In case you missed it, yesterday’s Gavel Chat blog was about a New York Post article that focused on James Haas, who according to the article is a majority shareholder of Global Authentication, and his issues with SGC and his Mickey Mantle 1952 Topps rookie card.

According to the article, Haas visited the president of SGC, David Forman to determine whether flaws on his card “could be fixed without hurting its authentication.” Haas left the card at SGC and up until now, still he has not gotten his card back.

The article states that Haas filed a lawsuit in Superior Court in Morris County. The article doesn’t say whether the lawsuit was filed so Haas could get his card back, or because he filed because Forman didn’t repair flaws on the card.

This is such a crazy story and the New York post did a very poor job covering this topic.

Nowhere in the article does it even specify whether Haas left the card with SGC, tell what his actual lawsuit was, and the photo caption called Forman an “appraiser.” He is not an appraiser, to my knowledge.

Anyway, I called Sean Skeffington, the vice president of operations for Sportscard Guaranty (SGC) and got his side of the story. I am working on contacting Haas. If anyone has his contact information, please let me know.

Here’s what Skeffington had to say: Basically, in a nutshell, what happened, Haas had a ‘52 Mantle that was graded a 10 by GAI, and for whatever reason he wanted us to review the card. We did that and decided it wouldn’t be an SGC 10, it was a 9. It had two imperfections that kept it from being a 10.

He was obviously convinced that it was a 10, which it wasn’t. He wanted us to keep reviewing it, and we didn’t change our mind. We also wanted him to sign something stating that we are giving him the card back the way we got it. That we understand that you thought it was a 10, it is not. There was inherent damage to the card. We got it that way.

A lot of time transpired. We didn’t want to be put into the position that someone would accuse us of damaging the card.

I don’t know if he thought since Global made it a 10, that we should make it a 10. He came here demanding his card but he hadn’t signed the paperwork he needed to.

The thing that bothered us the most about the entire episode is that in his complaint he said that SGC is “a rating and restoration company.”

According to Skeffington, that’s what made this a story, when Haas stated that SGC said they would fix the imperfections on the card.

I don’t know that he did this in order to damage our reputation or to damage Dave’s reputation. He obviously wanted the card back, but he threw in some things about SGC that would either damage our reputation, that would make us look like we were taking advantage of this guy.

Nobody ever promised him, or discussed that we would fix or restore his card to make it an SGC 10. We have never done this to his card or any card. We don’t do those types of things. It’s absolutely ludicrous.

According to Skeffington, there’s no question that the article has been damaging to his company and he said that they are discussing taking legal action because of this story.

Right now the card is being held by a third party’s bank safe deposit box and it’s in an SGC 96 holder.

He said that we contracted with him to improve the card so it would get a 10. That gets the attention of everybody. If he didn’t make this stuff up, it would be a non-story.

The fact of the matter is, he did say this stuff and I am working on chatting with Haas. There are always two sides to every story, so I would really love to hear what he has to say.

Hopefully I will have an update on this story by Friday.

-chris