Barry Halper (December 3, 1939 - December 18, 2005) was an extensive collector of baseball memorabilia who had been a limited partner owning about 1% of the New York Yankees. During the auction of Halper's collection, Sotheby's Auction House called it the "World Series of Sports Auctions."
Life
Halper was born in 1939 and raised in Newark, New Jersey, living near Ruppert Stadium, home of the Newark Bears, then the Triple-A minor league farm team of the New York Yankees.
Halper attended the University of Miami. He then went into the his family's paper supply business, where he worked until the company closed in 1992.
A resident of the New Vernon section of Harding Township, New Jersey at the time of his death, Halper had been a longtime resident of Livingston, New Jersey. George Steinbrenner called Halper "a great baseball fan" who was a "dear friend, a valued partner for many years and a decent, genuine person".
Barry Halper died at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, New Jersey at the age of 66, in 2005 due to complications from diabetes.
Barry was close friends with many baseball legends including Joe DiMaggio, Micky Mantle, Pete Rose, Don Mattingly and Tommy Lasorda, among other professional athletes, who regularly visited his home to admire the world's most impressive baseball collection. His wife Sharon would cook special meals for those who came to visit "The Cooperstown of New Jersey" in their Livingston home.
Halper had two other passions: Sharing his baseball stories and relationships with the local community at annual round table discussions at Temple B'Nai Abraham and The Burn Center at Saint Barnabas Medical Center. A member of the hospital's board of directors, he helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when an organization would ask to showcase some of his memorabilia at an event, he would agree while making one request of the group: to make a donation to the burn center. "He always put that Burn Center at Saint Barnabas above everything else," said Marty Appel the Yankees' former public relations director. "He never had a family member at the unit, he just had a great affection for his hometown hospital where he eventually died at."
Collection
Halper's baseball memorabilia collection was thought of as the finest, being both extensive and unusual. Many items, such as the uncut strip of T-206 cards with a Honus Wagner, were one of a kind. Halper's collection was housed in his basement, which had been outfitted like a small museum, including a hidden switch to a swing open panel, behind which were some of his most game-worn jerseys of famous players. The collection of game used jerseys included the only known examples of such players as Pud Galvin, Christy Mathewson, Cap Anson, King Kelly, Dan Brouthers, and the famed trio of Tinker / Evers / Chance. The infamous Joe Jackson was represented with jerseys from his minor league team as well as his Cleveland Indians jersey. The collection of dead ball era player jerseys was unrivaled.
Some of the notable items in Halper's collection included:
- Ty Cobb's 1928 autographed Philadelphia Athletics Jersey. (Sold for over 300,000 USD.)
- Lou Gehrig's last baseball glove. (Sold for nearly 400,000 USD.)
- Cap Anson's Chicago White Sox jersey
- A glove from Mickey Mantle. (Purchased by Billy Crystal for over 230,000 USD.)
- Mickey Mantle's 1956 New York Yankees World Series ring.
- The 1920 signed sale agreement that marked Babe Ruth's sale by the Boston Red Sox, to the Yankees
- A 1903 ticket to the first World Series.
- Lou Gehrig's 1930's Yankees hat.
- Ty Cobb's dentures.
- King Kelly's New York jersey
- Christy Mathewson's first minor league jersey (Taunton)
Following the Sotheby's auction, Halper remarked:
Sotheby's released a three-volume book, The Barry Halper Collection of Baseball Memorabilia, that included over 1,500 color photographs of the collection, giving history for many of the items, details about Halper's collection through the years, and a history of baseball.
In 1998, Halper sold the collection, with Major League Baseball purchasing many items, donating them to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The rest were auctioned off by Sotheby's for a record 21.8 million USD.
Controversy
In October 2010, Hall of Fame spokesman Brad Horn told the New York Post that a Halper-donated jersey, supposedly worn by Shoeless Joe Jackson, was a fake. Horn stated that the logo utilized acrylic coloring first created in 1941. The jersey had been removed from display in 2008. Issues of authenticity have been raised with other auctioned items, including items purported to belong to Cy Young, Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, and others.
Subsequent reports alleged that certain of items in Halper's collection at some point in time were stolen from the Baseball Hall of Fame, the New York Public Library, or other institutions. There have also been allegations that items in his collection were stolen from the wives or family members of deceased baseball stars.
These accusations have been made almost exclusively by Peter Nash, a former rapper-turned-memorabilia collector, culminating in an article that Mr. Nash wrote for the New York Post in July 2011. The New York Post published some of the very same accusations, but they have since removed Mr. Nash's entire article from its website .
Murray Chass, the long-time baseball writer for the New York Times, opined that Mr. Nash's article in the New York Post was "journalistically indefensible" and "defamed the late Barry Halper." Mr. Nash's credibility and motivations against Halper have been questioned, given that he has been involved in a long-running litigation with the memorabilia auction house that was instrumental in preparing, organizing, and cataloging Halper's memorabilia auction at Sotheby's in 1999. In that litigation, Mr. Nash admitted in court papers to committing fraud against the auction house, and he invoked the Fifth Amendment in response to questions about his own memorabilia transactions to avoid incriminating himself. An outstanding arrest warrant for Mr. Nash exists in connection with that litigation. Others prominent journalists, including Murray Chass and Sports Illustrated have raised doubts about Nash's motivations.
References
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