JSA, really?! Come on
 

How could anyone certify this auto? I just shake my head at stuff like this. I don't care if Koufax was surrounded by a mob of people, there is no way this should have been authenticated.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SANDY-KOUFAX...item1e929c5611

JSA, really?! Come on
 

I don't see the issue here, if it's authentic it's authentic. So what if it's chicken scratch or coughed while signing or what not. Isn't that the point of a TPG? So yes, if it is authentic I see no issues, if it were fake then that is the issue...


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Here is my issue:

This is, if anything, a very rushed and sloppy Koufax auto. If I obtained it myself IP and it was in my collection, then that is great. But the TPA didn't see it signed IP. They are 'authenticating' an autograph that looks nothing like his 'paid' autograph for the sole purpose of somebody else reselling it. This opens up the door to anybody and their dog faking Koufax autos. I am not sure if you ever go on eBay, but the number of reportedly signed IP Koufax autos from this past Spring Training is exorbitant. I was at Spring Training and Koufax did sign at spring training, but not the hundreds of sloppy IP TPA autos I have seen on eBay over the past 6 months. I have no proof, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people took this opportunity to fake a number of sloppy of Koufax autos, turn around and call them IP, and send them off to a TPA with their fingers crossed. That is my issue.

[QUOTE=HOF Auto Rookies;1330268]I don't see the issue here, if it's authentic it's authentic. So what if it's chicken scratch or coughed while signing or what not. Isn't that the point of a TPG? So yes, if it is authentic I see no issues, if it were fake then that is the issue...


So no problem only if it not real. That is why we should trust a tpa? We only have to worry if there wrong. I would never authenticate a piece like that real or not. It is a guess and tpa are not supposed to guess:mad:

Yet on the flip side, we have howls of incompetence when they fail someones IP submission......

He's 79, so his today sig likely has the tell tale signs of aging , i.e., unsteady hand and shaky scrawl.

If you got a sig IP then what is the point of sending it to a TPA? I guess if you are trying to sell it? That is the only thing I can think of. Am I missing something?

Here is the problem. Many in the world take their "opinion" as truth. Because of that anything they cert as good is considered good regardless of whether it is or not. I would much rather have them fail or give a "no opinion" result on IP submissions that they really can't tell vs passing things that don't look correct.
The IP graphers know that there are all sorts of variables that can go wrong while someone is signing. If they are graphing to resell, it is a risk of the business that they must accept. If they are graphing for their own collection the TPA shouldn't matter.
It isn't the TPAs responsibility to the submitters to pass things. Their purported purpose is to objectively evaluate whether an autograph was signed by a specific person. Let's face it, how many here have been offered a Ruth auto that they swear was gotten IP by their grandfather with 99% being fake?
Pretty much all of the issues with the TPAs that get brought up here revolve around things they passed that were bad as opposed to the opposite situation. I would think that any person offering opinions would err on the side of caution.

Bottom line. Until you see Koufax sign like that over and over again you do not authenticate it based on a guess. Those of you that keep defending them will wake up one day with a pile of crap. The tpa is no better that you when it comes down to an autograph like this. It is a crap shoot:eek:

I have even had people offer me facsimile baseballs that they swear were gotten in person.

My other main issue with this is that this opens up the door for all the scammers out there to submit their IP Koufax to TPA. If they authenticate one then they most likely will do them all. Has anyone noticed the influx of ugly looking IP Koufax autos on eBay right now. I don't think that is a coincidence. And a bunch of people are buying them because they come with a TPA, and they are getting ripped off.

Specifically for Koufax. If it is signed on a Selig OMLB, it should have either UDA or Online Authentics COA to be 100% real, if you didn't get it IP. Otherwise you are gambling and his auto isn't cheap.

i think the title should be "sandy, really come on" , because there is nothing wrong with this signature , it is real , but nothing more than a chance to take a swipe at a tpa , when it is apparent who doesnt have a clue what something should look like, to me this seems to go the other way that somebody needs a tpa to help them because they dont have a clue and a tpa is better than nothing

Sorry, but I 100% disagree with you, as this autograph is a horrible example of a Koufax autograph. It might be real, but it shouldn't have passed a TPA.

As I mentioned before, there are a ton of sloppy Koufax autos on eBay right now. There is NO WAY he signed this many autos at spring training. I was there, and It didn't happen.

When I was at spring training he lined everyone up and signed for a pretty long time whenever he decided to sign. I must have seen at least a hundred people go through the line the days I was there. He signed a lot of stuff.

i think if it was me i would just delete this post before anybody else reads it , but then again i wouldnt have started it

People are just giving their opinions. If you don't like seeing negative things posted about TPA's, you should be part of the process of getting them to improve.

That 'somebody' seems to be you.

Kirk, are you a relative to any of the Spence family?

what is funny is a is a post about a certed piece that is good and last week a mile long post about a bad piece that failed , just constant silliness

i dont know but do we need to start pulling out each others resumes? tell you what you go first? fair enough ?

