National
 

The people who run the national don't care. 3-4 years ago I had an issue with one of the sellers at the national. I contacted the people who run the national, by email, about the crooked seller, but I never received a response.

Of side note, there is an advanced scientific test they use on ancient ceramics to test age, but they don't do it on porcelain due to its finish that shouldn't be damaged. Usually the only time it is done on porcelain is in insurance cases where the item is broken and they're authenticating it for monetary valuation.

However, for most valuable ancient ceramics, collectors and dealers have the test done and get a card giving the age. The test probably costs a few hundred dollars, but when you're talking about a thousands dollar item...

I suspect in the future, with some very valuable baseball item-- perhaps a trophy or something--, someone will have it carbon or other radiometric dated. As I said, I already know of one item that was, but that was for a court case.

Also of note, some of these tests are done by hobbyists, but they're most often done for historical reasons (academia, museums) or for court cases.

Has anyone started examining signed 52T? It seems like these have begun flooding the market in recent years.

Thinking about this more and we don't know absolutely that olebbstuff is the Marquard scammer, but the fact that olebbstuff is already associated with a forger and he has been allowed to continue is very worrisome. Then to top it off that it there is a high likely hood that he is associated with the signed t206 that started all of this is just horrible.

I am in disbelief of our entire legal system when known scammers are allowed to continue to operate (including Coach's Corner). It isn't like there isn't enough proof to build a case.

Don't be surprised; the rule in law enforcement seems to mirror the rule in local news: if it bleeds it leads. Of all the times I've tried to get prosecutors interested in blatant fraud or other white collar thievery I've only gotten one case off the ground. They prioritize violent crimes. White collar stuff, which often requires larger resources and substantial expertise to prove and often involves defendants with the resources to fight, is not as attractive to lower level prosecutors looking to feather their beds with high conviction rates and move up to elective office or a judgeship.

Sorry if this pertained to me and it got some panties in a bunch. Sometimes you get so wrapped up in the reading you forget. I've updated my profile so my full name is in every post! Happy to be transparent to anyone.

I haven't been on the forums much lately, but Paul mentioned it to me. Haven't read this thread yet.

I've spent well over six figures on signed cards lately (T206's, Goudeys) and I'm just incredibly f'ing sad. I know I have fakes, I'm scared to find out which ones.

It comes with the territory.

I honestly feel bad for the forger(s). To have to do this is just...I can't think of the right words

After this episode of hobby fraud it seems like the only signatures safe to collect are ones that you have personally gotten from the signer. I would bet that these forged signatures are not confined to lesser players. When the prize is bigger the forgers will be better. My guess is that there are plenty of Ruth and Gehrig signed cards out there that are forgeries, but have gotten certs. Who makes more-the forger or the authenticator? That will tell you who will do a better job.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Joe, I believe I sold you the McBride about 4-5 years ago and I had owned it for around a year and purchased it from a fellow board member who had had it for years. I am highly confident the signature is good.

I brought this up several days ago on this thread. I have bought and sold thousands of vintage signed cards over the past decade and have never seen such a big quantity of signed 1952 Topps as is out there now.

Hey Howard,

I saw your post on transactions and I would like to transition my logs into what you are doing so I can help for situations like this.

How are you keeping track of your transactions?

Regards,

Brent

T206 Doyle
 

I recently won a T206 signed Larry Doyle batting, Lot 809 in Love of the Game Auctions. It was in a PSA/DNA Blue Label holder with an auto grade of Mint 9.
There was also an issue with another card, the Lake/Bender ghost image, authenticated by SGC, that a respected collector thought may be problematic
When the issue of fake T206 autographs started to blow up, Al Crisafulli of LOTG called me and said he was going to resubmit the card to PSA so they could look it over again in order to recertify it's authenticity, rather than just sending it out to me. He was also going to do the same thing with the SGC card.

Here is his email to me below about what transpired:

Hi Hank:

Hope all is well with you.

Just wanted to let you know the status of your items, as I heard back from PSA last night and SGC this morning.

