[travrosty]

What I find interesting is that it seems to be okay by many if jsa or psa makes horrendous mistakes, (not tough mistakes, that could go either way, but simple, glaring, obvious errors), it seems to be okay as long as they didnt TRY to make the mistake.

As long as they tried to do it right, then its fine. why?

If a towing company tows your car by mistake, it's okay as long as they didn't try to do it on purpose? Wouldn't you be mad if the towing order said red lamborghini and you drive a silver vw beetle?


I don't get it. If you bought a 30,000 signed letter by a certain hall of famer, and they got it wrong but they "tried", do you feel better now? Is it worth more now because they tried? No, it's still worth zero.

Think of a mythical authentication company.

They cert 100 babe ruth baseballs, get 50 wrong, for an error rate of 50% on Ruth.

They then cert a stack of 9900 Josh Hamilton signed photos that took place at a signing session with photo proof, and a representative present with documentation. (no brainer). Error rate 0%.

They then claim they certed 10,000 autographs that week, and if 50 were found wrong, then they had a weekly error rate of only .5 percent, so come get your Babe Ruth ball certed with us because we get 99.5% of our autographs right!


If they have a 5% error rate, and if some autographs are no brainers (which many, many are) that doesn't require an expert authenticator, or they are certed from signing sessions "in the presence" (0% error rate,) then the error rate for the others is higher to even it out at the 5%, now isn't it? And a so called error rate of 5% doesn't take into account the autographs that were good that they called bad, because no one tries to sell them one ebay or elsewhere with the rejection letter, do they? Those are the hidden errors so you can take the 5% and practically double it.

The tough ones are much higher than the 5%. We all know it. BUT THE TOUGH ONES ARE THE REASON A LOT OF US SEND IT IN, because we don't know!

Firpo isn't particularly tough!

All I want to see is the Firpo exemplar he compared that one to, to make his "authentic" decision. Show the exemplar, go ahead. Me and the guys with 20, 30, 40 years experience each can't find an exemplar anything close to that and we do boxing 24/7/365 for our entire lives. Spence can't call a boxing guy?

But good thing this is a mythical company, because in real life it is all gumdrops and lollipops.

People can send their autographs in to psa or spence if they want and that's their choice, I advise people to do what they want to do. They can trust who they want. But the system is broken in my opinion.

But people keep defending a system that is broken because they want the certs, because it is the certs that sell. Someday collectors might have the certs displayed on the wall that represent autographs, proudly looking at a cert that shows that an autograph of Al Hbrosky is out there somewhere and it is "authentic".

I am not against 3rd party authentication, just the way it is being done now, but I am against the status quo, so I have an axe to grind? A lot of people want silence to reign supreme. Chirp, chirp goes the crickets.

I once gave a `15-20 point reform post with suggestions that I know the companies saw, and 3 years later, NONE implemented. Guess my suggestions, all built on responsibility, transparency, and accuracy, check and balances, and a customers bill of rights is just too radical.