In light of T206 fiasco...
 

What do you think will happen?
Will prices of vintage signed cards plummet?
Will it all be forgotten in a few months?
Obviously a few fakes will slip through the cracks?
How many of us will be motivated to get out of the hobby?
Will prices rise with diminished supply? Will those of us with fakes be motivated to fill in the holes in our collection that opened or will we be too skeptical
Many possibly scenarios- any ideas?
So far I have one bad one (Flick). My Crawfords and another Flick seem good so far and the 8 or more Marquards look good (tho one is the sig auction one that the first discovered fake was modeled after). Wouldn't be surprised if others of mine turn out bad. And that doesn't include T205, 202, 201 etc

What do you think will happen?
-Time to shake the tree... the damages are adding up fast.

Will prices of vintage signed cards plummet?
-No.

Will it all be forgotten in a few months?
-Yes, but not totally forgotten.

Obviously a few fakes will slip through the cracks?
-Without a doubt.

How many of us will be motivated to get out of the hobby?
-I don't think it will be a lot. Maybe a few. Last time (IMO) there was a recent big hobby shift was when "The List" was release of the shill bidding. Confidences were dropped...auction houses responded. I feel the same with this. Confidences will drop..but they're be an appropriate respond to help ease collectors ( from AH's...TPGs etc..)

Will prices rise with diminished supply? Will those of us with fakes be motivated to fill in the holes in our collection that opened or will we be too skeptical.Many possibly scenarios- any ideas?
-Really hard to tell what will happen. Too soon.

That's a lot of questions:)
My heart is pretty sad tonight as I read about more and more of these popping up. I'll just stick to one question for the time being, and that is if this will have an impact on signed T206 card prices? I think the answer to that is definitely yes at least for the time being. It really only takes removing a few of the larger interested parties in these to impact the price, even taking out two or three potential bidders can result in a much lower hammer price. I haven't bought one in about four years and probably wasn't planning to...but now, even if I saw one I really wanted I probably wouldn't bid on it if it was in an auction and I had no access to it's history, where it came from, who I was buying it from, how long they had it, can I inspect it in person, etc. It's really sad and I feel bad for everyone who is holding on to one of these cards and watching the stone cold evidence be revealed that what might be one of their favorite pieces was a sham. I haven't followed signed cards from other issues all that closely, but if I were someone who recently purchased some tough signed Goudeys or Playballs or other pre war era cards, I would be really concerned.

My two cents...

Hopefully, the forgers are named an prosecuted.

Hopefully the TPG's learn from this and start getting it right or getting out.

Hopefully the AH's maybe do some due diligence toi items walking thr9ough the door.

Prices will probably rise for specimens with impeccable provenance... those that don't have it won't...

Me - I have never pursued them and won't now...

I anticipate the prices for Government and Legal documents containing signatures to increase in the hobby.

I was going to ask some of these same questions...

I believe that the signed T206 prices will remain strong with so many examples being weeded out as no good. Thus as the signed T206 population decreases, prices will increase (or at least remain the same/strong). It's not necessarily a bad thing to have these signed cards strongly scrutinized now. I own 2 (from thw 2007 Pittsburgh find).

I don't see that happening for a LONG time. Frankly I think this ends up hitting the hobby really hard, with plenty of vintage autograph collectors simply quitting. If the TPA's aren't doing their job (and clearly they aren't) then this is the wild west with no sheriffs, and while these forgers weren't clever enough to disguise their work perfectly; they were good enough to get authenticated, and smart enough to change the cards a bit from their original condition. They were only a few steps from making their frauds nearly undetectable.

I for one am probably out of the genre; this shakes the tree hard enough for me to say it isn't worth the risk, plenty of other exciting ways to collect... A trimmed card, is still at least the real thing... a forged autograph diminishes the value of the item down to zero.

What do you think will happen?
I think like it has happened with every other fiasco that has occurred in the hobby, and there have been many, things will drop a bit in the short term and then return after people feel it's safe to go back into the water again.


Will prices of vintage signed cards plummet?
They may drop in the short term, but once the obvious bad ones, like this T206 run, are cleared, the prices will rise again slowly.

Will it all be forgotten in a few months?
Will take longer than a few months.

Obviously a few fakes will slip through the cracks?

