You make some good and valid points. I think discussing authenticators is critical to educating the public. There are too many dealers who, as you say, "has no idea what he is doing or who to trust and blindly buys stuff and submits it and relies on the authenticators to know what is good and bad." These dealers are passing the responsibility for authenticity (which should be their primary job as an autograph dealer) to a bunch of corrupt, incompetent idiots.
You say, "One of the most trusted sellers of autographs is a consultant for one of the authenticators. Are you implying that he has no idea what he is doing. Yeah right..."
So what. There are tens of thousands of different celebrities that these companies claim to be able to authenticate. This seller may be familiar with, at most, a couple hundred, and even with those, the variations in how/when/where autographs are signed makes his familiarity worth very little.
The autograph seller in question is easily familiar with 1000's of celebrities and sees thousands of autographs every month and was my mentor at one point.
But more importantly we need to do our part to bring fun and education to this hobby. I believe that eBay and, back in the day, Yahoo auctions made it easy for all orders of scum to print photos and peddle their forgeries to a mostly unsuspecting audience. Luckily there has been a shift at eBay (I help daily with removal of bad sellers) and Yahoo is gone. The only real big danger ,in my opinion, is Amazon. Already several well known scumbags have accounts there and are pushing their junk on another mostly innocent audience.
Again we just need to educate as best we can and over time there will be a shift.
The universe pays attention to what we focus on. If we focus on the negative we will get more of it. I find it is best to focus on the positive.
You make some good and valid points. I think discussing authenticators is critical to educating the public. There are too many dealers who, as you say, "has no idea what he is doing or who to trust and blindly buys stuff and submits it and relies on the authenticators to know what is good and bad." These dealers are passing the responsibility for authenticity (which should be their primary job as an autograph dealer) to a bunch of corrupt, incompetent idiots.
You say, "One of the most trusted sellers of autographs is a consultant for one of the authenticators. Are you implying that he has no idea what he is doing. Yeah right..."
So what. There are tens of thousands of different celebrities that these companies claim to be able to authenticate. This seller may be familiar with, at most, a couple hundred, and even with those, the variations in how/when/where autographs are signed makes his familiarity worth very little.
The autograph seller in question is easily familiar with 1000's of celebrities and sees thousands of autographs every month and was my mentor at one point.
But more importantly we need to do our part to bring fun and education to this hobby. I believe that eBay and, back in the day, Yahoo auctions made it easy for all orders of scum to print photos and peddle their forgeries to a mostly unsuspecting audience. Luckily there has been a shift at eBay (I help daily with removal of bad sellers) and Yahoo is gone. The only real big danger ,in my opinion, is Amazon. Already several well known scumbags have accounts there and are pushing their junk on another mostly innocent audience.
Again we just need to educate as best we can and over time there will be a shift.
The universe pays attention to what we focus on. If we focus on the negative we will get more of it. I find it is best to focus on the positive.
Look, I have been an active in person collector since 1988 and a full time dealer since 2000. I have obtained tens of thousands of autographs in person. But that doesn't make me or anyone with similar backgrounds capable of determining the authenticity of even a SMALL FRACTION of the autographs on the market. The entire concept of third party authentication is absurd, especially when these companies will offer an opinion on anyone and everyone, and refuse to admit their own ignorance and incompetence. I'm sure you also know that all of these companies are known to give thumbs up to dealers they like. They have countless conflicts of interest.
I completely agree with you about Amazon. That is by far the worst place for an uneducated buyer to shop for autographs. Amazon is flooded with fakes and I have that posted all over my website. Amazon knows about the problem but they would rather collect the fees than try to prevent their customers from getting ripped off. Because Amazon has a better overall reputation than eBay, people will continue throwing away money on Amazon while avoiding eBay (which actually has quietly cleaned up its site over the last few years).