First, you clearly don't get it. How do you know that signature is good? Did you see it signed with your own eyes? Otherwise, you are just guessing like all of us and the TPAs. That is the whole point of this exercise. If you don't get that, then I am not sure what else needs to be said.

Second, you have a huge conflict of interest. Your business model is to buy autographs in the raw form, get them certified by a TPA, and then mark them up for a nice profit. I have bid against you on eBay multiple times (and lost), and then I see the piece slabbed for 3x the amount of money in your eBay store. So your relationship with the TPA's is different than 99% of the members on this board.

then this just what it always is on here sour grapes , it is called doing business i provide a service to my customers and the tpa provide a service , so it is a guess? for you maybe but i consider it a more than guess on my end , i started in this business in 1986 have built something more than a guessing game , this past august just completed my 24th national and along the way set up at like maybe 400 plus shows and where i live that was flying to them. and that was pretty much stopping shows in 2002 . i have for years provided signatures to card companies and can yearly sell around a million dollars and at the same time keep 100% feedback on ebay with a return customer percent of about 25% plus every month , so am i good guesser , or over the course of the year in just my business the 7000 plus sale customers comprise the 1% not on this board? or in reality the whole world is actually using tpa and that is what is real. if folks would have actually went to the national in cleveland this year the whole hobby accepts and moves around tpa. auction houses , everything, just like 20 years ago when card grading started , just like i said sour grapes . i buy alot, i buy good stuff and i do not guess , and i pay good money for it , i then have it certed and thats what customers want

I will be happy to go first. My past helps me know just how much people trust in a coa. They never learn that they are working for the money and they would be out of business if they turned down to many items. My past also taught me that the tpa's where easily fooled.
Last thing I learned that an opinion is just that and opinion.:rolleyes:

IMO auto collectors just need to do a better job of research. Authentic or not that is a crappy Koufax sig, and if I wanted one for my collection, that one would not be it. If enough collectors think this way the market would take care of itself and crappy examples that are authenticated would sell for much less. The second question as to whether it is authentic or not I would answer in a similar way. I as a collector have a responsibility to myself to look at each auto as if it was not authenticated. No matter what anyone says I stay away from this signature. Perhaps authentication companies should say more about the signature itself in their letters, ie it was a rushed signature at a later age accounting for sloppiness. Bottom line, the collector must be diligent and do their homework.

By the way. I have found that when a person can no longer defend there position they always go after my past. My past has nothing to do with this post. I was just asking if he was a part of your family because of the way your defending him.
I also would like to know how you came to the conclusion that the ball is authentic?

yeah well i spend a bunch of time sorting through your past and whats left from this and seeing what happens when you dont have a tpa to provide some sort relief . every day i see operation bullpen pieces all over in auction lots , on ebay , everywhere , i may be wrong and i do not want to sound unprofessional , but i am afraid it is , but didnt the tpa actually contribute to the "past" , so you get busted and it becomes the past but makes you a expert? , but it is the foundation to prove tpa are wrong, so i will start forging stuff and slip it by tpa and my argument is see how they dont know what they are doing , just a pointless arguement , i somehow feel dirty engageing in this type conversation and i want to think i am better than this , i mean if people on this board want to buy something and make a investment and have to show for it a cert you issued or even a verbal opinion versus a tpa like psa or jsa then it is a sad statement on what people read on the internet. my resume is doing straight business for 27 years, doing right is going to be compared to this , then i am in the wrong place and need to stick to what i am doing , and shut my mouth . i just hate seeing people get filled full of misinformation and scares , i thought i could add something that was useful but maybe this counterculture here is best left to scare itself silly . i will issue a apology if i offended anybody including shelly , because facts about somebodys past i dont know all the details , people make mistakes and thats fine. what i had to offer is there , if somebody needs anything they can contact me and i will see if i can help

That makes sense - Shelly's past gets you off the hook for your ridiculous statements. I'll say the same thing: Are you related to someone in the Spence family? Okay, what in MY past gets you off the hook? :rolleyes:

There is a lot of "data" to analyze in this signature. It's not like it is one of those single line "marks" that passes for entertainment signatures these days.

This very well may be 100% consistent with Koufax's crowd signature. The TPAs are continuously updating their files with the latest in-person signature exemplars. While it is certainly not an example I would want -- who picks a dented can when so many un-dented ones are available? -- this does not strike me as an "un-authenticatible" example.

Authenticating isn't just picking the textbook perfect examples and tossing the rest. Just about anyone can do that. A good authenticator will have exemplars of walking signatures, crowd signatures, variants, etc. Even in an atypically sloppy example, a good authenticator may be able to recognize very subtle positive attributes that a forger would be highly unlikely to replicate.

Just my 2 cents.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am the space autograph consultant for JSA and SGC.

Steve, your a friend and what you wrote might be correct but it really does not hit home as much when you are hired by the people we are talking about.
I just feel that until you see more of that style from Koufax that they hold off saying its authentic.

never mind.

