Generalizing about Generalizations

Wow, it's been a month ... sorry about that , but it gets busy here as the hockey season heats up.

I want to talk a little about generalizations in the game-worn jersey world. I was having a conversation with a collector at the Northern Virginia Expo last Saturday, an Expo by the way that just finished its Seventh Year and is wonderfully handled by Francis Rady.

In the game-worn jersey generation that proceeded the MeiGray Generation, with team participation and absolute authenticity and serial-numbered tagging to ensure that collectors know exactly when their jersey was worn, generalizations abound.

Assumptions are made based on the available information, the good work done by credible (and the questionable work by not-so-credible) authenticators, and the astute observations of those who have collected the jerseys over the years.

While we believe that all information available can help, it's important that collectors and dealers not assume because something happened to one jersey, it happened to all. Or because something did not happen to one jersey that happened to another, that one jersey contains a problem. Or because something may have happened once, it could have happened 10 times.

That's the most dangerous generalization of all.

My point? When we authenticate jerseys from yesteryear, ones that lack the tracking, documentation, and information of today, we must tread very carefully. Research and information must be considered carefully, and each jersey needs to be examined individually. Because one generalization never fits all.