I am writing to explain to you my friends and anyone else that might read this why I am leaving at least for while AML. This also is not entirely based on being called unethical by a particular AML member unrelated to this group. My crime was apparently wanting to judge an autograph by ink, paper and comparisons and not who the seller was or what sticker was on it. I do not talk about myself much and to most here I am just a name. All a man really has is his reputation be it good or bad. As a historian and museum director by profession for 35 years, and as an elected local government official for 20 years my reputation is paramount to me. I doubt many can fully comprehend how insulted I was or how furious. Others might have just brushed it off but it is not within my DNA to do so.

I want to say to Eric K. Longo and Joe W., Karsten and goodcat how much I appreciated their quick and kind statements of support at the time. Also to Steve Zarelli for the very kind email. Those gestures means more to me than you all can know. Out of anger initially I began deleting all of my signature studies, discussions and exemplars on here. There were a lot and it really takes a long time to do that. A good friend urged me not to completely delete the Andy Griffith group. So I have held off on that because I did put a lot of work into it. I likely never will post more exemplars or start more signature studies etc. There is a lot of work involved in it and almost no one collects classic shows anymore. More or less was doing it for my own enjoyment and it is now no longer fun. Originally I had intended to show about 300 TAGS exemplars many extremely rare. To my knowledge there is no collection of the sort on the internet.

I wish I could say I felt like I accomplished much on here over those years. I do believe few could say that I did not at least try with studies on The Andy Griffith Show, Barney Miller, Gunsmoke, The Munsters, 12 Angry Men, Kolchak:The Night Stalker, Star Trek, The Bob Newhart Show,The Beverly Hillbillies plus a discussion on using government resources as exemplars. Also a few minor and forgettable discussions that even I do not recall. I also have tried to help with Eric Longo's monumental Jackie Gleason signature study and Mike P's great Redd Foxx signature study though in both cases my contributions were secondary. I have tried to encourage others with comments although I did not collect in that field especially if no one had made a comment to them. I have tried always to respond anytime someone commented on anything I wrote. I have not come here to sell autographs but have bought some here. In almost 50 years I have sold fewer than 20 autographs and have regretted selling everyone of them.

While it may be petty on my part and I am not particularly proud in feeling the way I do, there has always been the sense of being the unwanted bas***d son at a Thanksgiving dinner. Certainly I never felt that the powers that be cared one way or another for anything I did on here. I realize that out of sports, music and modern entertainment that classic entertainment is very small and dying interest. There is I suppose a logic in not wasting any time or effort with encouragement of anyone trying to do a study in that area. I do not flatter myself that anything I did on here was all that important, or was something any other classic entertainment collector with almost 50 years of experience could do. Having collected hundreds if not thousands of individual actors and actresses I did believe the various studies might be more useful than I think they were. I suppose the effort might be rightly called a magnificent failure.

Autograph Magazine Live creates a unique forum one I hope will thrive and continue to help collectors for years to come. I admire Mr. Cyrkin keeping it a free site to help those that do not have much. Not everyone can afford thousands of dollars for an autograph. I will still log on here and read much of the content regardless if it is in my field of collecting or not. I want to thank all of you that have contributed to any of my discussions or commented on them they were greatly appreciated by me. I have told Eric Longo that regardless of what I do I will support his extremely important Jackie Gleason study any way I can including commenting on his various posts. Other than that with the contentious nature of the internet I think I will keep my authenticity opinions to myself from now on. Joining several friends in classic entertainment collecting that have left or become silent observers.