The following comes from Auction Central News, the newlstter of Liveauctioneers.com.

Morphy Auctions’ CEO Dan Morphy has announced the addition of a full-service sports memorabilia department to his company’s growing roster of specialty divisions. The new department is supervised by Morphy’s chief operation officer Tom Sage Jr.

“We decided to open a sports department because of the increasing number of requests from collectors who wanted to consign their collections and game-used items,” said Sage. “We’ve incorporated sports memorabilia into our general and toy sales regularly over the past six or seven years, and we’ve also referred business to companies that specifically handle sports memorabilia, but we reached a point where there were so many inquiries, it was clearly time to start holding our own specialty sales.”

The plan is to conduct dedicated semiannual auctions of items from all major sports, including football, baseball, basketball, hockey, boxing, golf and more. In particular, Morphy’s sports sales will focus on Major League and collegiate game-used jerseys and other apparel; sports equipment, rings and jewelry; photographs and ephemera; and other quality collectibles with a connection to professional athletes.

Sage, a lifelong antique dealer and collector who began his career selling baseball cards in 1977, said a strong emphasis will be placed on provenance and authentication.

“Buyers expect, and will receive, letters or certificates of authenticity when they buy game-used or autographed items from Morphy’s. We will be using the services of some of the sports memorabilia industry’s top authenticators in vetting the merchandise we sell,” Sage said.

Morphy’s debut auction of sports memorabilia will take place this fall, with another sale to follow in spring of 2012.