Posting messages to a public forum intended to insult &/or provoke readers
against another person or company is known as flaming.  If the flaming
suggests criminal wrongdoing to hurt your reputation, it may rise to the
level of libel.  Would you let such flaming against you go without a
response to let people know the truth?  If the false & defamatory
communication reflects upon your sole means of income, would you defend
yourself?  Please hear me out, as this is what has happened here on this
Forum.

I want the truth to be known in order to clear my reputation, and the
reputation of my company.  I make my living by buying & selling original
Mark Twain memorabilia, and am the world's only full time Mark Twain
memorabilia specialist.  This specialization has allowed me to create the
best authenticity guarantee in the entire rare book & manuscript industry,
$1,000 above purchase price free of any time constraint.

Mr. MacDonnell has wrongfully placed suggestions of criminal wrongdoing
(self bidding & selling unauthentic material) upon my reputation regarding
two specific items (posting of December 12).  These are crimes that would
actually be impossible for anyone to commit without the complicity of the
University of California, relatives of Orion Clemens, other book dealers,
handwriting expert & author Joe Nickell, and Sotheby's auction house itself.
Allegations of unauthentic material & self bidding of the two items at
Sotheby's are completely absurd and baseless, and defies logic & common
sense.

The beauty of an auction is that the market determines the value of an item.
It does not matter if the consignor is dead or alive, male or female, smart
or stupid, wealthy or not, old or young, hip or square, the interested
buyers determine the value based on what is at auction.  It is the actual
tangible asset that bidders are interested in, not who the consignor is.
The exception to this is if a consignor is a celebrity & such ownership
could potentially increase the value of the object.

If full disclosure was the true & only issue Mr. MacDonnell's very first
posting could & should have simply said, "By the way, Mr. Slotta consigned
the two items at Sotheby's."  Instead,  he decided to post the information
in such a way with multiple postings in a few short hours as to cast
aspersions upon my fine reputation, as if I was somehow up to no
good--clearly never my intent and impossible for me to accomplish without
complicity of other fine & reputable entities.  That is why I asked him for
an apology in my last posting.  The fact is within 15 hours after I made my
posting (at 2am just before I went to bed the day before the auction) he
attacked me, said I already had time to reply to his attacks, & then
notified the forum of my ownership.  All of this transpired before I ever
saw there was any problem with my posting, as it was longer than 15 hours
before I went back to this computer.

Because my ownership didn't affect the value of anything at Sotheby's, and
Mr. MacDonnell already posted notification that I  owned the Twain material
& consigned it, when I saw the postings about noon on Nov 30th I thought if
anyone needed to know anything else they could contact Sotheby's or me, as I
said in my initial posting.

 My intent was simply to let any interested party to know that a special
auction was going to take place on Mark Twain's birthday.  The intent was
absolutely to do a favor to anyone who had an interest regardless of that
interest being in the newsworthiness of the auction or in bidding in it.  I
run an honest business, and stand by everything with the very best
authenticity guarantee ever devised by a rare book or manuscript dealer.
Now I have had to defend myself of impossible crimes, accusations which
wrongfully cast aspersions upon my mighty fine reputation, which is above
reproach.  I have much better things to do with my time to have to address
baseless attacks, and everyone else reading this has better use of their
time, too.  Mr. MacDonnell, it is time to stop the nonsense.

This Forum is supposed to be about Mark Twain, & not a platform for flaming.
Thanks to this eye opening experience I will make sure to clearly state my
ownership of anything that is ever discussed on this Forum, regardless of
whoever makes the posting.  Just don't expect me to make a response within
15 hours of any posting, as sometimes I go weeks without looking at this
computer.

Bob Slotta