[Archive]

Posted By: Erick Lewin

Very troubling, but not surprising to me at all. I have always thought about this when going to the card show at Hofstra. They used to have GAI do on site authenticating, but the last show they had JSA. It would be so simple for anyone to bring a forgery of one of the guest signers there. They don't even look at the signatures, they just assume all are real since the people are signing right there, about 30-40 feet from them. People could keep their real signatures for themselves and have the forgeries stickered authentic for about an additional $5.

I have always thought that whole process is so stupid anyway though. Why would someone have there item stickered and given a COA when they just witnessed it signed in person. If the only reason to do so is $, that's more reason for people submitting there fakes. Especially at shows with atheletes who have high dollar signatures.

Theoretically, Say Cal Ripken is signing. Someone could buy 1 real ticket to get a real Ripken signature. Then walk over to the JSA (or other autenticator's booth) and have as many fake signatures given COA's as they want. They could just pretend they paid for, say 5 or 6 signatures from Ripken and I bet the authenticator wouldn't give them a second glance if the signatures where anywhere close to the real thing......Scary