[Tabe]

Originally Posted by BobC

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.

I recall seeing a story about someone at a show. They got an auto from a guest at the show and then walked over to get it authenticated. It was deemed fake.