[Archive]

Posted By: <b>Bill Panagopulos</b><p>What a disgusting, insulting disgrace to our collecting fraternity. My friends who collect baseball, your stuff is now worthless. Why? These guys are flooding the market, day after day, with worthless frauds that sooner or later will dupe more and more innocents into buying them. As a result, the legitimate, authentic autographs, cards, relics, photos, pins, banners, etc, you've bought will be reduced to the same value as the worthless crap being peddled by crooked auctioneers and dealers - yes, just as worthless as the junk these guys are foisting on the public because the average guy simply won't know the difference. <br /><br />As long as everybody sits back and says: "Well..MY stuff is real, so I have nothing to worry about...", they WILL have something to worry about! Don't get too comfortable.<br /><br />Just today, some crook offered a good customer of mine several utterly worthless historic autographs that they swore would be passed by either Morales, STAT or some other so-called authenticator. They weren't baseball or rock autographs, but important historic Americana. And only NOW did this guy realize what a hazard his own collecting interest was facing. He told me: "I don't give a sh_t about rock, but when these guys start messing with historic autographs, we have a problem". I told him to "wake the f up". Get the picture?<br /><br />Baseball is ruined. Rock is well on its way, and only a slew of federal indictments can fix it (and they just might...). But the problem is swelling, it's a cancer and needs to be addressed immediately with every asset available, before it spreads wholesale to other fields of autographs, and...<br /><br />...cards...banners...pins...photos...relics...uni forms...coins...stamps...etc....etc...etc...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />