Sports Autographs

orutulsa

This may be more suitable for the Autographs board, but there's so little traffic there, I thought I'd ask here.

I keep seeing slabbed psa/dna 3x5 index cards for sale on ebay. Does anyone know if you take the card out of the slab whether there is anything on the card besides an invisible dna strain that verifies that it has been PSA/DNA certified? Or does removing the card from the slab make it impossible for the common person to recognize that it has been certified because the matching certification number is only on the flip, which has now been removed?

Related to that, does anyone know whether psa/dna automatically slabs all 3x5s sent in for authentication, or is there some sort of option to just have the invisible dna added along with a certification sticker on the back?

And I guess that while I'm on the topic, I'll toss out one more question. I saw on Ebay a 550 count lot of signed index cards which came with a PSA/DNA Letter of Authenticity (LOA). Does anyone know if, in a lot like this, each individual card is tagged overtly with a certification tag and covertly (with a dna strain) so that one could keep some and sell the unwanted ones as PSA/DNA certified? If not, and all there is is the LOA, what keeps the original seller from forging a bunch of autographs and substituting them into the lot once the LOA has been received?

It also appears that in this particular case, the LOA is for “1000s” of signed index cards. How does one then sell these in groups of 550 and provide an LOA for each group?

Thanks for any insights you can provide!

wufdude

Hopefully I'll be answering your questions correctly.

I am pretty sure that an autographed 3 x 5 that has been slabbed does not have any kind of DNA strain on the actual 3x5 just as a slabbede autographed card does not have any kind of DNA. I believe that the slabbing of the 3x5s is through the $20 service however, if you send anything (card, 3x5, 8x10, etc.) through the actual PSA/DNA process and pay the increased fees, you then get the sticker on the item and I guess some sort of DNA strain applied.

As far as the large lots certified by PSA/DNA, I don't believe there is anything on these either that notes that each has been certified. I think the letter indicates that the certification is for just that, a large lot of autos, and may list some of the more significant ones. I have bought a few HOF autographed football cards that were a part of a large lot certified by PSA/DNA and only received a copy of the cert letter. To my knowledge, there is nothing on the actual card.

If someone understands these issues differently, please let us know.

baseballfanatic

There is nothing on the cards, and they usually come from reputable sellers in large lots from Mastros, etc, So they just get a "quick" glance and going over before getting a "blanket" letter covering all of the cards (i.e. Group of 1,500+ signed index cards). PSA will slab the cards for the slabbing fee with the ORIGINAL letter from PSA/DNA. The sellers of the large lots usually break them up and supply a photo copy of the original letter as proof. PSA will not accept a photo copy of a PSA/DNA letter, so if you want to have them slabbed you will have to pay from scratch for the authenticating fees plus the slabbing fees (meaning the letter has no use)............

orutulsa

So what keeps an unscrupulous owner of a large lot from switching out some or all of the signed items with forgeries and then sending them off to a buyer along with a copy of the PSA/DNA letter of authenticity? Seems like if there's no authenticity identifier on the actual item, then there's no way to know if that item was even physically in the original lot that PSA/DNA signed off on.

baseballfanatic

Bingo