1) PSA is not comfortable with the Doyle. The card was authenticated in 2013, as you know, and they had a different team of authenticators at that time. Their new team, Bill Corcoran and Kevin Keating, feel the signature is a forgery. As such, we are going to need to take that card out of the hobby. I will process a refund for your purchase price on that card right away.

2) On the other hand, SGC IS comfortable with the Lake/Bender. They reviewed it, they feel the same way about it that they did when they first assessed it, and so they’ve given it their blessing once again. They are returning it to me in a brand-new holder with their new flip, and I’ll send it your way ASAP with the rest of your order.

Thanks for being understanding about this. Obviously it’s very important to me that we do not contribute to fraud in this hobby in any way, and when something comes up like this, I think it’s critical to investigate it and get it right, every time.

Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

Regards,
-Al


Al Crisafulli
Love of the Game Auctions

Al is and always has been a stand up guy, IMO.

Hank-Do you think this means that one of the two autographs was good, or that, even with two chances, SGC can't tell a bad signature from a good one? Who authenticates autographs for SGC?

This is the proper handling of a bad situation. Also good to see PSA taking a new and obviously more critical look at these cards.


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Greg agree on PSA, but what happens if they start decertifying a whole generation of autographed cards, it will cause utter chaos, no?

But isn’t that chaos what is needed? I mean, they need to get it right. Wouldn’t the hobby rather go through a time of chaos but at the end have it correct? To me, that seems like the right way to take it.


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Kudos to Al and PSA on that one 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

Class act.

I suppose it's better than the alternative, but it will very ugly if it happens on a large scale.

it's good to read that lotg once again acted responsibly in response to selling a bad card. last week we read that rea was preemptively issuing refunds. has anyone had experience with hunt and clean sweep as far as being made whole?

Agree on that. To call into question every autograph authenticated over the last XX number of years could get very ugly and would be a detriment to the hobby. This is a situation I would enjoy sitting down and talking about for a few hours over drinks with a group of collectors. I would love to hear the various opinions of how to handle this and move forward. The past is the past, now how do we move beyond this and make the hobby better.


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Yeah, I really don't know. I only have a few autograph cards, the modern certified kind, so my opinion would mean much less than those of guys with big money invested in collections of these cards. I imagine that there's quite a lot of angst right now with collectors and TPG/TPA.

I have some autographs. I have some Mantles and Williams and others that I had reviewed and approved by the board. I don’t have the funds to chase the high dollar signed T206 cards and I feel for the folks that have those and are now suffering from this scandal. It hurts my heart when I think about these assholes making money selling forgeries to good people. Don’t think there is a clean way out of this, but it is nice see some auction houses and authenticators doing the right thing.


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The Doyle was originally sold in the November 2013 Heritage Auction. Others were sold during that auction. Rucker, Wheat, etc.

https://sports.ha.com/c/search-resul...-Search-071515

refund
 

Clean Sweep has offered a full refund on the Marquard including my SGC grading/auth fees.

Thank You Steve!

Cliff
(the start of this whole mess)

that's great to hear cliff.

anyone on hunt?

Hunts wants me to return my forged T206 Flick to have as evidence with the FBI. They have said nothing about issuing a refund yet but I assume it will be forthcoming. Kevin and Bill at PSA have been incredibly helpful since I have had more signed prewar cards evaluated by them then possibly anyone except maybe Paul. Most of mine are 10+ years in my safe and gotten from long term collectors. I know that doesnt guarantee anything. Most are Marquards, Wheat, or Crawford. No super valuable ones They questioned one or two and offered to take the rest back for extensive re-evaluation if necessary. This is just me but I never felt very comfotable with SGC. When they were starting I submitted 3 Callahans which I know were fine to them and they said they couldn't tell one way or the other and just returned them. Later Rich, Bill and kevin approved them. They were purchased from Ron Gordon many years ago who worked for PSA in the beginning along with Stinson who is probably enjoying not being in this mess from his home in Cuba (he moved there due to his Cuban wife and cost of living, not to escape this mess :)

As others have mentioned, it remains to be seen what effect this will have on the hobby - and particularly the prices of pre-war signed cards.

