Very, very, interesting...

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

That's true in the fine art world, as well. But museums and individuals still collect. And I, for one, am quite thankful that they (especially museums) do.

I have no problem with this at all, but I have to say if it were not for this board and all the educated autograph collectors I would think anything with a JSA/PSA cert was 100% legit.

[travrosty]

A lot of people still do think that. they think 100 % legit if it has abc or xyz but the word is slowly getting out.

The well told tales like they only make 1 mistake out of 1000, or that if it has abc or xyz it is as good as gold and you can take it to the bank without any authenticity concerns really does a disservice to the collecting public.

Misinformation like these can travel halfway around the world, while the truth is still putting its shoes on.

I used to believe it, but then went looking for the truth, found it, and it was beyond my wildest dreams of what and how i thought a third party authentication firm could and should operate. totally shocking.

knowledge is power.

[RichardSimon]

Originally Posted by travrosty

Misinformation like these can travel halfway around the world, while the truth is still putting its shoes on.

If you are gonna semi-quote Mark Twain, at least give him credit .

[mschwade]

Got the mail today and saw a brochure or some kind of advertising book aimed at Cosigners from Heritage and how much money they've sold some of their high value items at. On the cover, coming from the Lou Gehrig collection, I couldn't help but notice the Babe Ruth signature on the 1926 Yankees signed baseball. There's no slanted e in Babe on this baseball either and I have serious doubts that someone else signed the Babe's name for the Iron Horse's baseball-- if in fact, it was from Lou Gehrig's collection.

[travrosty]

that ball is interesting, it matches fairly well with the ball that pete nash put up as a ruth ball that ron k. thought was good, which is the one below.

Notice how both balls have flow to them, they have light portions, dark portions to the signature. The way the captial R is made, the way the h is made. You can just tell they are real.

Now let's go to the 300,000 dollar ball. It has no real flow, it is uniform, monotone, uncharacteristically even, with the same pressure throughout. so do a lot of the other questionable balls.

the two above have characteristics of a Ruth dashing off a signature on a ball. the rest have characteristics of a 'planned' signature. steady, even pressure without the flow and ebb and tide like the real ruths show.

here are the good ruths (3), then questionable ones (2), then the good one again closeup. notice the montone of the questionable balls, and the light and dark portions and flow of the good ruth balls. I think the closeups of the questionable Ruth balls really tell the tale.These high dollar ruth balls with the monotone look? Looks like they were signed very evenly and slow.

The funny thing about the LOA's is that the verbiage says that these balls are "consistent regarding flow, pen pressure" etc. with other exemplars we have seen in our professional career. Where is the flow and the varying of pen pressure? What other non flow and even, monotone pen pressure exemplars did they use to okay these questionable balls?

[David Atkatz]

You've nailed it, Travis. There's no variation in pressure, at all. Nor is there any variation in line-width. For one who normally uses a fountain pen (e.g., Ruth) there are variations in line-width caused by the direction of motion of the nib. Motion perpendicular to the nib plane produces a thicker line than motion parallel to the plane. None of that in the "record-breakers."