The problem, and my main bone of contention with TPAs in my many rants on Net54 and other places, is that people placed them too high on a pedestal. The public took TPA OPINIONS, and made them definitive confirmations of truth. I saw an interview of a panel of autograph experts, from a number of years ago, where Kevin Keating, who was one of the panel, stated that he wished what PSA would give were called a "Letter of Opinion" rather than a "Letter of Authenticity" for this exact reason. This blind faith in TPAs has given rise to the lowering of our guard as to what we know vs what we want to believe. Due diligence was now something the TPAs were supposed to do for us. Unfortunately, it would be impossible for them to process the volume of autos they do and still take the time to do the legwork Manny did to open up this can of worms.
Now the TPAs did nothing to stop people from taking their opinions as fact. Why would they? The more people trust them, the more business they get.(which of course leads to higher volume which means less time spent per auto, This also means less time to do any sort of investigation like has been done with the T206s. This also means that less skilled and experienced people would need to be vetting the autos in order to meet the time guidelines for submission levels.)
The auction houses also share responsibility as they have now outsourced much of their due diligence to TPAs, for both autos and cards. Why wouldn't they? They get to have clean hands from any disputes as they are not responsible for saying the autos are real. By pushing more and more on the TPA, this furthers their reputation of reliability which increases their business volume, which makes all the problems I noted before that much worse.

No solution will satisfy everyone is the reality. TPAs have good and bad things about them. IMO, The best way to collect autos is to 1) due your own due diligence. Start by being a skeptic and demand the auto be proven real rather than the other way. 2) Develop a network of people whose opinion you trust to help you see things without emotion. 3) Understand what level of risk you are willing to accept. If your answer is none, then you should not collect anything at all. Save your money and go on vacations around the world. Anywhere demand and money meet, criminals will look to take advantage. It is true in any collectible. 4)If it's too good to be true it probably is.

How many of us will be motivated to get out of the hobby?
Very definitely some will. This is also why some of the prices will drop. Some will liquidate their collections and therefore increase supply. That coupled with less bidders should drop prices to a degree.

I am torn; this seems so much bigger than anything that has happened that I can recall that I want to say there will be a long term impact; that so many of the cards passed multiple TPAs suggests either gross negligence or involvement on their part. OTOH, we know that Probstein and PWCC shill bid; people still bid with them, we know that the Gretzky Wagner is trimmed; it still passed PSA, we know that TPAs have all kinds of problems; at the National, PSA always has a line out the door. Stuff trumps scruples, and I would not be surprised if the next 'find' of signed prewar yields the same excitement and prices as before.

Side note: what on earth is going on with CLCT stock? At the end of January they were trading at $30/share, then a week later they were down to almost half of that, and been roughly stagnant since.

I would be careful about saying who is shill bidding. My guess is that close to 100% of it that happens with Probstein and PWCC are from the consignors or their friends and family. I can't imagine either of those guys doing it themselves. (*barring some extraordinary issue with a reason behind it.)

You also have to take into consideration the volume that Probstein and PWCC are putting out there. It's going to be hard for them to have a team of "shill bidders"..I assume it's possible, but doubtful.

Agree 100% - those guys are the ones I specifically DONT worry about shilling. They do so much volume, and have so many people that literally use their name as the search term, rather than the specific cards/pieces they want that their traffic always gets them top end pricing. The guys I'd worry about shilling are the ones that sell for a living, but at low volumes. The guys selling 100-300 cards a month, that really need to extract prices, and might have less traffic organically to their items.

Sort of along the same topic, has anyone else noticed the number of extremely rare inscribed baseballs that have been hitting the market recently? With TPA certification. I have no proof, but does seem a bit fishy.

Yes, and I think anyone buying autographs in our hobby today needs to be really, really careful. As Jeff L said in one of the big threads, there weren't near as many autographs 10-20 yrs ago as there are today. It seems they are being made out of thin air. Collect govt and notarized docs and you have a better chance of being safe.

Most of the guys who have been in the autograph hobby for a long time have always been VERY skeptical of signed T206 cards. Anyone who died before the late 1960's would have never signed a T206 card. Their mere existence is an anomaly as nobody was attempting to go back to the good old days and get autographs on gum cards until AFTER "Glory of Their Times" came out in the late 1960's. Because of this, I dont think anyone that was big into autographs before this fiasco is getting out of the hobby as a result. The magnitude and depth of these forgeries are shocking, but the fact that most of the signed T206 cards in the hobby are fake is not.

