We all know that Tom Shutt defrauded the people of the Overland Park (KS) area of about one and a half million dollars before he ran to Costa Mesa (CA) where he again, bilked people there out of a couple million dollars. He was caught forging the signatures of Erich Hartmann & countless other wartime veterans to photographs which he then sold as authentic, so why mention him again? Tom Shutt is dead. A few will shed tears; many will not.

This past December, he was driving from his home in California to another city in that state on `a business trip' when he suffered a massive heart attack and was dead before help could reach him. He was just 54 years of age.

We thought it important to mention his passing because of what he did to achieve notoriety in the field of memorabilia collecting and his huge negative impact on this entire hobby.