It isn't necessarily the material but the motive behind sharing it that I question. Do your own research and judge for yourself. I just happen to believe that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

John Hatcher

John,

Understand your point fully, but as for me, I could care less about the motive as long as it exposes the material. Just my .02 cents worth.

Ah, but it can be such an amazing spectacle when they do... :p

There is no denying the TPAs have made some mistakes and I think reasoned criticism is completely valid.

However, what I find interesting is that the two sites dedicated to dredging up every mistake made in the past decade and utterly destroying the TPAs, are run by people who are anonymous and/or would not hold up well themselves if a bright light was trained on them.

Steve,

Maybe, but does that matter with respect to the fact that TPA's get it wrong many times?

"Are run by people who are anonymous and/or would not hold up well themselves if a bright light was trained on them."

Well written, Mr. Zipper.

So what? If what they are writing is true, it's true.

The owner/operator of a large sports auction house, renowned for his ethics, was caught ripping off the New York Public Library.

All seems to be forgiven, there, however.

Some of the evidence presented is compelling no matter who the source. However, it does interest me why certain characters in particular are so hell bent on destroying the TPAs. Frankly, I don't trust their motives.

I try to keep it in perspective. While some of the mistakes are sensational and high dollar, the goof-ups stretch back a decade and account for a tiny percentage of the overall body of work of these TPAs. I understand this may be no comfort to the person who has a bogus HOF first day cover. I get it.

But for every goof up, there are probably hundreds and hundreds of accurately authenticated Mantles, Williams, Mays, DiMaggios, Ruths, Cobbs, etc., etc.

Now if the people who run these sites dedicated to bashing TPAs had their way, could we say the same? I doubt it.

Would we need to say the same? I doubt it.

agree wholeheartedly and therein lies the PROBLEM with the autograph industry...the saga continues

Amen Steve. I couldn't have put it any better myself.

Again, well written, Mr. Zipper.

First there is the "forensic" authenticator who issues generic COAs and doesn't seem to reject anything.

Then there is the authenticator with the "God Complex." When you point out one of his mistakes, he will never admit to it. Instead, he will ramble on and on about "How his COA has been forged." And when you do point out one of his mistakes, he always has a story as to how he acquired that autograph; and the story itself, is also just not believable.

Then there is the authenticator who claims he gets physically ill when he reads about one of his "mistakes."

And now there is a new authentication service, whose work is showing up on a particular auction site, and yet when you go to their website, there is absolutely no way to contact them, whether it be via email or telephone. They list various prices, but no menus that allow you to print a submission form.

Wow!!!

And then there are the authenticators who say:

“Certification and authentication involves an individual judgment that is subjective and requires the exercise of professional opinion, which can change from time to time. Therefore, JSA makes no warranty or representation and shall have no liability whatsoever to the customer for the opinion rendered by JSA on any submission.”

“Certification and authentication involves an individual judgment that is subjective and requires the exercise of professional opinion, which can change from time to time. Therefore, PSADNA makes no warranty or representation and shall have no liability whatsoever to the customer for the opinion rendered by PSADNA on any submission.”

i.e., "I might be wrong, but if I am, we'll just chalk that up as a learning experience. Thanks for paying my tuition!"

Wow. And "wow" again.

How do you know its only a small percentage?

hundreds and hundreds of good ones for every goof?

i can give you cert numbers that you can check online at psa for 75 bad muhammad ali signed photos, all in a row, that they won't cert anymore. 75 goofs in a row.

So hundreds (200) of good ali's for every bad ones means they can't make a mistake the next 15,000 muhammad ali signatures in a row? do you really think that is going to happen?

Of course many, many of the people defending these companies say 1000 to 1 good to bad, so where is the 75,000 muhammad ali good signatures without a mistake?

and a prominent authenticator who is a consultant for them even says 10,000 to 1 good to bad, so where are the three quarter of a million good ali's without a mistake?

A question is can a critique more reliable than the source? If you don't trust the author, how can you trust what is written?

Bias, misinformation and propaganda doesn't always mean that the individual information is incorrect, but that often correct information is cherry picked to meet an agenda or pre-determined outcome. In these critiques, threre is no doubt that the conclusion was picked first, then the data was gathered to support it. Don't just ask what was included in the report, but what was excluded and why.

That's why I think following critiques with predetermined conclusions written by authors with questionable ethics is at best a dubious exercise. Whether or not the individual tidbits of information are accurate, the whole exercise is unreliable, because of the authors' biases the size of Lake Michigan.

If these types of sites and essays and critiques are important for the hobby-- and they probably should--, they should be being written by entirely different people. For example, people who are not writing them to get back at companies these have vendettas against and/or as methods to subvert competition for the author's own company.

Are you describing these websites, or auction lot descriptions?

(Perhaps both.)

Of course the information is cherry-picked, David. Is there much point in discussing, say, all the August Hermann papers that weren't stolen from the Hall of Fame? After all, that Heritage auction guy left most of them behind. Or the Halper uniforms that weren't forged? (I'm sure there were a few.)

The purpose of the website is to expose fraud. It therefore showcases fraud.

Can you post the cert number of the fake Ali signatures? If they no longer certify these as being real, I'm sure these bad examples would be useful so collectors know at least what to stay away from.

For me, it isn't so much the ratio of times the TPA's have gotten it wrong to how many times they have gotten it right, but the number of instances that keep popping up showing them being careless and not doing their job very well or barely actually examining an item. I have personally experienced this as well as seen other stories with examples of this.

The fact is, nobody can possibly know the % they get correct or wrong, so for anyone to say they get far more right than wrong is is just a statement of opinion, we just don't know the %. What we can see and is fact, is the number of times an authenticator is negligent in doing a poor job of examining an item by giving a thumbs up to a preprint, a secretarial or a photo copy, all of which should NEVER happen if you actually examine the item properly.

