So what you're saying is that the cards from the Great Pittsburgh find are bad too. No, stop, it can't be.

Here's another tip: don't take expert advice from people who have been defrauded more than anyone seeking their advice.

Maybe I misinterpreted him on the McBride, but I thought he meant that those were all good, and this card is clean because if its provenance.

That may be but either way, the idea that people weren't forging signatures before 2007 is crazy. In every "find" there is a gap in the chain of custody which we fill in with hope, greed or some other sin. The values of these cards will reflect reality now, not hope.

Was there a lot of interest in Snowgrass, Doyle and others back in 2007 to warrant forgeries?

I wish it was as simple as using common sense here. That if there was little interest in a signed card it would be more likely to be real. Makes sense, except as we've learned, many forgeries are on small ticket items instead of the Babe Ruths. And it's not like autograph forgeries are a relatively new phenomenon. Remember, the $20 bill is the most counterfeited bill in the US, not the $50 or $100 bill.

People have been forging signatures on T206 cards since they were packing them with tobacco products. Through the mail autographs suffer from a chain of custody issue to be sure. I just happen to believe that the Pittsburgh Find cards have the some of the best provenance you can find if you choose to collect signed T206s. I am now going back over all of my emails from 2007 and piecing together as much additional corroborative circumstantial evidence as possible. I’ll publish it and let people believe what they want to believe.

If you have cards from the Great Pittsburgh Find, the Morey collection, or the recent Steiner Auction that you would like to sell now, please let me know.

Why somebody hasn't set up a transparent authentication service that employs a huge database of known transactions + AI (or, Mechanical Turk) is beyond me.

'Lenny and his loupe' may be enough for a grading service, but there are FAR better tools for authentication if anyone cared to use them. I'd love to buy a graded card knowing EXACTLY what databases were searched (examples: ebay sale date range, auction house list, known provenance chain) and if any red flags were raised.

I think this is definitely possible, but from I’ve seen people don’t want to pay for the cost a service like this would cost. Think about how much complaining is done about a $20 grading fee.

The irony is this type of authentication could be much less expensive.

Edit: should add I’m referring to authentication specifically against a “known universe” and not determining if a card is real more broadly

If people will consistently pay you to do something you don't have the expertise to do, then most people will keep on taking the money. 'Transparent ineptitude' is fine.

Also realize that too many collectors and dealers don't seriously care about authenticity. They just want a label or certificate to facilitate resale. Many people on the PSA registry don't care really care if their cards have been altered or misgraded. They only care about the number on the label.

I'm not an autograph person, but my friend is a serious and learned one. He does his own research and studies before, during and after buying-- and will agree and disagree with TPA verdicts--, but also knows the LOAs are useful for resale because many buyers go strictly by the TPA LOA. I also imagine that he thinks it useful to have someone else's (TPA) opinion on an autograph, even if he sometimes disagrees.

Cost. And known database pictures only go back 15 years and don’t begin to touch live sales at shows and stores and in private. This extra service would add little.

T206
 

Great point Jeff! Plus, I can say with 100% certainty that the major Authenticators place much more emphasis, time and due diligence on the Ruth’s, Cobb’s, Gehrig’s, Mathewson’s, etc. The TPG’s exemplar files for the major HOFs are so much more extensive from both a “good” vs. “bad” perspective. It’s much more difficult to pull off “fraud” on the higher-end scripts. Of course, this does not excuse them from not doing their homework on any autographs. When I purchase a valuable autograph, while I certainly need a respectable LOA, I always use my own common sense and expertise before pulling the trigger.

Who is this forger?
 

Are we ever going to learn the name of this asshole forger?

Ha, I know! I keep checking the thread, the suspense is killing me!

+1

I wouldn't expect AHs to give up names, but given the seriousness of the situation I don't think it would be unreasonable to expect them to make a statement about their assessment of and intended response to the problem. That doesn't seem too much to ask, does it? Perhaps it's too soon, but hopefully that will be forthcoming. They certainly are not shy in general about communicating.

hahahahahahaha

We're still waiting for one from PSA about the Gretzky Wagner.

Amen

And behind door number three... (drum roll)

It was Colonel Mustard all along.

Nope. It was Doctor Card ... in the basement ... with a Sharpie.

The most crucial revelation here is that TPA's never take provenance into consideration like they do in the art market. Someone sends in a group of super rare signed cards with shaky ballpoint pen signatures and if they match their exemplar file of other shaky ballpoint pen signatures, they pass. There are videos on YouTube of people that can draw extremely detailed sketches with ballpoint pens entirely from memory. What makes you think scribbling a shaky "Frank Baker" in blue ballpoint is impossible? It's the opposite of impossible. Anyone with even a functional level of manual dexterity and hand eye coordination can forge that.

They never ask the submitter where the cards came from, what estate they were purchased from, where the original TTM envelopes are, etc. If the submitter can't answer that with ironclad proof, the TPA's can always refuse to render an opinion. They don't have to reject them, but they don't have to certify them either.

This is a huge dilemma for the TPAs, because if they start doing that, then business dries up completely due to the fact there are only so many legitimate autographs in the market, and most are already certified. It stands to reason that a good bulk of their business is comprised of fakes that recently popped out of nowhere. The legacy stuff from the 70's/80's/90's/00's is already well known and you can only milk them for so much money in authentication fees before it becomes overkill (double, triple certs).

When you look at the public filings of PSA (Nasdaq: CLCT), you see that they make the bulk of their revenue on cards (a lot modern) and coins. On the other hand, JSA only authenticates autographs. They have nothing to fall back on. Are they betting that there is a never ending stream of undiscovered autographs out there to make money on? How can this be realistic?

The forger is one thing, but how about holding these auction houses and grading companies feet to the fire. Who are the authenticators, what are their qualifications and how much time are they spending on authenticating these signatures?

I wish people would stop making tangents in this thread; it's just cluttering up the thread and people who are looking for information can't find it (but since you started the thread, I guess it's okay).
But to your point, there are plenty of undiscovered autographs. How many uncertified collections of mailers from the 40s and 50s are still in attics? A lot. How many autographs from Hall of Famers have yet to be signed at shows JSA certifies their autos at. Authentic autographs will never dry up. Many haven't been found; who has troves of college yearbooks? High school homework assignments? cancelled bank checks? Ledger books? library check out cards? These are all places autographs come from and will continue to come from.

Is there anything new?

A lot? What's 'a lot'? They need a whole lot of 'a lot' to run a 100+ employee, 2 office interstate business. They need growth, and their fee schedule has modern autographs at like $20 a cert, most under $50. You can barely pay the notary that signs the COA for that kind of money. The vintage stuff is what pays $100-250 a cert. That's where the profit is.

Agree. When someone asks me for a formal opinion on something, I always ask where he got it, even if the answer is just going to be what auction.

Look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV0BTEPriFA.

Look at the amazing precision and pen control that guy has.

Now look at this Frank Baker.

Yeah.

?man
 

Not likely on this site Eric. Instead of being given the chance to check our collections to see if we have any dealings with this douche, we're told to be patient.

simmer down. there are things that are of more importance than the typical net 54 mob extracting its pound of flesh. you have gone a couple years not knowing this forger or forgers existed. is it really going to kill you to wait a few more days or even a week?

In another week this will have been forgotten and we will be onto a new scammer we will care about for a few days.:)

I think one of the biggest revelations I have had from this whole nasty, grimey situation is how little effort the TPG’s and TPA’s put into documenting the items that pass through their hands.

I am a collector at heart. As a collector at heart, I am, also, and accumulator. And as such, if I were running a multimillion dollar TPG/TPA I would certainly have accumulated a database of every single item that has passed through the hands of my people.

Every item would have been scanned front and back and been assigned a number to which every item could be referenced at any given time.

Could you imagine if in the last 20 years of grading the database that would have been accumulated? It would be so easy for fraud and forgeries to be ferreted out. Trimmings, alterations, etc would pop like color on a black canvas.

It seems to me such a wasted opportunity for those in control of TPG/TPA’s to have documented their entire history of submissions.

I can’t imagine how much easier it would be for law enforcement to know who and what was submitted at any given time.

And talk about provenance? Their information would be worth millions alone!

Crossovers would be able to be tracked and pop reports across the board would be so much more accurate.

As it stands now, if one wanted to dump the market on a certain grade card all they have to do is keep cracking the same cards and resubmitting them to artificially inflate the population, thus, essentially, destroying a market for any individual card.

It would have taken seconds per transaction to have scanned and documented every submission, now it’s just been a wast of nearly 20 years worth of data.

Oh the hobby...always so slow to embrace technology.