Looking at things from an economics standpoint, we have a market with a small, fixed supply of signed cards. With some of those cards now turning out to be forged, there is a real and significant impact on the supply. As opposed to other players and mediums where the supply is almost limitless (think Bob Feller autographs). So one would think that with supply going down, that prices for authentic autographed cards would rise.

On the other hand, the demand will probably take a hit as some previous buyers will become disillusioned and exit the market. How much, we don't know, but I certainly wouldn't see the demand increasing due to this mess.

So with supply and demand both going down, where does that leave the market? I think it's really up in the air at this time and will depend mostly on what happens to the demand, which is up to us as collectors. And by that I mean a small number of folks - I'd put the over/under at 100 as to the number of folks collecting signed T206s, but I may be way off. Maybe 3 to 5 times that for pre-war cards in general (Goudeys, etc.)

Thoughts?

I don't have a dog in this fight, but I think demand will suffer a lot more than supply. I don't believe collectors will trust graders to get it right and I think prices will weaken/crater. I would love to be wrong since I think this will be bad for the hobby, but that is what I believe.

Is the LOTG Doyle Batting one of the t206's that the sleuths on this thread have found the un-signed version of the same card?

What makes everyone think PSA is correct that it is a forgery? What if Al removes a legit card from the hobby?

Didnt psa authenticated a trimmed wagner, which Mastro admitted to trimming The t206 market wasn't affected and that is the top card in the set, arguably the hobby. It was swept under the rug in a matter of months. I'm betting there are multiple more trimmed cards in holders than forged autos. Is this that much worse?




This should bring even more scrutiny to signed cards, help collectors to do their own diligence, and will boost psa fees and probably prices in the long run.

Looks like PSA recertified the Flick from that Heritage Auction, where Jason May bought it, and then just consigned it to REA this Fall. I agree the Doyle looks off, but given that the Flick (7x higher price) from that consignment passed the re-cert, I would theorize that the Doyle was just a poor version not worth the risk as opposed to an outright forgery.

Agreed. Given that PSA reverted the same Flick from the same original consignment that brought the Doyle, I think there’s a decent chance of that.

And no, it’s from 2013, which predates the current activities which are the subject of this thread.

From my own no dog in the fight perspective I disagree somewhat. I think people WANT to believe the autographs are real, so many or most will tell themselves yeah there was a problem but it's cleaned up now. Wishful thinking will always outstrip cynicism.

I'm probably as guilty of it as anyone else. We convince ourselves that whatever problems are out there, don't affect us.

I don't know that I see this as such a magnanimous effort on the part of PSA...I mean, they did authenticate it to start with. And with this "house of cards" collapsing, doesn't it seem prudent on their part to get their slabs and flips off as many of these t206s as possible so they don't take the reputation hit that SGC and JSA are currently taking?

I once had an authenticator tell me about an item, "since I'm only rendering an opinion, I'm not saying this is not authentic...I'm just basically saying that I don't feel comfortable enough with it to put it in our holder."

In light of what has unfolded, I can see why PSA would be wise to now quickly become "uncomfortable" with it.

Not anymore, we don't.

I still don’t really know where this all will sit with me as time goes on.

But, consider that the Mastro Wagner is still encased in the PSA holder it was given nearly 30 years ago, while a $900 Doyle auto that may very well be legit is viewed as too risky to keep in the PSA holder it was placed into 5 years ago.

By all means, PSA can change its mind, but a little consistency would be appreciated.

i'd much rather a grading company evaluate the signature itself instead of when it was previously slabbed or what "find" a card might be from.

I will tell you that one thing I have definitely learned thus far is to preserve the provenance. For years, once the TPA put the signed card in the case, the value of provenance was significantly diminished. The card once entombed was supposedly forever authentic just because a TPA said so. Who needs the letter enclosing the card from Fred Snodgrass when that happens? Auction houses have been separating letters from cards, and throwing the envelopes into even another lot because the player wrote his last name in the return address.

