[WhenItWasAHobby]

I first met Joe Orlando at the very first PSA Registry Luncheon approximately 10 years ago. I introduced myself and we had a very nice, cordial face-to-face discussion for approximately 10 minutes – very much like Leon’s experience at the 2011 National. In short, a terrific guy who cares about collectors and the well-being of the hobby!

Sadly, as a few board members know and as Leon alluded to in the first post of this thread, someone attempted to impersonate Mr. Orlando via e-mail several years ago. When this occurred, Leon was accommodating enough to show me the e-mail and I for one knew instantly it was a fake. How did I know? Anyone who has ever read any of Mr. Orlando’s articles or letters to the collecting community know that he always ends the message with, “Never Get Cheated”. This phrase was conspicuously absent from that e-mail therefore rendering it unquestionably bogus.

Once I came to the realization that someone or perhaps several people were impersonating Mr. Orlando, my mind began to race back over the years to all my other Joe Orlando encounters. One that immediately comes to mind was at the 2003 Atlantic City PSA Registry luncheon. Leading up to this event there had been ongoing controversial rumors that PSA was going to go to half-grades and this created a major uproar among many of the registry collectors like me who already owned thousands of PSA-graded cards. Although I was sitting in the far back of the registry luncheon and already had a few drinks, I recall someone getting up in front of the luncheon attendees who identified himself as Joe Orlando and seemed to have a striking resemblance to the person I met two years earlier. Anyway, this person stood up and made the unequivocal announcement, “Read my lips. PSA will never go to half grades!” This should have been the first tip-off that someone was impersonating Joe at public functions since as we all know now, PSA did go to half grades.

This also explains many other “enigmatic” incidences that have occurred since. There had been allegations that Joe ejected a collector from the 2009 registry luncheon in Cleveland for privately expressing his concerns that someone might be successfully getting doctored cards past the PSA graders. I thought this collector was just confused, and perhaps Joe was just exhorting him to leave to get back to the convention to buy more cards, but he seemed to think that this wasn’t the case and had a witness to substantiate that incident. Now it’s clear this alleged misunderstanding must have been with the Joe Orlando impersonator. There have been numerous other confusing things that happened during this time span, such as my banishment from the CU Boards and all of my sets being deleted from the PSA registry, but it wouldn’t be fair to Joe to bring up those types of incidents since I’m now relieved to know it wasn’t him after all.

Kudos to Leon for helping bust up this impersonation ring and putting everything back in its proper perspective.