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T206 scandal
 

In response to Frank & others, Leon made it clear on an earlier post, I will gladly explain why public posting is not prudent at this time:

#1- This criminal activity is being handled by legal authorities and they will be better in finding the actual leaders and forgers if we do not allow the perpetrators to crawl back under their rocks, which may have occurred anyway since none of us initially realized the extent of this criminal activity.
#2-I do not know the name of the specific buyer of my Baker card, I do know the location, but there is enough info already out there to know the autograph hobby has severe vulnerabilities and your "dealings" were probably not with this guy anyway. The behind the scenes group that used various people to swindle grading services and authenticators are sophisticated and intentional, if you bought authenticated signed items, you should really care to wait until the investigations are done and its best to leave specifics off public forums in order to actually GET THIS RESOLVED which everyone in the hobby will benefit from.
#3-EVERYONE THAT CARES ABOUT THIS HOBBY, as a collector, dealer, authenticator or grading service knows that this forgery association has infiltrated certain high end items, not just common autographs and luckily manny(set builder) figured the tip of the iceberg out initially and there are now many people that care and are knowledgeable involved...THIS SITUATION is a toxic poison that must be RID of so its in everyone's best interest to stick together and educate yourselves. Most of those fake T206's are not even that good, but good enough to pass authentication so everyone needs to re learn the wheel and pray the good guys get these poisonous vermon. Also WATCH the video that Manny has posted on the net54 boards just recently, if you can see how amazing this one artist is with a pen, then imagine worldwide how many artists have the talent to reproduce a signature.

Are you kidding? There must be blood. And it must be public.

T206 scandal
 

Manny- You are a very funny guy....and had great insight to stir up this hornets nest!

I think that view is shortsided. The culprits already know they're found out. If we get the eBay IDs and names of the people, we can crowdsource the identification of more fraud examples. Why slow play the peeling of the onion at this point?
Are they still a registered eBay user?

The question, or a question, for me is: is it really as easy to do a credible copy of a signature as it looks?

Take a pen and paper and after 2000 tries let us know.:D

This can’t be... Net54 memes? I like it.

+1


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Guess the hobby is getting quicker at this technology thing than I thought. ;)


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Let's say it's a crew of butt heads pulling this off.

If given the choice of having the crew prosecuted to the maximum possible penalty or having them get a plea deal where they disclose the entire operation and provide as much information on all of the forgeries they created, which would you like to see?

This is all going to take a while once LE gets involved. It'll all come out at some point in time.

It would just be nice to be able to dole out a little vigilante justice. Could you imagine how much money a charity could make if there was an auction to let the winner beat the living crap out of the perps.

I bet you this forger’s Mom brought him a plate of T206s but he hit them on the floor out of her hands and screamed, “ This isn’t fair. I was supposed to fool them all.I was the smart one. F**k Manny and his great detective work.”

REEEEEE

T206 scandal
 

responding to john...

#1-The guy on e bay did not sell fake material, he most likely bought material thru e bay, probably all legit and some were used in the criminal activity that was submitted to 3rd party services, and he sold low end authentic autographs and vintage baseballs that were legit maybe as a smoke screen. You already know where the good fake items went..major AH's, possibly high end e bay autograph dealers, look up every major AH last 3-5 years history, that is how you can tell and network...also PSA & SGC have pop reports of signed T206's so you can at least tell how many are out there...What is worse is how many vintage balls, photos and other items could have been authenticated.
#2-Since the net54 membership knows there is a problem, everyone can check there own inventory/collection regarding signed items and if you feel suspicion about the item, there are enough knowledgeable guys on active list like Richard Simon, Bill P. etc. that can tell real autographs better than most of the authentication services, and ask them.
#3-It is in my opinion, the best interest of everyone is to let the authorities handle this, many key people in the hobby know how important it is to get these forgers out of the hobby, and this will be my last post.

We collect enough donations to build a Net54 forger’s prison where we house the forger. We make him wear Cleveland Browns jerseys as a prison uniform and feed him nothing but cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli while he spends 23 hours a day opening and meticulously sorting late 1980’s baseball card wax packs. For 10 years.

Nothing but ‘88 Donruss & ‘92 Triple Play for the rest of his miserable life.

Except for the Browns jerseys, that sounds like most of my 20's.... :o

For canned, Chef Boyardee isn't bad.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 New International Version (NIV)
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.