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QVC auto'd baseballs...Mantle, Williams...etc. Legit?
fmclaug11
Posts: 330 ✭✭✭
I have an opportunity to buy some signed baseballs supposedly from QVC. Should I stay away, or were the baseballs coming from QVC legit? I read somewhere that they were supplied by Scoreboard...?
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Mike
12-30-2008, 08:44 AM
Written By:
19Braves77
Charter Member
One of my favorite things to do while traveling, is to visit small flea markets and look for autographs. Nearly 40% of the stuff I see at dirt cheap prices are items with a Scoreboard COA. I had a history with this company in my teenage years and have items to match stuff with the new stuff I find. People for the most part avoid these items but for the 1st 5 years of being in business they were legit. It was a company started by a father and son. They started out selling lots of cards from factory sets/vending boxes from previous years with Topps and Donruss and also with Score in 1988. They would then cherry pick all the star players and RC's and repackage the commons in lots of 100. These repackage lots would end up in stores like Will-Co and Toys R Us. They decided to start a Tristar/Steiner type business by selling sports autographs that helped pay the way for Upper Deck to do their exclusive with Reggie Jackson in 1990.
Shortly, the company became a public stock option. 70% of their business was thru QVC home shopping network. The other 30% of business came from a card distributor called Smokey's Warehouse that operated in Las Vegas. Smokey's supplied card shops and dealers with the autographs obtained by Scoreboard. Scoreboard's problems started when the dad Paul Goldin dies in 1994 and the son takes over. The company would later go bankrupt in 1998 due to poor business decisions outside of sports autographs. They started their own card company, ruined Classic, signed a huge contract with Madonna, and also had signed a contract with George Lucas to release Star Wars memorabilia.
It was later discovered thru Operation Bullpen that Smokey's obtained the templates/copies for the COA's along with the COA embosser from Scoreboard while acquiring a large amount of Scoreboard's inventory. A company called Athlon acquired a large portion also. Smokey's then started counterfeiting autographs due to them not being able to fill large orders that were placed before Scoreboard went out of business. Instead of canceling the orders, they fulfilled them by faking the autographs and later selling them on Ebay. However, a good many real autographs with Scoreboard COA pop up. Below are some helpful hints to help you find these dirt cheap gems:
Athletes that they had signed for in baseball the honest years are:
Jose Canseco, Bo Jackson, Darryl Strawberry, Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, Hank Aaron, Roger Clemens, Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Nolan Ryan, Sandy Koufax, Reggie Jackson, Barry Bonds, Allen Iverson, Stephon Malbury, Shaq, Drew Bledsoe, Dale Earnhardt Sr, and Jeff Gordon.
Scoreboard had a hard time selling the Dimaggio's. Scoreboard paid him something in the range of 6 million dollars over the course of 3 yearsto sign for them so Scoreboard could have the exclusivity of his signed baseballs coming only from them. Scoreboard, of course, has to charge in the $300 and up range to see their exclusivity pipedream come to monetary fruition. Joe's Scoreboard commitment ends, he then goes out on the show circuit, full time. He turns around and tells the promoters to charge $175 for a flat and $150 for baseballs. Scoreboard made no money off of Joe.
Also, the majority of fake Scoreboard items are from Joe and Mickey Mantle.
Score Board photos have a sticker on the back with "Q/A" on it.
These players mostly only signed flats and balls with the exception of Strawberry, Jose Canseco and Bo Jackson signing Jersey's. If you see a Mickey Mantle bat with a Scoreboard COA, it wasn't signed by Mantle with Scoreboard present for the signing. I would question any bats with a Scoreboard COA.
Joe Montana & Wayne Gretzky did sign for Scoreboard but they were under contract with Upper Deck the most part. The item amount they sign had to be small.
Most of the "NFL" Score Board items will have a NFL Logo on the Cert. and came with an "NFL" sticker to correspond with the color logo on they yellow cert. BUT... some are black and white as well.
Scoreboard never did a signing with Micheal Jordan. Jordan was the Goldin's dream client.
You will see a lot of jersey's of Starberry, Bo Jackson and Jose Canseco being called game used that would have never fit on either player and the tags will also not match up.
The Cassius Clay/Mohammed Ali Pro Line cards with a Scoreboard COA on Ebay are all fake if it is stamped.
The only card redemption that could have been filled after 1998 is any auto by Kobe Bryant. Kobe's contract with Scoreboard did not expire until 2002. You will see a lot of cards with a Scoreboard stamp and COA saying its was a redemption. The majority of the redemptions were never filled. The ones that were filled were mostly on bats and they came with too many different wood colors and COA's. I would stay away from all bats.
Stay away from all Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire Autographed items. These were the 1st targets of Operation Bullpen.
The only Score Board Erving auto cards I know of are the 1978 Topps numbered to /1978.
The Star Trek autos were obtained by a 3rd party and never signed in front of a Scoreboard employee.
For cards, they never had a contract with Upper Deck or Fleer to buy their cards in bulk. With a lot of their basketball autograph signings, these cards were signed on Classic cards.
With the COA's. stay away from the ones that are signed by the son Ken Goldin or John White. You want the COA'S signed by the father, Paul Goldin on thick card stock dated before 1995 with the Goldin Sports round affixed to it. The Score Board "newer" COAs actually have a SB watermark on the back.
On Ebay, ask the seller if they still have the QVC receipt for the item. Many times they will and the invoice will help you date the item.
In conclusion, this is just half of it. If you stay with your Albert Belle and Dale Murphy type stuff from Scoreboard it was real. I went to Smokey's when the were legit one day with dad when we owned a shop in 1991 and we were picking out dozens of balls for each player among 3000 balls. You literally had a warehouse full of autographs doing nothing but gathering dust. I would love to find some old QVC christmas catalogs to compare items in the future.
30
If you can posts some scans of the pieces you are considering buying, I can help you from there..
<< <i>you can add Cal Ripken Jr's name to the list of signers during Scoreboard's "honest years." >>
I hope you are serious. I have an auto'd Ripken ball with a Scoreboard COA that my mother-in-law bought me about 5 or 6 years ago.
But they went to the darkside making the COA basically worthless.
Didn't Kenny Goldin own that company?
He was the shill that would be on the phone while Don West blabbed
how this lot was crazy.....
Steve
And Joe loved that. he hated for anyone to make money on his name.
Steve
<< <i>
<< <i>you can add Cal Ripken Jr's name to the list of signers during Scoreboard's "honest years." >>
I hope you are serious. I have an auto'd Ripken ball with a Scoreboard COA that my mother-in-law bought me about 5 or 6 years ago. >>
post a scan of it and I can confirm it's authenticity...Ripken was a prolific signer for Scoreboard/Paul & Kenny Goldin for nearly 10 years
<< <i>100% legit >>
Sweet! Still has the $150 price tag on the holder.