"Who would ever send an autograph to that guy?!"

Who said that here?

Sorry, if that's vicious slander to you, you've got some pretty thin skin!

Are you being sarcastic, or are you just bad at inference?

Hey, if someones business practices and experience don't stand up to harsh, or even ordinary scrutiny they're probably headed for failure.

Saying "we'll compare your stuff to stuff we find on the internet" doesn't exactly inspire complete confidence does it.

Heck, I can compare stuff to stuff I find on the internet. And I suspect I'd be wrong a LOT.
Based on a not incredibly scientific "survey" where I look at autographs presented here, compare them to my massive exemplar file (the internet) and decide if I think it's good or not. Then I wait for the more experienced opinions. The results are iffy at best.

But then I'm not making COAs for pay. And that's not a bad thing when it comes to autographs.

[QUOTE=SetBuilder;1785121]None of the major authenticators are required to train as Certified Document Examiners (CDEs), who at least try to be scientific. That's why authenticators keep popping up.





What is scientific about opining autographs?

First off in writing it's libel, and I don't think libel can be "inferred"

With enough known good and bad exemplars out there, I'm sure that a graduate student/staff at a university could come up with a machine learning algorithm that could be as good, if not better, than any human at rendering a good/bad opinion.

Just look at what we can do with fingerprinting (on your iphone), facial recognition, retina detection, etc. And that software is in use today.

[QUOTE=thetruthisoutthere;1785844]
For modern autographs? Not a lot. It's more art than science.

For the old autographs? A lot. For instance, all pre-1935 autographs penned in blue ink could be tested for the presence of Phthalocyanine blue pigment, which didn't exist before 1935.

Just one example.

That test would be nearly worthless for all but a handful of items.
Maybe on a dated item like a contract, or perhaps a multi signed item with signatures that rule out any date but pre 35 for all the signatures. but not on some memorabilia.

With the new pigment.
Pre 35 item dated - ok, but only exclusionary.

pre 35 item undated - means nothing. For example a 33 Goudey signed in 1940 could have the new pigment. On something like a team ball, if one signature had it but others didn't that would be suspect, but not certain proof that one signature is fake.

Without the new pigment
Pre 35 dated - looks good, but a faker at the time like a clubhouse guy or wife would have used old ink too.
Post 35 item - means less the closer the assumed date is to 35. Old ink stocks, inks that don't use that colorant etc.

As an ink pigment, there were plenty of inks that didn't use it even into the 1960's. (as determined by the Postal inspection service who presumably knew what they were doing. )
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwe...2&context=jclc

since pthalo blue is mostly lightfast, it's very likely that blue inks without it are still used today.


should autograph experts add some science to their "toolbox"? Probably. Is that science expensive? sort of, I looked at machines for non destructive spectroscopy, and it seemed like a minimum of $30K and I couldn't find one with a generalized database - databases specific to metals or other narrow fields yes, generalized ones no. Not a deal breaker, but that would force a user to interpret the raw data themselves, and not everyone knows the chemistry well enough.