The 2018 Spring Steiner Auction had four signed T206 cards in it from a wonderfully large through the mail collection. Steiner broke the entire collection up and failed to share the evidence of where the cards were obtained, by whom, and how. Did you know, for example, that the baseball address list that the collector used to find his ballplayers was also included deep in the auction, as just a random, soulless vintage baseball player address list?

http://auction.steinersports.com/lot-104975.aspx

There was space for a “description” like “This is how our consignor of hundreds of TTM autographs found his players” but instead it was left appallingly blank. I spent several hours today combing through two different Steiner Auctions to piece back together the fabric and soul of this collection, which by the way happened to include four signed T206 cards. I’ll post more about it when I complete my research.

The definition of provenance is “a record of ownership of a work of art or an antique, used as a guide to authenticity or quality.” I’d argue that judging the signature entirely out of context will lead to more mistakes than fewer.

Paul's post brings up the "many 52 topps" in the market. 2 enormous finds were sold after the last few years. One find of about 500 sold though LOTG, and another few hundred from long time collector Hugh Critz. There were more than a handful of ttm and auto seekers in the 50s, many I've had the pleasure of meeting on this board and in my pursuit of a signed 1952 set. Provenance is, or should be, a big part of authentication.

It's probably been mentioned already but one consequence may be TPGs become gun shy and decline to authenticate lots of real autos.

and i'd argue that placing too much importance on when a "signed" card was purchased and/or surfaced will end with a collection containing numerous forgeries.

that is also my concern. Will they now become so conservative that items will fail or be deemed inconclusive. This could also affect auction houses as will they now wind up rejecting more submissions? I think more scrutiny is better in the long run. Hopefully things will fall into a place where getting it right becomes more important that getting more submissions.

Ots already happened at PSA worh the additional of Corcoran and Keating. Its been very tough getting cards passed. I'd think the addition of people at SGC would straighten things out.

Why? What is the connection between provenance and forgeries? A false sense of security?

I think provenance is one factor to consider. It's no different than any other factor like pen type, slant, pressure, etc, etc. No one factor universally trumps others especially when considering giving opinions. No TPA or anyone can guarantee that any auto is real, outside of witnessing situations. We all should consider all factors before giving that opinion.

Agree. And most Auction houses will tell you that the best autograph collections also contain a meaningful percentage of fakes. It does, unfortunately, come with the territory of collecting autographs. And either you can stomach it or not.

Personally, I’d much rather be buying potentially authentic raw signed T206 cards from an old time collection for $250 like it was 2007 again, than dropping $6,000 on a never before heard of signed T206 of Billy Sullivan encapsulated by any of the TPAs without any context about where it came from. I’ve done both, and I can tell you which one feels better over time!

I wrote this is post 290 of this thread. IMO, This is the proper mindset for anyone collecting anything. There will always be bad people trying to take advantage of situations for power, money, control, etc. We all need to define our tolerance level for that risk. I collect autographs because I am comfortable with the risk that is involved. I take measures to try to mitigate that risk, but fully understand that my collection very likely has some bad items in it. Would I prefer them to not be there? SUre. unfortunately, the only way to guarantee that is to only collect autos I see signed in person. To me that would lessen my enjoyment of my hobby

Well said (again)!

I would think demand would go down big time. I'm just one person, but my dream has been to one day own a signed Goudey Ruth. I figured as long as it was authenticated by JSA I could be comfortable in that it was authentic. As I approach the time where I could afford such a purchase, I am no longer comfortable doing so.

Reminds me of the one time I did by an autograph 25 years ago. It came with a cert. The index card was signed "Robert Clemente", the description in the cert said the card was signed "Best Wishes, Robert Clemente". I called the seller and they said, "no problem, I'll have our auto guy draw up a new cert for you". I returned the card.

At least he didn’t say “no problem, I’ll have our auto guy add the ‘Best Wishes’ for you.”

