It finally happened to me...
 

Hello all,

I am surprised this is my first post on here. I have been coming to this site over a year now and I recognize a lot of the posters on here from either buying from or selling to them (or both) in the past.

I am a collector and dealer in vintage non Hall of Fame autographs, in addition to being a serious collector of pre-1900 Pirates/Alleghenys memorabilia.

I have a horror story to tell all of you which reflects the state of the autograph business and authenticators today. I am going to preface this by saying that I am not a big fan of any of the 3rd party authenticators, because I have seen far too many fakes slapped or come with a COA.

Now, I have heard stories of this sort of thing happening to others, but this is the first time it has happened to me.....

I am not going to mention the item or the auctionhouse's name (or the specific item). In 2004, I bought a nice framed/matted cut of a figure off of the auctionhouse. The signature looked good to me and it came with a letter from PSA (Grad/Spence at the time). Well, this was one of those purchases where afterwards I thought to myself "Why did I buy this?" as it was something I didn't deal in or collected. A few months ago, I sent it to the same auctionhouse to consign for a future auction. A week ago, I got the item back in the mail with a letter from them saying it had "authenticity issues". Since it was past their business hours, I emailed the company and a few of their employees I know personally. I was able to find a link on their site from the auction listing from 2004 and offered them two choices:

If it was authentic then, it has to be authentic now, b/c after all, it came with a letter from the all-knowing PSA.

The other option was I wanted a full refund of the original purchase price or I was no longer going to bid in their auctions. (I have dealt with this company since I was a senior in high school, 12 years ago).

To my surprise, they were quick with a refund check and an apology.

The thing is, I know someone who had problems with the same company in the past with team signed baseballs. I know auctionhouse COAs are basically junk, but still, if you sell something as authentic in one auction, and then say that there is a problem with the same item if the buyer wants to re-consign it, then there's a problem there.

This is why I am sticking to buying collections from people I know personally or who have a good name in the business.

Happy Thanksgiving all

Thanks for sharing. Glad it worked out for you. Sounds like the auction house did right by you.

nice story
 

First of all welcome to Net54baseball.com. Glad you finally posted. We are getting more and more folks every day. Plus, as a registered member you have far more access to all areas and will be able to see all images.

As for autographs I could never collect them because of all I have heard. If I ever did get the hankerin' I would collect checks or legal docs with signatures. At least the great majority of those should be good....take care

Welcome to the board Russ. For those of you who do not know him, he is a really great guy with some nice early items as well.

Rhys

Sound like the auction house did the right thing in the end. I suspect there are some out there that wouldn't have given a refund.

How a seller reacts to an error will often tell you more about him than when a sale goes smoothly.