[thetruthisoutthere]

Originally Posted by SetBuilder

You guys are wasting your time. Trying to stop the forgers is a never ending game of whack-a-mole. They just pop up again with a different account and a different COA.

The real solution is for people to stop buying their goods. They're in business because there is demand for what they sell. Once people become aware that 90% of autographs are fake, demand will drop, and they'll be out of business.

The only real way to get the forgers to disappear is for buyers to become educated on the signatures they buy and to be more skeptical.

Let's face it, most experienced collectors on this forum will never buy one of those shady autographs. It's only novices that buy them.

I've never seen a marketing campaign aimed at increasing awareness of forgeries. Very few autograph buyers even know forums like this exist. Why is that?

It's like the war on drugs. Everyone knows it's pointless to try to stop the supply. Look how that's worked out in the real world. Stop one druglord, and the next one is waiting to take his place. The real way to stop the drug cartels is for people to stop doing drugs. You stop the problem by shutting off the demand, not trying to stop the supply. If someone is willing to die to sell a bag of drugs, there isn't much of a deterrent that can stop them.

I've been exposing forgeries and sellers of forgeries for a long, long time and I would like to think that I've made a small impact on the forgery industry, and at times I have asked myself "Why do I continue to do this?"

And I always come up with the same reply which is "I simply cannot just sit on the sidelines and do nothing."

There are a few people in the hobby (Richard Simon, Shelly, Steve Z., Terrier, Steve Cyrkin and others) who have stuck their necks out exposing the bad guys.

And at considerable risk to us.

I have literally written over a thousand threads/blogs on the forgery industry.

The majority of them have been directed at Coach's Corner (Scott Malack and Lee Trythall), Chris "I Never Saw An Autograph I Didn't Like" Morales, Ted Taylor (who I have deep, deep disdain for), Drew Max, Stephen Rocchi (Guaranteed Forensic Authenticators), the old GAI and others.

It is "my time that I am wasting," not yours.