Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowman
Why is the assumption being made that the "museum" is an expert whose opinion on signature authenticity ought to be respected? I'm ignorant here, so I'm asking this question honestly. Why do people care what this guy thinks? What are his credentials other than being some random fan who bought his house and some memorabilia and lets people tour it for a fee?
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Agreed. And for that matter, why is the other, non-museum person's opininion any better or more respected? The only way you personally can ever be 100% certain that someone's alleged autograph was actually signed by them was if you witnessed that individual actually sign and immediately give back the autographed item to you. With the exception of certain business/legal documents and/or items that were notarized or signed by witnesses (and even then, documents as such have still been known to be faked). My understanding is that no one throughout their entire lifetime ever signs their name precisely the exact same way twice........ever! So how exactly can these so called experts ever really be 100% certain that an autograph they are reviewing after the fact was actually signed by the person it was claimed to be signed by? Truth is, they can't. The only thing they can possibly be 100% certain of is when an autograph is fake and not signed by the person it was supposed to be autographed by. For example, when you see an autographed card of some athlete that wasn't even produced till some time after that athlete had already passed away.
I know a friend who has been collecting autographs mostly TTM since the late 1980s, and probably has somewhere between 500,000 to 1,000,000 autographed items today. He was never big into authenticators, and tried an experiment one time to see if he should look into getting at least some of his items authenticated. He had been somewhere that Sandy Alomar Jr. appeared for a signing back in his playing days, and got Sandy to personally autograph a card for him, so he knew it was 100% legit. He then took another Sandy card, and after practicing the signature from the legit autographed card he'd recently gotten a few times, signed a fake Alomar autograph himself on the second card. He then went ahead and submitted both cards together for authentication to one of the major, recognized autograph authentication and grading companies that is still doing it today. And guess what, the card Sandy autographed for him in person came back as a fake, while the card he had forged Alomar's signature came back as a legit Sandy Alomar Jr. autograph. I'll give you three guesses what his opinion is of these so called autograph experts, and the first two don't count. Needless to say, he's never wasted even a plugged nickel on having anything else of his "professionally" authenticated.