Not sure anyone has seen this? ESPN counterfeiters video Greg Marino
 

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=21011515

Interesting

Sorry if anyone posted this.

Scott,
Awesome video! Thanks for posting this.

That's a very interesting video.

Kind of amazing how good he was. I went to an estate sale two weeks ago and apparently this guy bought tons of Marino stuff. I was looking at them and felt bad that he thought his stuff was legit. The funniest one was a colored photo signed by Babe Ruth in Silver Sharpie.

Never realized how elaborate that forgery scam was. Disgusting to think how many people he ripped off.

Good work by the FBI.

That was excellent, Scott. Thanks for posting it up.

Hopefully Leon puts this on the main page, and maybe a couple others as I think anyone in the hobby would like to watch this.

To me it’s a shame that they received such short sentences for the crime committed.

getting a little of the backstory was interesting, but the forgeries were not. i am not an expert at mantle but the mcgwires suck...i'm certain fudd or chris would laugh at those mantles. these were probably aimed at the vegas tourists.

all this video does is validate the irrational fears in minds of normal collectors who think all autographs are fake and we are the crazy ones to collect them. :rolleyes:

Well I do agree that a video like this may put three years in the people, it was mainly posted to educate people. A little bit of background on the lead forger in the biggest forgery wearing of all time in sports. I think it is interesting and educational to a degree and that's all I was trying to get out of it.

Listening to Marino talk you get the impression he thinks he was a victim:rolleyes: He just wanted to see people happy.

His Mantle especially on baseballs is pretty obvious when compared with known good examples.

I've seen his Ted Williams' forgeries and those are far harder in my opinion to identify.

On Ted Williams look at the bottom of the "T" in Ted and the "S" in Williams. Otherwise it is pretty good.

His williams are very easy. He could never get the s correctly he loped it through the middle on all of his williams.

He was pretty good at most of them, but his McGwire was atrocious. I actually was authenticating for several auction houses in 1999 after the story broke because PSA/DNA had not started and JSA only did vintage players. I was called by one house and a few others joined in.

Before the story broke I was really mad because I had collected a lot of McGwire signed items and did an auction after the 1998 season. The prices I got were very low because people saw the cheap forgeries and would not bid over the forgery prices. I was selling signed balls for maybe $100 before the story broke. Then afterward... woohoo. I got as much as $1200 for a nice signed ball because people just wanted to know it was legit.

I like at the end when he says they put pride into it! LOL

I actually appreciated watching him execute the forgeries.

For anyone who has wondered what "deliberate and drawn" means, there ya go.

+1

Yeesh. I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

The crooked ebay sellers who peddled this sh-- were way too many to count.
I can remember tangling with many of them, even an Army Lieutenant, and eventually had to sue one of them, who had slandered me, and beat him out of a nice sum of money.
A ton of Mantle and Williams and Joe D. stuff is still out there and is offered to me regularly by naive (?) owners.
Marino was very weak on the vintage stuff. Though many of those were also sold on ebay at "bargain" prices.

22 well spent minutes...thanks for posting the link to the video... AND liberty was taken to copy it from the autograph section to the front page for a few more eyes to see. I know it's not cards but some of our cards have signatures on them...( I am not making any statement as to any forgeries, not my area)

I highly recommend the book operation bullpen, interesting read. Quite disappointing what it did to our hobby, but if looking for a new book it is a good read, eye opening.

Reminds me of an old Dilbert comic strip...

LMFAO!!! Love it!

Thanks for sharing video. Seen it before but watched it again.

I would never buy an autograph unless I saw the player signing it himself. I am sure that there are still thousands of his forged autographs that were never confiscated and are still floating around.

His Babe Ruth's were pretty bad...

https://bid.robertedwardauctions.com...e?itemid=47657

Is this what you are talking about ? Are these fakes ?

This is why I don't collect autographs.