Coach's Corner - The Perfect Crime?

[Mr. Zipper]

Originally Posted by Vintagedegu

This is close to what I've been thinking lately. Basically, what are the odds of a) so many rare vintage signatures being consigned each month, and b) basically all of them poor fakes?

Occasionally they might have some modern stuff from legit sources, so I'm looking at big-name vintage only, the Ruths and Mathewsons and Clarksons and nonsense like that. What are the odds of being wrong almost 100% of the time, for years? I don't have any hard numbers, but anecdotally speaking it seems that way; some absurdly high number. Authentication via dartboard would yield more accurate results.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were better odds of being correct every time than of being wrong all the time, particularly with people experienced in the memorabilia business.

I don't know exactly what's going on over there, but it sure is weird.

Criminal conspiracy is what's going on.

The sheer volume and percentage of fakes nullifies any possible "oops, bad opinion" defense. A monkey with a 50/50 chance of picking good/bad would have a higher accuracy than they do.