wished to talk about the fact that a cut of his autograph was recently sold at a sports memorabilia auction site on the Internet.

John Adams: “It’s an outrage, I tell you, an outrage!”
Bullpen and More: “What exactly, sir, are you referring to? The fact that somebody has the balls to sell a signature of yours 185 years after your death and claim it’s legit?”

John Adams: “No, no—I mean, yes. But that isn’t what upsets me the most.”
Bullpen and More: “What then, sir?”

John Adams: “I’m sorry. Modesty forbids…”
Bullpen and More: “No sir, I must insist. Remember it’s 2009. Self-promotion is the rule. Modesty is an antiquated virtue.”

John Adams: “All right, if I must. The price, my good man, the price! Last time I checked, the top bid was only $233.”
Bullpen and More: “Yes, that is pretty low. But they set the value of your signature at $20,000.”

John Adams: “Well, that seems more reasonable, don’t you think? After all, I signed the Declaration of Independence. I represented Massachusetts as a delegate to the Continental Congress and served as veep to George Washington before becoming president in my own right. I helped to negotiate the peace with Great Britain after the Revolution and was a loving and faithful husband to Abigail all the while.”
Bullpen and More: “I know, sir. You’re a true patriot. In fact HBO just made a popular miniseries based on your life. Paul Giamatti played you and won a Golden Globe.”

John Adams: “Precisely my point. See, I’m hot. So why only nine bidders and a measly $233? And to think of all I did for this country…
Bullpen and More: “I agree. It’s depressing. Paul Giamatti’s signature on the HBO poster could probably sell for more than that.”
Offering his apologies, Adams ended our discussion at this point, saying he had to rush off to make an interview with Geraldo.

John Adams signature, on sale in 2009