Oh man, you just made me spit up my cereal and milk all over the keyboard. LOL

Because I mainly collect 52 Topps cards, although not signed ones, I have also noticed this lately. Someone on here said, it could be older collectors now selling off their old collections, which could very well be, but it seems odd to me that multiple old collectors would choose to do so at the same time?
I recently saved a random recently signed 52 Topps card just to see if I could find it unsigned somewhere prior but when I went into Worthpoint, there were 23 pgs of this players card so I went no further as I viewed it as a daunting task and without having any dog in the fight myself, a huge time killer.

I have also wondered, since joining this site, even if a signed card was purchased 20, 30, 40 years ago, how does one know, without provenance, if that signature is real? I have also always wondered, if the player had passed on prior to those years, what do TPAs use as their basis for comparison?

In my opinion, if the TPA's don't have/own something that acts as a certified template with undeniable provenance, then how can they 100% guarantee the sig is legit?
I think the only way of going forward from now on, and only if the test can be 100% guaranteed, carbon dating or something similar will now have to be used in order to bring some trust back into the hobby? Just my thoughts anyway.

EDIT: To add further to my thoughts above. Being as thousands and thousands of players have played, say, in just over the last century in all kinds of sports such as baseball, hockey, football and basketball, to name just 4, and you're out at a flea market, for example, and you come across a common, unheard of, forgotten about player's signed card. You purchase said signed card and you send it in to be authenticated. Please tell me what TPAs would use to authenticate the sig is 100% legit? Thinking further, even if we had carbon dating and it was proved the ink was of at least as old as the card, who's to say the sig wasn't signed back then by some kid or adult that was just goofing around playing with their card?

I agree 100%! Without pain there can be no gain, and if this situation isn't torn down to the very bottom, then there will always be doubt within the hobby and that side of the hobby, imo, will be forever scarred.

The reality is you can't KNOW that a signature is real unless you see it signed in person. Even if your best friend gives you a signed item, you still can't KNOW, as in absolutely certain. You believe the person is being honest as they are your friend, but you can't know it.

There are many items people use as exemplars based upon the preponderance of evidence. If it's good enough for our court system that can sentence people to life imprisonment or even possibly death, then it should be good enough for vetting autographs.

TPAs CAN NOT and DO NOT GUARANTEE ANYTHING except for witnessed events. The certification process is about them giving an opinion. That's it. They are no different than anyone on this board. We can all give our opinions based upon each of our own experience and knowledge. The only difference really is that the TPAs have convinced people that their opinion is worth paying for. People pay for them and then sleep better at night.

As I posted earlier, if you are only comfortable with 100% certainty, you should not collect ANYTHING. There is fraud in every single collectible market.

I added this above, Mark.

"EDIT: To add further to my thoughts above. Being as thousands and thousands of players have played, say, in just over the last century in all kinds of sports such as baseball, hockey, football and basketball, to name just 4, and you're out at a flea market, for example, and you come across a common, unheard of, forgotten about player's signed card. You purchase said signed card and you send it in to be authenticated. Please tell me what TPAs would use to authenticate the sig is 100% legit? Thinking further, even if we had carbon dating and it was proved the ink was of at least as old as the card, who's to say the sig wasn't signed back then by some kid or adult that was just goofing around playing with their card?"

I understand what you are saying but I honestly didn't realize there was so much blind faith/hope in the hobby, especially when large amounts of money are being laid down for said cards.

But like me and my sole purchase of a signed 52 Topps card, seeing it in a certified slab was enough for me.

This whole thread/situation has definitely been an eye opener for me even though I don't collect signed cards.

Like I have said numerous times since I joined this site back in 2016, I had no idea, gave it no thought whatsoever, that fraud would be so prevalent in this hobby or that it even existed.
Oh, how I have quickly learned! :(

Oh the irony of this SGC article.

So is PSA basically saying that their authentication team was rubbish around 2013?

What does that say for all the other autos PSA authenticated at that time? Like Goudeys, Play Balls, '52 Topps, etc? That's a little unsettling that PSA admits that.

