Steve Grad, what the hell are you doing, Joe Orlando drop your paddleball and wake up

[travrosty]

We hammered PSA and JSA for 3 years now over the most basic of misunderstood boxing autographs, the Sonny Liston autograph. We screamed at the top of our lungs until they hurt.

We published articles, on major and minor websites, forums and blogs. We even published an article in the only autograph publication in circulation, Autograph quarterly.

We thought they got the picture that they were authenticating Geraldine Listons signature of sonny as a real sonny liston, and maybe they could now stop doing that. I had no reason to believe they were continuing to do so.

I couldn't believe anyone could be that thick to continue to do so, but here it is.

http://www.fighttoys.com/PSAListon.htm

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sonny-Liston...item4d05299bf3


This is not a real sonny liston autograph, it is wife signed, we have known it for years and years, and for 3 long years now we have been trying to embarrass psa and jsa to stop certifying it.

we hammered it home and kept hammering. It is not hard at all to tell the difference. It is easy, but they keep certifying the wife as the hubands signature.

WHY?

Steve Grad, get a better pair of glasses. Joe Orlando, put down the paddleball game and stop playing spider solitaire and go out there and kick some behind. This craziness has to stop.

You are collecting checks for 150 dollars i assume, according to your price list, to authenticate Liston.

THEN AUTHENTICATE HIM!

We told the major auction houses to be on the lookout for the wife signed listons with the big 2 authentication certs that come with them. the auction houses pulled the listings when they found out that a psa or jsa certed wife signed liston was not the real thing.

A big blow up on autograph magazine ensued when bobby livingstone wrote an article entitled "the future of autographs is a third party world"

We spent 2 weeks and a few dozen examples on the screwups of these companies, focusing especially on Joe Louis and Sonny Liston. We showed numerous examples of sonny liston's real autograph, and the wife signed that psa was certing. Then we showed real liston autographs that psa and jsa were shooting down. WHY are they shooting down the real ones and certing the not real ones?

we were told by a "moderator" that maybe psa knows more about liston than us and are up to date with the most modern and sophisticated fakes out there. (implying we dont know what we are doing, and psa does?) We did a spit take and laughed so hard.!!!

After we hammered them for a couple of weeks, they presumably wanted us to stop. I was asked to be a consultant authenticator for them. Now I don't know their motivation, but what timing!!!. i helped for 2 days unofficially then told them no thank you. i realized they don't have to send me any autographs to authenticate if they didn't want to, but i could hardly continue to criticize their boxing autographs anymore if i was part of the maaaahvelous company known as psa/dna.

when autograph quarterly, the only autograph publication out there, ran an article on mine in their first edition, the article was critical of these big 2 companies, like many other articles written for that publication in issue #1.

in issue #2, almost everyone else gave them a break and wrote articles about other autograph subjects.

Not me. I leaned on them hard about which autographs?

SONNY LISTON.

I showed their certed wife signed autographs, and the ones they shot down that were good. I really let them have it.

I had reservations about being so hard on them, because I was fairly certain maybe they had learned their lesson on liston and had stopped the madness.

I almost felt bad submitting that article, maybe I was overdoing it.

Now I find out I wasn't doing enough.

Here it is, another wife signed Listion recently certed by that dapper man of authentication, Steve Grad, Mr. know it all about boxing.

How dumb is it to give this one a cert when it has a long inscription, and Liston hated signing his name, and would never put a long inscription like that. the capital L in Liston connects to the i, when he never did that, and it has a double n in Sonny, which is very, very atypical. about a dozen more things don't match up, the autograph is very smooth, when a real liston is shaky. but how can grad look at it and sign off on it as being real?

For the life of me I cannot figure this out. they are cashing checks and giving these opinions? WHAT?????????????????

wake up over there at psa/dna, what the hell are you doing?

Joe, go chew some backside and get some authenticators that know boxing.

this burns me to no end.

I issue a challenge to joe orlando and steve grad to come on here and explain this authentication and tell me and my buddies why we are wrong. Boys, take us to school!

'World experts' my foot.

[Exhibitman]

What's with the "we" stuff? Who else are you speaking for in this post?

[toybulldog]

"We" is "me".

[travrosty]

i take it you are on psa's side on this one, adam?

[Exhibitman]

I'm not on anyone's side on the ultimate issue; I don't have any skin in the game and couldn't care less whether you are right or PSA is right. However, using the royal "we" in posts is a pet peeve of mine on this board since The Dorskind Group's nonsense. If you start using "whilst" you will have to be sanctioned...

[toybulldog]

Hopefully this PSA/DNA company and its employess will be pressed for answers about some of their authentications by some branch of authority. With all this Mastro stuff going on and the issues with the Honus Wagner trim job, just out of curiosity I went through some of their older auction listings. In my opinion these items are far misses and have no supporting evidence that they are real, in fact the evidence shows something to the contrary.

http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDeta...entoryid=71369
$756

http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDeta...entoryid=86974
$300

http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDeta...entoryid=49022
$1,201

http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDeta...entoryid=42995
$974

How could they have listed, authenticated and sold this 1910 signed John L. Sullivan in 2007?
http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDeta...entoryid=74414
$1,669
After selling this real 1910 signed John L. Sullivan in 2002? Wouldn't they have had prior knowledge that the one sold in 2007 was a fake before it was even listed and/or authenticated?
http://legendaryauctions.com/LotDeta...entoryid=21883

Close to $5,000 of worthlessness on these alone.

An interesting relationship between Mastro and PSA/DNA to say the least. Is it possible they did receive favoritism in their authentications or even knowingly had bad items passed for them?

I would also like to see a representative from PSA/DNA come on here to explain these in addition to the Sonny Liston posted on this thread.

Bureau of Consumer Protection, FBI take note.

Mark Ogren
Schenectady, NY

[RichardSimon]

IMO they have to keep authenticating the wife, otherwise it is an admission that all the past wife authentications are bogus.
A very well known autograph dealer. was doing the same thing for years with Babe Ruth wife signed photos.