1934 All star Japan tour auto ball legit?
 

This is up for auction in Japan right now, an autographed ball with Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, etc from the 1934 All star tour of Japan:

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/o195882873

No authentication and the seller provides zero description of the item (the Japanese text in the listing is just boilerplate language about the seller's policies against returns, etc.)

Cool item if its real but I get a bad vibe from the seller and was wondering if any autograph experts had opinions on the autographs themselves.

I think the ball looks good from what I can gather, and in good condition too

I would be more concerned with whether or not those are images stolen from an auction house. Very professional looking photos. If seller has other items that are not photographed in a similar way or has other items that are nothing like this one in terms of type or value or if the seller has no other items for sale, I would run away.

If the seller seems to have a good history and sells high value items with professional photography, that is a different story.

The ball itself looks perfectly fine.

Tom C

Here are pictures of mine for comparison.

I am far, far from an expert, but I don't see any real red flags from either the ball itself or any of the signatures.

Thanks for the reply. The seller has a few other balls but they are all low vale contemporary ones, and none of them are photographed like this. Yahoo Auctions is rip off city for autographs so I was a bit suspicious, but interested to know that the autos look legit.

Sean are you saying there are lots of fakes on japan Yahoo? At times I have been tempted to bid on items tho not this one

Yes, Yahoo Auctions Japan is flooded with fakes, way more than Ebay. I would advise extreme caution before bidding on any autographs there.

I wrote a post about the issue on my blog:
http://baseballcardsinjapan.blogspot...h-out-for.html

Basically its almost anything goes as far as Yahoo Auctions is concerned and there is no system for controlling fakes (or other frauds, etc) on the site, so fraudsters flourish on the site (though for regular cards it is a good source).

Nice blog! I tweeted out that post.

Good post, keep exposing these people.

It doesn't matter how authentic is the item if you never receive it in the mail.