Autograph collecting is a scary hobby, and this kind of revelation can shock it to the core. But it’s not any more scary to me than dealing in unsigned but valuable pre-war cards, which are susceptible to fraud as well (see Mastro Wagner).
Hopefully this kind of discovery will help strengthen the hobby in the long run by reminding us all how careful you have to be. Provenance is important, but hard to find in many cases. On the valuable ones, I try to have more than one authenticator review the item. But as long as authenticators are human they will make mistakes.
The sad irony of our hobby - cards and autographs - is that if PSA or JSA say the item isn’t good, then it doesn’t even matter if you pulled the card from a pack, or got the signature yourself in person. If a card doctor or forger is successful, the item gains an unjustified legitimacy as long as we continue to buy the holder not the card.
I’ll be updating the signed T206 Marquard pages to remove this one, and possibly the other one done in exactly the same spot and angle described here. It’s a damn shame, but the prevalence of signed T206 Marquards earning $1,000+ hammer prices appears to have invited forgers into this game. Marquard’s is such a common signature it is apparently all the more likely to pass the glazed eyes of a third-party authenticator.
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