When you think about it, no matter what they said would have been unsettling. If they had stood by it despite proof that it's fake (which would not be unprecedented a la Gretzky Wagner), if they admitted they blew it (then how many others did they blow?), or, the easiest route which they seem to taken.... blame it on guys that are no longer there and spin it as "we are continually working to make our team stronger."

I see this a little differently. The reality is that any authenticator can only give their opinion of the item at the time they have it. They gave their opinion based upon what they see now. They are allowed to disagree with previous employees, current employees, or even change their mind. This is what an opinion is. Nothing more nothing less. The people in 2013 gave their opinion. The people now gave theirs. We should be glad that the people doing it now are giving us their honest opinion and not just restating what the previous employees did.

To me this is the biggest reason stuff like this can happen. People abdicated the responsibility for doing their own research and the healthy skepticism needed when vetting any item just because a Third Party Authenticator gave their stamp of approval. As people learned, this goes the same for cards as well as autos.

What having a TPA did was make cards and autos commodities that required no expertise to buy and sell. In the old days, G-VG-Ex-ExMt-Mt could mean widely different things to people. Having a TPA was supposed to make all cards graded a 5 be in roughly the same condition. The likelihood is that card commerce on the internet has been greatly helped by the fact that people don't feel the need to inspect cards as closely before sale when they are slabbed as X grade. We know this does not always work and that is why so many people keep repeating the saying "buy the card, not the holder."

IMO, If all anyone ever looks at, is the slab or cert, it increases the likelihood they can be fooled based on that slab or cert. If you use the TPA opinion as one of MULTIPLE pieces of evidence, this would then have the possibility of increasing your safety margin. More data = opportunity to make a better decision. Now, we still might make an incorrect evaluation, but having more data points allows for higher probability of getting it right.

Where did this info come from about the Witherspoon books? Someone mentioned this on the autograph side last month, but I went back to the store and checked all of her signed books, I think they still had 5 of them and every single one had different characteristics. They were clearly not autopenned.

Amazon
 

Interesting on this guys Amazon account... I went back to the earliest feedback (9-24-2008) - He was selling autographs back then and was getting some Negative "FAKE Auto" feedbacks even then...

There was also a time when "tweener" grades like VG-EX, EX-MT, etc. were understood for what they truly were - proper ranges of condition meant to imply that different collectors can have different opinions. It was meant to be a helpful approximation. The result of what happened with the advent of TPG's was that those ranges in the 1980's and even early 90's are now supposedly (straight face here...) pinpoint accurate grades, and at least to some collectors this is taken to be deadly serious. You can even get half-grades "PSA 4.5 VG-EX+". What? That would probably be nonsensical to a 1980's collector if you went back in time. Shouldn't a VG-EX+ card be...um, simply "EX" if it was already on the border of that grade? I understand, I mean I get it should follow logically that what we have done over the last few decades is to make the scale more precise - but the problem with this in hobbies like coins and cards is that the more precision you try to squeeze into the scale, the more you run afoul of what different people think matters or does not matter for eye appeal - hence the controversy you see all the time on sites like this or on other social media sites today (Why didn't this card get an 8!? It's only a 7.5! I got cheated!!!) The move toward more precision streches the line that is already taught between aspects of technical grading that most people can agree with (i.e. any card with a true crease being "VG" or lower) vs. some of the more subtle aspects of eye appeal which can truly be subjective. PSA grading standards for a 5 EX say that "very minor rounding of the corners is becoming evident." Though most who collect graded cards today might actually be somewhat close to being on the same page as to what constitutes "5 corners" - tell me how that statement from PSA is ANYTHING but subjective - still today?

I will agree regretably that it seems like far too many collectors today do trust TPG's like PSA almost as the word of God. It's only when something really obvious like this comes out which is immediately controversial that some actually stop and think about the nature of a grade being an "opinion" and nothing beyond that.

I will also agree that for me personally, reputable TPG's are useful services for buying cards online / that I cannot physically inspect in my hands as if I were in a shop or at a show first. But beyond that - say what you will about collecting a few decades back. Even as kids - we were taught how to grade, what the subtle differences in condition were - why X card was NM and Y card was only EX...etc. etc. Now who today is really more of an expert - the graders at PSA who we cannot seem to get any information on in terms of their qualifications? Or hobbyists who have collected for decades on end and in some cases have literally had their hands on hundreds of thousands of cards?

