Scary news regarding fake autographs
NickM
Posts: 4,895 ✭✭✭
I got a message today from a friend who works in law enforcement. There was a search warrant executed in Florida recently on a mall store that sold autographed items from sports, music, TV/movies, etc. It was apparently not part of one of the chains.
The officers found, among other obviously fake autographs, shipping boxes in the back room containing sizable quantities of supposedly autographed posters. The boxes were marked as having been shipped from China.
We could be seeing an explosion of fake autographs in all fields.
Nick
The officers found, among other obviously fake autographs, shipping boxes in the back room containing sizable quantities of supposedly autographed posters. The boxes were marked as having been shipped from China.
We could be seeing an explosion of fake autographs in all fields.
Nick
Reap the whirlwind.
Need to buy something for the wife or girlfriend? Check out Vintage Designer Clothing.
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I work in the food industry and lived through the melamine issue as well as other Chinese food safety issues not publicized (heavy metal and carcinogens) to not be surprised at what they would do for money.
Go to China and see how cheap you can find DVD's of movies still in our theatres.
I think more than any other collectible other than game-used/worn items, autograph collecting requires the collector to do a lot of research and studying before jumping in.
You have to know the signing habits and patterns of the people whose autographs you're collecting. You need to know what their autograph looks like. You also need to know not only what items the person would sign, but even more, if there are certain items they would not sign. For instance, take astronaut Neil Armstrong; he has not signed any postal items since 1971. Since, like most other people, his signature has changed over the years, you need to match the style of the signature to the item. If you see a postal cover signed by Armstrong, and the signature style dates it to the 1980's, then the signature is bad. To use a baseball player as another example, I've read that there is a particular baseball card that Gary Carter will not sign. Evidently, he signed one years ago for a charity, and vowed that it would be the only one of that particular card that he would ever sign. Additionally, you need to know if they used an autopen, and if so, you need to familiarize yourself with the autopen pattern(s). Again taking Neil Armstrong as an example, he had at least eight different autopen patterns over the years. You also need to know if the person used "secretaries" or clubhouse personnel to do their signing. You also need to know how much the person's autograph normally sells for.
Additionally, you need to make sure the item could have been signed by the person. I remember back after Roger Maris died, baseballs would show up purportedly signed by him. A check of the baseballs' markings however, showed that the balls weren't even made until after Maris had died. So...there is no way those signatures could possibly be real.
You also need to stick with buying from reputable dealers. Don't go to the "fly-by-nights" or dealers who offer their items too cheaply. Look for dealers who offer "lifetime guarantees" on their items. Needless to say, again, this requires one to stay with the larger, well-known dealers, as really, anyone can offer a "lifetime guarantee". If the dealer isn't one who's going to be around 5-10 years from now though, how good is that guarantee, really? Also, if you know a certain autograph should sell for $100, don't buy one from someone who's offering it to you for $10, unless you are absolutely 110% CERTAIN that the autograph is authentic!
In addition to baseball/football/basketball/hockey autographs, I also collect those from astronauts and some Hollywood movie/television stars. I tend to rely on dealers who specialize in one of these areas. For instance, if I'm looking for an Apollo astronaut, I'll go to a dealer who specializes in astronauts. Same with the other genres. There are plenty of these dealers out there.
If you do all this, you should be ok. I'm not saying that you won't still get "taken", but the chances of that will be greatly diminished.
Steve
95% of the fakes out there don't even look close to being authentic. It's just the buyer didn't do their homework to see what an authentic autograph would look like.
There are so many fakes on ebay right and on other websites, and people are buying them.
If you are going to collect autographs, it would be wise to learn about the market before your first purchase, unless its from a company that conducts private signings such as Steiner, UDA, MM, etc.
I have probably wasted 1000's of hours since the age of 13 (when we first had internet in our household) researching autographs, learning different autograph changes that players have, browsed 100's of exemplars of a player, reading books on autographs and the like, but I am at the point to where I am comfortable evaluating an autograph before I purchase it.
Most of the people who purchase fake autographs are the ones that aren't involved directly with the sports memorabilia hobby.
A mom buys her son an Ichiro signed baseball for his birthday. A wife buys her husband a signed football of Johnny Unitas because he was his childhood hero.
This is where most of the problem is. People who don't know about what their buying, but since it's on ebay or from a fancy website, it must be authentic.
How to clean that up? I have no idea.....
sorry for the long post, Iv'e been throwing back a few of these
I swear, it's really getting me to the point where I just want to sell out of everything, buy a house, and not be bothered any longer. Then again, with my luck, it'll have Chinese drywall problems.
The economics of Chinese mass production can make it cost-effective for them to forge large quantities of even the players who are (or were) fixtures on the show circuit. In fact, it might be easier to sneak large quantities of those fakes into the marketplace without arousing much suspicion. After all, who would notice a seller with hundreds of signed photos of Bob Feller, Rollie Fingers, Gaylord Perry, Monte Irvin, Brooks Robinson, Duke Snider, Lou Boudreau, etc. - and no one generally submits those for third party authentication unless they're specifically working on a slabbed set of cards.
The time and effort that new collectors will be required to put in to keep from getting defrauded is rather high, and I doubt most people will put it in. When a scam company like Ne Autographs (the same guys who spammed us 2 days ago with their website full of bad fakes of Belushi, the Beatles, Elvis, Bogart, Ali, Brando, major movie full casts, etc) appears as one of the 3 sponsored links on Google for searches like "movie star autographs" or "autographed movie posters", lots of people will assume that makes them legitimate and buy their forgeries. [Side note: their poor and stilted English, combined with some rather odd phrases, suggests that they are from a country with rather different grammatical rules than English has. I would not be surprised at all if they are part of the Chinese connection.]
Nick
Reap the whirlwind.
Need to buy something for the wife or girlfriend? Check out Vintage Designer Clothing.
NE Autographs website is humorous. If you see them advertising on Google, click the link...then send an email to Adwords telling them about the mountain of fake goods they're allowing to be sold on their pages.
adwords-support@google.com
In their case, Anthony Daniels (C3PO) is exposing them as sellers of forgeries of his signature, so I have evidence even Google should accept.
Nick
Reap the whirlwind.
Need to buy something for the wife or girlfriend? Check out Vintage Designer Clothing.
Kiss me twice.....let's party.
was just crappy, looked like some 3rd grader wrote it, was just scribble. All the autos I have and have seen are nice and all about
the same. I asked them once, and told them there was no way it was real, and they just laughed at me, and told me they had a
COA with it, and it was real.
<< <i>The government won't let me buy Cuban cigars or anything else from Cuba, but I can buy any fake thing I want from China. The Chineese do make a fine counterfeit. I imagine them having access to pretty much anything they would need. Their fake Jordan shoes are not just sewn together leather, they fake the boxes, nike labels, tags, stickers, shoe paper and they now include fakes of any jumbo card or keychain that came with the shoes. I am really worried about all the fake U.S. currency they are printing....oh wait, that is our government doing that. >>
The dirty little secret that nobody wants to admit to is that a LOT of counterfeits are made right in the exact same plants as the legit stuff. Happens with sports jerseys all the time. They run 1 or 2 shifts of legit stuff, then run another shift of counterfeits. The difference is that the legit ones get legit lettering, tags, etc, on them where the bootlegs get lesser quality stuff.
Do a search on Ebay sometime of any big-name player. 95-99% of the jerseys you see will be bootlegs. Has to be the highest percentage of counterfeit merchandise of any segment of Ebay. Heck, Ebay a couple years ago included a bootleg jersey in their Christmas "catalog" and used an average price driven down by bootlegs to highlight the great deals to be found there.
Tabe