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.