These discussions always turn into a black and white thing, and the TPA issue is anything but.

Scott, I must admit you are correct. No matter which side you take when it comes down to the the big two no one wins expect the them:mad:

That's my whole point. Maybe they have seen this style and have plenty of exemplars. Just because it's the first time we've seen it, doesn't mean it's the first time they have seen it. :)

No service is perfect and the TPAs have taken some hits around here. Some of the criticism is valid. I just don't think this is one of them.

Agreed.

To me it's the same as Honus Wagner signatures. His signature was quite elaborate when he was younger but deteriorated with age, yet I feel many here are confident in identifying a later in life Wagner signature.

Yes, and if you look at PSA's site, you'll see exemplars of Wagners "deteriorated" signature - same for any player whose signature changed drastically. They are common knowledge. Not so for this Koufax example.

Who is to say these companies have not already compiled exemplars?

I have no idea what kind of hocus-pocus is going on in the TPAs' exemplar compilation area, but you would think that if it is such a well-known "crowd" signature, that there would be publicly-available exemplars.

It certainly is not "just like" what happened with Honus Wagner's signature.

Aside from all this TPA arguing, I just want to say that I would never pay that much for a horrible shaky Koufax signature (assuming that it IS authentic).
As Shelly pointed out in a previous thread, some recent Steiner certed Koufax sigs are showing signs of serious aging (like Aaron's). Up until just a year or so ago, Koufax' signature was really nice and flowing. There are plenty of them to still go around and probably under $300. Go buy one of those before resorting to one of his recent shaky ones.

So you know there are recent shaky ones that look like this?

Unless you are the one, I'm surprised there isn't anyone here who has recently gotten Koufax' autograph. At least if we found that it hadn't changed, this could only be, as Steve suggested, a "crowd signature", or bogus.

I agree with others that TPA's should certainly authenticate it if it is legit. The decision to purchase or not is personal.

I think the point of my post has gotten a bit lost in the chatter.

I am concerned that unscrupulous people are taking advantage of the influx of IP Koufax autos from Spring Training to forge ones of their own and submit to TPA. Even if he did sign 100 autos a day at Spring Training, he was only there for 5 days and I know he didn't sign each day. Plus take into the account that not everyone gets a baseball autographed, and most people will keep the auto for their own collection etc...

I have seen people selling a dozen (12) sloppy Koufax autos on ebay over and over again with TPA certs. That is what concerns me. Shouldn't a red flag be raised by the TPA when somebody is submitting a couple dozen IP Koufax autos?

Also I agree, I would never purchase this auto. It is ugly, and I still think it shouldn't have been authenticated. But that is my opinion.

You mentioned what you think a TPA action should be, so prepare for more annoying "chatter".

If you there do you have anything signed by him. I you do please post it.

Sure thing. I got this autograph myself at spring training in February. This was a crowd signature and not from the line he set up later in the week.

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...ps6dd6cce5.jpg

That is more like it. That signature looks more like a Steiner
I have to say that we say players that are old cant sign . Dimaggio, Rizzoto , Berra, Gibson. Ford, Williams all signed or sign extremly well. I am just saying that I can not see Koufax going down hill that fast.

I didn't know it got this shaky until recently when I saw some Steiner certed Koufax balls that were pretty shaky. I'm not sure how Steiner has his signings set up, but I would assume the player is seated at a table with a Steiner rep watching....and yet some recent examples were pretty bad.

The only ball we have seen so far from spring training looks good. Do you have any examples of what you are talking about from the signings. It would be a big help.
I have looked at ever steiner ball on ebay and not one look like the one we where shown at the start of this thread.

Shelly, I was actually referring to a picture that you posted in an earlier thread here:
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...86#post1324086

This is the Steiner example I was thinking of when I thought of Koufax' signature not looking like his signature of old. Ok, so after looking at it again, maybe it’s not necessarily "shaky"...but definitely off from his usual examples.

Plus, there are some recent auction lots I've seen where there are some shaky ones....I think they were just PSA certed though. I can't remember which auction, but I think there's one now or one that just ended recently that had a lot of 5 or so Koufax balls and they were all pretty sloppy...but still with some good bid prices on them.

Off for sure but not like the one posted in this thread.

This discussion has been productive, even though I'm sensing wincing by some who think criticism is 'TPA-bashing'. There tends to be a confusion between constructive criticism and bashing - thin skin on both sides, understandably.

Personally, I think if it's an authentic signature, it should be certified. The problem is that JSA keeps his exemplars to himself, and he has approved too many clubhouse signatures for me to have any faith in his hidden exemplars.

PSA, on the other hand, at least shows us exemplars. It's very helpful (to me, anyway), because I can at least tell what styles of each player's autograph they are willing to consider. I don't see any horrid Koufax signatures on PSA's site, but I do see the ugly 'old Wagner' examples. Makes me think that PSA isn't comfortable with the ugly Koufax signatures. I have more confidence in PSA than JSA, so that fact gives me no confidence in Spence's opinion on this one.