As another update, just to let some people know that this has not been a pleasant ordeal for me. It was brought to my attention by other members that there was question on why I was involved - "I am just a fan and they don't hand out "Bullwhip Expert" Certicates from any institution". Please reference such thread here on another forum:
http://www.thelostpages.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=575
It was over 3 years ago, that my involvement on this project was completely unselfish. It was my own intellectual curiousity that brought me to this project over 3 years ago when I found out about a Raiders Whip.
Back to topic! The main "key selling criteria" of this item was the provenance of this whip. It went from Morgan, to Glenn Randall Jr., TO THE SET OF RAIDERS, to Faye Snyder and then finally to Mark Allen. My involvement was to authenticate this whip to be:
- a David Morgan whip
- to be made my David Morgan from the era of pre-production to production of the movie, "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
This provenance was documented in the auction and verified. The dots were connected to all the parties. That is what made this Raiders Whip so interesting. Truly unique provenance as compared to the other auctions from previous Indiana Jones whips.
[name deleted by courteous request], if you are reading this since you bothered to not approve my membership in response to your forum... my qualifications were that I have documented the differences between David Morgan whips from the late 70's to present. Please feel free to
"search" the numerous threads that I have disclosed on the differences. It's all here in the COW archives. But I guess for some people, including yourself, were to lazy to research those claims.
I have catalogued the differences and mentioned the differences to Mark Allen about 10 seconds prior to measuring the Raiders Whip. That is all documented in Mark's letter as part of the selling collateral. I gave zero "heads up" prior to the measuring of what I was looking for. Once I started measuring the whip, it was true to spec for that era, without a shadow of a doubt. Full Stop, end of story. My conclusion was that it was a David Morgan whip. Since it was made by David Morgan AND it was not a currently crafted whip, but a bullwhip made from his earlier days.
I can go into a lot more detail on my eye for detail on whip makers. I can truthfully spot from a distance of 10 yards a whip made by:
- Joe Strain, Bernie from Tasmania, Terry Jacka, Russell Shultz, Michael Murphy, Janine Fraser, Paul Stenhouse, Jim Markel, Paul Nolan, Robert Duke etc.. (I know I left out some crucial significant others...

) ) In fact, I was tested by Mark Allen several times by pointing to a whip and asking who the whip maker was.
No matter how some of the above (not all) , try to copy David, they all have an individual style that breaks through. Just like a poker player, there are the "tells". And there is nothing wrong with being different. Because each whipmaker is an artist and an artist brings his own palette.
I just thought I needed to post this because,... it was needed.
And to be absolutely sure on what I posted in this thread, NO. NO... I am not the sole reason for selling this whip to auction (re: " I just find it highly laughable that the main thing the seller is using to authenticate this whip is a review by a fan.")
-Sergei
p.s. [name deleted by courteous request], feel free to drop me a line. Maybe we can discuss this cordially, person to person, offline. I am not sure if cordial is part of your practice, but I will assure you I will be.
p.p.s. BTW, [name deleted by courteous request] refuses to allow me to respond to his forum. He is denying my registration due to an invalid email address. That is laughable. I did read the first paragraph of the T&C's. Last time I looked the provided email address was not from hotmail or yahoo or from anyother "free" email service provider.
The email address I gave him was Sergei@indygear.com. That is not a free email account. It's bought and paid for every year.
p.p.p.s Remember Michael G. Ryan, the author that wrote the Indy article for the 20th anniversary edition of Raiders in the Star Wars magazine? Well some things never change:
http://indyfan.dnsalias.com/vault/forum ... 83803.html
http://indyfan.dnsalias.com/vault/forum ... 83883.html