I digress a bit as I don't collect autos and I'm sure there is another whole realm of TPA controversy over the evolution of the practice there...

Aren’t the 2013 guys competition for them now?

TPA opinions
 

When I used to set up at shows with (my friend) Kevin Keating, the well-known TPAs would frequently bring items over to solicit his opinion of them, and conversely on occasion he would want to know what they thought about pieces. If memory serves correctly, when the autograph side of PSA was first organized 20 years ago, it was a team effort whereby a number of their authenticators would "vote" on submissions to determine whether they got a pass or not. The fact that different authenticators might have different opinions about some autographs shouldn't be surprising to anyone. And it seems to me the fact that the current team at PSA would have the honesty and institutional freedom to reverse a prior authentication of their company should be applauded. What more could you ask of them? As for such divergent opnions on resubmitted items calling into question all opinions rendered by the prior authenticators, anyone is free to resubmit items they think might get a different opinion today.

I am sure everyone will be clamoring to pay PSA more money for somebody else to re-certify or un-certify their items.

A TPG renders an opinion. I don't think you can fault someone for their opinion on a given day when they assessed the authenticity of an item. It's the hobby that tries to twist TPG opinions into fact. I don't think the companies owe anyone anything if something they authenticated is later determined to be forged. It's the seller and AH that need to make things right. The TPG didn't benefit from the sale and they gave the submitter exactly what they paid for: an opinion.

:rolleyes: No, I don't think there will be a lot of that!

+1

+ 1

TPAs are useful independent opinions (It's wrong to say they're useless), but they are only one piece in the puzzle. Sellers and collectors should be using them as second opinions, not as the only opinions.

I think most people on Net54 know and do this, but clearly not everyone in and all segments of the hobby do.

My post that you quoted had the link to blowout showing autopen. It wasn't every copy, but seemed to be all the ones signed "X - Reese"

Thanks. Doesn’t look good. Looks like she started out by signing some of them, then got bored enough to use the auto pen. Last year B&N pulled all of their Brian Wilson books before Black Friday because they learned they were autopenned.

Just want to throw in my two cents regarding something I keep seeing repeated over and over - carbon dating is not applicable to ink.

For one, the amount of scientific uncertainty is too great to distinguish between decades, let alone years. We run many samples at work (I'm an archaeologist) and results are generally +/- hundreds of years. And second -- and perhaps most importantly -- carbon dating only applies to (formerly) living beings that took in carbon from the atmosphere.

Now, chemical analysis ("forensic analysis") can be performed on ink, as some people have alluded to. A mass spectrometer or x-ray fluorescence can be used to analyse the ink, but this does not date the ink. Instead, it determines the chemical makeup which can be directly compared to another sample. So, while useful in comparing 2 samples, it would have little practical use for authenticating a signature unless the composition of ink has varied significantly over the years. Someone had mentioned that this method would be destructive -- not necessarily.

Sorry, a bit off-topic but thought folks may find this interesting. Sadly the "forensic" future for autograph authentication looks grim. If anything, I feel like a good old fashioned microscope may be off some use to see how the ink interacts with the paper. I would imagine that ink that's been on paper for 100 years would look differently and react with the paper base differently than ink that's been applied a few months ago.

Interesting topic to think over, especially in light of these recent developments. Great detective work to everyone involved. I have no dog in the fight with the T206s (thought did consider bidding on a few recently), but am hoping my 33 Goudey collection is unscathed.

I agree, as long as they don't make a mistake. By that I mean authenticating something that CAN'T be real, such as signed on or with an item after death. Things of that nature aren't an opinion to me and is on them.

Awesome information Corey
 

Thanks for sharing

I told you weeks ago that a lot of the Witherspoon were autopenned and also some of the fields. But you blew me off like I had no idea what a autopen signature looks like.