Memorabilia

Fleer again will be inducing kids of all ages to flip this summer, as the "Fleer 2000 Baseball Card Flipping Challenge" will be played out across the country. The challenge will be staged in hobby shops across the country from now to June 15. The winners of those events will move on to regional competitions at six big-league ballparks. The survivors of that round will compete for the national crown at the All-Star FanFest in Atlanta in July. The Fleer flipping game is, of course, the one that you and I played as kids in the 1940s and '50s and our fathers played back in the 1930s.

A federal probe into fake autographs and memorabilia has expanded to include counterfeit sports trading cards, authorities said yesterday. Operation Bullpen, which began in 1997 and resulted in charges against more than two dozen people last year, has uncovered a trading-card counterfeit ring based in Southern California, assistant U.S. attorney Phillip Halpern said. He declined to disclose details about the investigation. Operation Bullpen turned up hundreds of examples of fake memorabilia, including a baseball supposedly signed by Mother Teresa, and fake autographs of Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, Jerry Garcia and Mark McGwire.

Wallace Nutting was a New England Congregationalist minister who was born at the beginning of the Civil War and died at the start of World War II. He also was an antiquarian, a painter, an illustrator and an early 20th century photographer whose works are characterized by a certain prim blandness, the sort of artwork you would expect to see in the home of - well, a New England clergyman. Nevertheless, Mr. Nutting has his devotees, including Michael Ivankovich, a Bucks County dealer who has specialized in his art for 10 years.

Not long ago, the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society had to cancel its annual fund-raising breakfasts, because most of the players who used to attend had died. More recently, the passing of 1953 all-star Gus Zernial left the number of surviving ex-A's at either 36 or 37. No one was certain, because Max Silberman, the member tasked with keeping the count, died two years ago. Like the last vestiges of a deep and memorable snow, those who played and rooted for Connie Mack's A's are gradually melting away.

The opening of the baseball season may be weeks away, but next weekend, Hunt Auctions Inc. will herald Opening Day with its annual late-winter auction of baseball memorabilia. More than 1,100 lots will be offered at the two-session sale to be held at the Best Western Conference Center & Hotel in Lionville. Autographs are a highlight of the sale, according to David Hunt. The top items, including several from the estate of Hall of Famer Ty Cobb's secretary, will be offered at the second session beginning at 11 a.m. next Saturday.

Tell us what you have in the way of unusual, obscure and just peculiar sports memorabilia. So, whatcha got? Perhaps your grandfather passed down to you a piece of the goalpost from the Eagles' win in the 1960 championship game, or your great-grandfather had a collar that was once worn by Connie Mack. Or, perhaps it was something you came into possession on your own: a cancelled check endorsed by Wilt Chamberlain or a bar tab signed by one of the old Stanley Cup champion Flyers.

If you have always wanted to start collecting something but were never sure where to start, try visiting the Holiday Inn in Fort Washington next Saturday. Beginning at 10 a.m., Allian Auction & Appraisal will sell collectibles in more than a dozen categories, ranging from autographed baseballs to memorabilia from the 1940s radio and comic-book sleuth The Shadow. The largest category consists of the baseballs. More than 400 will be offered, beginning at 11 a.m., and several are likely to fetch the auction's highest prices, according to Allian's Allen Gross.

Two auctions, one today and tomorrow, the second next weekend, will be devoted to two national pastimes: baseball and automobiles. The baseball auction will take place Friday and next Saturday at the Holiday Inn, Route 100, Lionville. Conducted by Hunt auctions the sale will feature memorabilia from the collection of Robert Schroeder, secretary of the board of directors of the former Philadelphia Athletics from 1902 to 1950. The main items will be sold at next Saturday's session beginning at 11 a.m., including John Shibe items, early Major League photography and memorabilia from the famous tour of Japan that the A's made in 1934.

A busload of Philadelphians embarked this morning for Englewood, N.J., to attend the first rites in a new location for the Edwin Forrest Home for aged actors, late of Parkside Avenue in West Philadelphia. The passengers consisted not of transferees from Parkside Avenue, but board members, friends from the theater community, press and invited guests. Their destination was the Actors Fund Home, situated just across the Hudson from New York City, where a check for $1 million was to be presented toward the new Edwin Forrest Wing, a recently constructed extended-care facility.

A Columbus tattoo-parlor owner whose purchase of Ohio State football memorabilia triggered an NCAA investigation of the school pleaded guilty yesterday to drug trafficking and money laundering charges. The federal charges against Edward Rife didn't directly involve Ohio State, but the university first learned of the memorabilia sales through the federal investigation into Rife. Football coach Jim Tressel resigned after it emerged he had known of his players' involvement with Rife and didn't report it to the NCAA or his superiors for more than 9 months.