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Originally Posted by whitey19thcentury

I brought this up several days ago on this thread. I have bought and sold thousands of vintage signed cards over the past decade and have never seen such a big quantity of signed 1952 Topps as is out there now.

Because I mainly collect 52 Topps cards, although not signed ones, I have also noticed this lately. Someone on here said, it could be older collectors now selling off their old collections, which could very well be, but it seems odd to me that multiple old collectors would choose to do so at the same time?
I recently saved a random recently signed 52 Topps card just to see if I could find it unsigned somewhere prior but when I went into Worthpoint, there were 23 pgs of this players card so I went no further as I viewed it as a daunting task and without having any dog in the fight myself, a huge time killer.

I have also wondered, since joining this site, even if a signed card was purchased 20, 30, 40 years ago, how does one know, without provenance, if that signature is real? I have also always wondered, if the player had passed on prior to those years, what do TPAs use as their basis for comparison?

In my opinion, if the TPA's don't have/own something that acts as a certified template with undeniable provenance, then how can they 100% guarantee the sig is legit?
I think the only way of going forward from now on, and only if the test can be 100% guaranteed, carbon dating or something similar will now have to be used in order to bring some trust back into the hobby? Just my thoughts anyway.

EDIT: To add further to my thoughts above. Being as thousands and thousands of players have played, say, in just over the last century in all kinds of sports such as baseball, hockey, football and basketball, to name just 4, and you're out at a flea market, for example, and you come across a common, unheard of, forgotten about player's signed card. You purchase said signed card and you send it in to be authenticated. Please tell me what TPAs would use to authenticate the sig is 100% legit? Thinking further, even if we had carbon dating and it was proved the ink was of at least as old as the card, who's to say the sig wasn't signed back then by some kid or adult that was just goofing around playing with their card?

Originally Posted by gregr2

But isn’t that chaos what is needed? I mean, they need to get it right. Wouldn’t the hobby rather go through a time of chaos but at the end have it correct? To me, that seems like the right way to take it.


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I agree 100%! Without pain there can be no gain, and if this situation isn't torn down to the very bottom, then there will always be doubt within the hobby and that side of the hobby, imo, will be forever scarred.