This! I have noted quite in uptick in this the last two years, and have spoke to various TPAs about this. Amazing what a #6 adds to value of a Mantle Ball. Plus everyone I have seen lately seems to authenticated by JSA. They are all over Facebook 101 also. I called them out and got banned....hmm.

Get out of the hobby!?!? How about get EDUCATED before getting INTO the hobby in the first place?

I realize that you personally know your autographs and are probably just panicking a little. That's understandable. But go find a scan of an AUTHENTIC scanned Fred Parent T206 (believe me, you can find one that you'll be sure of) and place it next to a fake. Then you can relax. It's the people who are letting the TPA's do their thinking for them who are getting burned. Unfortunately, that's most of the signed T206 collectors.

As an aside, now that we finally have some proof regarding T206's, are any of you ready to start talking about all those signed '33 Goudey Ruth and Gehrig cards? (Lou and Babe are still signing from the grave, so rest easy collectors who are concerned about diminishing supply).

Well-said. What I've found is that there will be autographs that I am positive are real. Those are the ones I buy. The ones that I think are probably real, or might be real, even if they look great - I wait for one that I am 'positive' about. If I were collecting signed T206 cards I would be limited to only a few signers, as I've only seen a few that looked positively real - we all know which cards those are: Marquard comes to mind, but there are others from the period that Rhys mentions. It sucks that you can't have a signed T206 Addie Joss, but if enough of you ask, they'll start turning up.

My prediction is that PSA picks up more of the autograph business. Right or wrong, they appear less impacted by this (granted this is small sample size). Will be interesting to see what happens and where we at when the Goudey’s and Play Balls are scrutinized. Black and White signed HOF survived a mass forgery issue and people still pay good money for those (including the 3 r Lajoie ones).

Not going to happen. The only reason these are being caught is because the unadulterated scans are available. Untraceable slabbed Goudeys will not be scrutinized after the fact.

I won’t touch a bw HOF Plaque postcard. Do you think any of the forged ones made it into slabs?

The number of rare inscribed baseballs hitting the market over the last 2-3 years has been insane. Just makes one wonder about authenticity. Are old time dealers dumping stock or is something more sinister going on? Just last month I saw a very rare HOF inscribed ball in an auction house lot with 5 other easier to find balls. I have seen 3 of these rare HoF balls over the past 5 years. The other balls in the lot are a dime a dozen. They came with an auction house COA. So I start asking myself, why is this ball not being sold by itself in its own lot? Why does it not have a full letter coa? Maybe the auction house didn’t realize the rarity? Too many questions that need to be answered.

I have been thinking this for quite a while. It makes me have a stomach ache and I don't even collect them. So many high end Ruth and other sigs on pre-war cards. It honestly seems kind of crazy to me as to how many we see. And when it seems crazy.......

One thing though
 

To take the chance to forge a signature like Ruth on a 3k to 10k card takes some huge confidence. I tend to think those sorts of cards are far less frequently forged than the cards that are less than $50.

Ruth’s also draw a lot of attention — TPAs and collectors alike become critics. When $20 commons can sell for $6,000+ like in the T206 world, that’s where it really pays to forge — very low risk, extremely high reward. Us signed T206 collectors were more or less inviting the criminals in.

Some Exhibit cards are 500 dollars but with a signature become 20k or more cards.....that is an issue. I still can't imagine that many high end HOF'er signing these cards back then but that is just me....

This is only my opinion, but this really is only a blip compared to operation bullpen. I think the people that would be buying the signed T206's and other cards from that era will arm themselves with these new tools to find the unsigned versions of the cards in question and continue in to the marketplace at a slower, more deliberate pace. For me, this is just another nail in the coffin that has made my favorite hobby a bit less enjoyable, and when you add a lack of full time reputable dealers, sky rocking prices, newer players/hall of famers with eligible sigs, it makes me take a hard look at what I am (or want to be) collecting.

Good analysis, but the incentive on a Goudey Ruth is massive, and 33 Goudey collectors have proven to be just as inviting.

