That's the question. Much has been said about the number of fake/forged signatures circulating in the market today. The industry has really enjoyed a boom that started in the late 80s/early 90s. Unfortunately, with rising prices and sought after big name autographs came scammers, cheats and frauds looking to make a quick buck off excited too trusting collectors. These fraudsters exist, because these collectors exist. A little common sense and a little research is all that's required to keep your money out of their greedy pockets.
If an autograph looks legit to you, but you do not consider yourself an expert in the field, there are a couple of steps you should take before purchasing. The first is to research the seller. For company names, there's Google. If there's no information about the company on the internet, there's a giant red flag. There are communities of collectors on the internet, 'Autograph Magazine Live' comes to mind, where you can ask about a company, an individual seller, or even get educated opinions on the autograph in question. I get calls at our store every week asking my opinion on an individual seller or a certain autograph, and I'm always glad to help out.
And now Ebay. Well, there's probably more autographs bought/sold on Ebay than every other source combined! There are reputable sellers on Ebay, there are plain all-out fraudsters that should be charged or at least expelled from Ebay, and there are casual sellers which may be selling fake autographs they think are real, having bought them somewhere without doing their research first. Don't depend on Ebay to weed out the bad ones- Ebay's raking in commissions from the fraudsters too, so they're not too worried about you getting taken for a ride. If the item you're buying has a Certificate of Authenticity from a reputable company (which we'll list later), you're pretty much good to go. In the absence of a good COA, check the sellers feedback rating and click on it and read any negative feedback the seller has. If any say the autograph didn't pass an authenticity submission, you may want to steer clear of this seller. Don't count on this alone though, also check to see the other autographs this seller is listing. If the seller has a multitude of VIPs (Jordans, Bryants, Mantles, Gretzkys, Ali's, Eastwoods, Stallones, Michael Jackson et al), chances are they are not real. If you say, 'yeah but this Schwarzenegger looks really real' - do this: when looking at the sellers other items, type in Arnold's name in the sellers search bar. How many of this signature does he have for sale? And then...this is important...move your mousy to the left of the screen and click on 'sold'. You may notice he's been selling this same insanely hard-to-get autograph over and over again for a long time. Use your common sense now. Has Arnold been reported missing? Perhaps this guy has him chained up in his basement? Common sense will save you a bunch of $ in most instances.
We learned our lessons early on. Having been dealing in autographs for 30 years, we have been duped more than once. Our buying policy was pretty lax in the beginning - yes, we were trusting souls. Now we follow a strict buying policy to ensure authenticity, dealing with only certain companies/individuals which hold frequent signings with athletes/entertainers, or at least ensure an autograph has a COA from one of our approved 3rd party authenticators. That's not to say you can't buy an autograph from someone who obtained it in-person, in fact, we've obtain some very nice autographs on occasion doing just that. But, again, we've been at it for 30 years, and have bought/sold most every signature out there, and you develop an eye for the good stuff after years of study. Any autograph we obtain that we deem to be worth over a certain amount still gets sent for authentication from one of the big three - JSA, PSA/DNA or Beckett. I'll get into them in another post soon.
It's a great hobby and can be very profitable/investment worthy if you know what to look for. There's another topic for a future blog...what makes a good investment.