IMO, there is a big difference in TPA who will not answer any uestions about their practice and are trying to authenticate as many items as possible so they can make money and the TPA who really cares about the hobby and takes their time examining an item.

I believe Richard to be one of these guys who takes his time to examine an item because he cares about the hobby and values his reputation above a dollar. He will admit he has gotten some wrong in the past but I would feel more comfortable with him believing that he took the time to examine the item properly instead of just doing the assembly line process to authenticate as many items as possible because it means more money.

Edited to say, in the end, shouldn't we doubt more the guys who show they do a poor job by not examining things properly. Since we don't really know the ratio they get right, shouldn't we judge them on the things we do know?

We do know they get a lot right. Go to eBay where there are thousands of TPA Mantles, Williams, DiMaggios, Koufaxs, Cobbs, Ruths, Jeters etc etc on display at any given time and see how many fakes you find. There might be a few clunkers that slipped through, but it would be a tiny percentage of the whole.

As I stated earlier, it's not about sweeping mistakes under the rug, but about addressing issues rationally and keeping it in perspective.

Steve - We have known each other for a long time and I believe there is a mutual trust and liking between us.
That said, I have to rehash one old story that has been mentioned here before and you should judge it on its merits and think about how such a mistake could occur.
Hunt Auctions auctioned off a handwritten letter purportedly signed by Ed Delahanty. The signature on the letter read Ed Delehanty. PSA and JSA both gave this letter a full COA, despite the obvious misspelling of his last name. It eventually was proven that Ed's manager wrote out the full letter and signed it for Delahanty. It sold for $30,000. What motivates a TPA to authenticate such an item and to NOT note in the COA that the name is misspelled. Not one TPA but both leading TPA's.
I have always found this one particular incident to be troubling.
I have discussed other incidents here on the board. The Babe Ruth autographs that I sold that were rejected by PSA, though I had bought them from someone who at the time of Ruth's life was an in person collector. He hung out at the Ansonia Hotel where Ruth had a room for personal activities :). This man became a close personal friend of mine and was the author of Freedom's Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism in America, 1909-1969 by Gil Jonas.
But as I have stated in the past mistakes are part of the game and nobody is infallible. I would even think that, outside of boxing, their batting average is not bad in some categories.
But I still find the Delahanty letter incident to be very troubling in so many ways. And I doubt if there is anything that anyone can say that would make me change my mind about that.

I think you may have missed the point I was trying to make. I never said they don't get a lot right. I said it is impossible to know the true ratio of good to bad. My issue is with the poor quality of work they put in at times. How do you know when you are getting their best examination? Why put so much trust in someone who does poor work? My issue is not with their % they get right or wrong, I personally don't know the %. I haven't seen all items authenticated by any company. I have seen lots of authenticated autos by TPA's that are good and bad. My big beef is their credentials and lack of quality control.

Take any of the big TPA's, you don't have a clue who is actually examining your item. How do you know the person examining an item is actually good at what they do?

And you seem to be glossing over the fact that they authenticate preprints. This should never ever happen. I mean never. It shouldn't be considered an honest mistake IMO but an outright fraud because they obviously didn't examine the item that someone paid them to examine. If you are getting paid to authenticate an item, you should be able to tell if it is a preprint by going through a thorough examination process. When these get passed, it is because they didn't do this, yet these are the people we trust to give our money to to authenticate something?

Just to emphasize, I get people will miss some forgeries, but to authenticate a preprint should absolutely never and I mean never happen. There is no excuse for it.

I'll give another example, if I'm building a house and I know one company is known to take short cuts and there is another one I believe doesn't take short cuts, I'm going with the company who doesn't take short cuts. Regardless of if the company who takes short cuts has 1 issue in a thousand.

I've seen enough to know firsthand of some companies that without question take shortcuts.

Steve, this was the point I was trying to make. It's not the honest mistakes that bother me, it's the issues that should never happen, the issues that happen when they get sloppy that bother me.

In most cases you don't even need a thorough examination process to see a preprint. Take the autograph photo out of the plastic sheet. The ink on the photo does not "leap" off the photo. You place it under a light and bingo, you can easily see what it is. Total time elapsed: under 60 seconds.

and that's the part that bothers me Richard. I know no authenticator is perfect. Not a single one. Anybody can be fooled at a given time. It's the shoddy work and not properly examining an item and then giving your stamp of approval on something that I have an issue with. Especially when it is from someone who is supposedly one of the best and is making lots of money to do the job properly.

Absolutely!!

:)

that is what burns me too, the shortcuts, calling a james jeffries autograph a james jeffers just because it was submitted on a sunday show and they had to get it authenticated by the end of the show. it was not even in jeffries hand, and the tom sharkey and james corbett werent either and they called them all good and called jeffries "jeffers"

it's what really bothers me, the slipshod work, that they call authentication, and it is commonplace, not an abberation or 1 out of 1000.

A few of us in boxing have had enough, but if there were basketball, football guys who had enough also, you would see more of their errors in those disciplines.

they arent particularly good in boxing, but not a lot can be said for the other sports either.


If it was just once in a blue moon, no one would care, at all.

but its not and the cheerleaders for these companies love the status quo, no reforms necessary.


but in my opinion, major reforms are necessary, and if not implemented, will be implemented for them as far as a market correction. just like mutual funds and their managers. people eventually will have enough. the market will correct and the guys who promised but couldn't deliver won't last. we saw it with gai.

We are a funny bunch. Think about it, why should we worry about a few errors on an autograph opinion when we enshrine those we collect and they only succeed .277% of the time

Shocking
 

I have collected sport memorabilia for 30 years.
This article is quite the eye-opener !!

You know what they say.....statistics are made up 58.5% of the time.