The number of signed Gehrig exhibits from the 1920's hitting the market have been alarming to me or at least highly suspicious. We know some folks were getting cards signed back in the 1930s like the Goudeys with the red lines under them. Many of us back in the 1960s were sending cards TTM to be signed. When I did that I was sending 1960-1 fleer cards. Never thought of looking for GOUDEYS or T206s and as a teenager in NYC without a card store nearby (just buying packs in a nearby candy store), I would have had no idea how to even get a T206. I did send some older topps to players but nothing earlier. And when the old time dealers like Max Schrager sold HOF autographs I never saw any on vintage cards as I went to his house a number of times
It would be interesting to know how many say signed 1933 Goudey Gehrigs actually exist both real and forged. At auction when say a T206 of a tougher guy like say Baker comes up we are aware of the collectors that might bid as we are most times bidding against others on the board. Wonder what the real demand is. If Baker signed 25 T206 in 1960 with great provenance and pictures to prove it and they were all listed on ebay for $20,000 each buy it now- would they all sell? Just curious

Such information is readily available. Just start collecting scans from old auctions or from catalogs.

We've brought this up before regarding Goudeys and... crickets. No one wants to piss off the big AH's that keep recycling these things. And most collectors are also afraid of bad-mouthing the TPA's that won't give them a re-look.

Too much money being threatened, and too many collection gaps needing filled. Black ball me, but you guys are the root of the problem.

I am one of those in the goudey camp, but am limited to just 1934s, which have not seen a particularly big jump in the number of cards out there like the 33's. It has taken me 38 yrs to collect 80 different cards.

I do have concerns as we all should. If anyone finds any of mine unsigned versions somewhere, I would appreciate them giving me a heads up. I freely admit to not being perfect and am always willing to hear from knowledgeable people.

Mark, I don't think it's that difficult - you can be quite imperfect and still have an unadulterated collection. I'm sure you are fine.

Are any of the signed Baker t206 cards pre-stroke? Some of the 61 Fleer are.

This is mine. Got it in person from an old time collector of baseball and music autographs in North Carolina in 2016. Flew down from New York after being connected through Jeff Morey’s autograph magazine. I helped him consign his entire collection through Brian Dwyer over the Spring and Fall 2017 catalogs. For helping him, he sold me a handful of signed prewar cards, including this Baker, and my Lajoie and M116 Wagner. His most valuable stuff was Beatles related. He had some really crazy pieces. Yes, they passed JSA and SGC, but under the recent circumstances, I’ll just show the raw scan. :D

how does buying it in person relate to the authenticity of a signature? reading your posts over the past few days it seems you place more importance on when a signed t206 was purchased rather than the signature itself. now added to the mix is if a card was bought in person? runscott is right about the root of the problem.

I was hoping the old time collector was Frank Baker.

I mean that I examined the signature in person. Didn’t buy it on-line based on a scan or an LOA. It was then authenticated by JSA and SGC.

The timing is only important insofar as you consider that the current scourge of forgeries being discussed this week appear to have begun in October 2015. Since this card was purchased in 2016, I think it is important to note a little bit about the history of the card.

I personally own a few Bakers. my 40 playball and 61 fleer of just Baker are prestroke. My 61 Fleer with Sisler and my 60 Fleer are post stroke

Some great points in here. The two that I connected with are RunScott 'get educated on Parent et. al' before starting to collect and Lordstan - be a skeptic and make the autograph have to prove itself to you.

I've been collecting vintage baseball stuff for over 40 years but only got into signed cards 5 years ago when I saw a Mel Ott signed Goudey at the natty. I said to myself, in all my years of collecting I don't see many old cards with vintage signatures. So for the past five years I've been learning about and picking up signed vintage cards of HOFers.

It's been just about the last year that I thought I was seeing more signed cards than usual. I know in some thread, some of you felt that too. And specifically to me, I noticed more signed Mel Ott on Playballs. Now I may be totally wrong but they felt off to me.

I didn't bid on them.

The point I would like to make is to not be afraid to rely on your instincts. It's one of my favorite aspects of collecting. If you've done your research and something seems off to you, odds are you are right.

And when you come across signed cards from old collections where you trust (as much as one can) the provenance, that's a good time to buy.

I was lucky enough to get a few Goudey and Diamond Star cards direct from the Michigan batboy collection and from the Long Island collection at Phillip Weiss Auctions. I learned about the how the cards were acquired, trusted the sellers and was comfortable with the signatures, so I went for it. They did have COA's from the big TPAs but it was the provenance that gave me the real confidence.

So I say do your research, take in a lot of information and then trust your gut.

And man I can't wait to catch this guy.

-peter