A Connecticut collector (anyone here know him?) saw a suspicious unique item on eBay, recognized it as something he donated to the National Archives thirty years ago, and tracked down an insider who was pilfering goodies from the Archives:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-574 ... ?tag=stack

Nice photo of (part of) his collection in the article!

--Bob

Yeah I heard about this guy selling those recordings and how it was discovered on the radio today. 1 1/2 yrs isn't enough in my opinion.

Life!! 1 1/2 years is just a little slap on the wrist for what he did.

I'd give that much time for stealing a big new flatscreen from the store... big deal, they're just worthless trash anyway. Stealing from the Archives is like stealing from everybody, present and future.

What is he doing to Mea West
And only 34.95 for the recording, That sucks!
I would have bought it for that.
I wonder if they will get paypal records and find the buyers of these stolen items?
Peter

Meanwhile, some poor slob in TX is getting 10 years of hard labor for 1/2 oz of pot. That is a light sentence for multiple counts of grand larceny.

^ ? ? ?

I just wish they'd given more background of how David Goldin knew it was "his record."

It doesn't seem like Goldin could have been the audio engineer with the interviewer the day the record was actually cut; he's too young for that. So did the record belong to CBS or NBC at the time it was made? Or the property of the journalist? How did Goldin come to add it to his personal collection? Was it common for the studios to throw this stuff out? Immediately after it aired? A decade later? 30 years? Did Goldin acquire big bins of 30-year-old platters that he had to sift through for historic content?

Oh, details. Give us details!

Obviously, he's way too young for the Babe Ruth recording to have been 'his'... about 30 years too young. If he's 69, then he was born in '43. The recording was done 6 years earlier, and reasonably, he would have had to be at least in his 20's by then.

Yes, old A/V material is sometimes thrown out, or at least released for public sale. It's still very curious how he could have come to acquire it. It seems that the recording would have more likely passed from the studio straight to NARA. I'm also very skeptical of the recording being the 'only original'. Babe Ruth's career had essentially ended in 1936 (no longer played on a team) so in 1937, he would have been a full-blown celebrity. As is the nature of candid recordings, there is usually not just one made, in observance of Murphy's Laws.

My wife spotted the story on yahoo and just told me about it
http://news.yahoo.com/amateur-sleuth-he ... 12038.html
Maybe a member here?
Tons of old recordings were discarded, there are whole radio series that hardly exist anymore because the network trashed any records that were made. I'm guessing the Babe Ruth record might have been made on something like a Recordio?

Nice radio collection...

Thief's should be shot. JMO

Do a google search for J.David Goldin. He has he own website.

In many Middle Eastern countries, they get their hands cut off.

I was given many promo records from WINS Alan Freed program by an engineer that worked there and knew my dad thru the church. Perfectly legal as they were being thrown away. Today some are worth big bucks.

Motto: Never throw anything away

Carl