Quote:
Originally Posted by packs
That's really not how things are supposed to be done though. And I think that's my issue overall with this piece. Provenance should not matter one iota when it comes to authentication. We are all conditioned not to believe grandpa's attic story. It should either be authentic or not authentic or an opinion can't be rendered and that conclusion should be made based on what you're looking at.
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Agreed, but the problem is no one is still alive today that was on hand to see the item being signed, as is the case with most items from so long ago. And many people hope and want to believe that items were used, belonged to, and signed by certain people from the past. So even though there often isn't first hand verification of such, the provenance becomes a huge factor in determing if many items were actually signed, owned, used by the party they are purported to be.
In the case of autographs, the only way to truly be 100% certain it was signed by the person in question is if you witnessed it being signed yourself. Absent that, there is no 100% certainty, and thus you are forced to consider other factors, such as provenance surrounding such items and the circumstances of their being signed. This is done to determine where on the scale of 0% - 100% the consensus opinion of the public ends up falling as to the authenticity of an autograph. And it is the public at large that really ends up determining if an autograph is authentic or not. The opinions of so called "experts", just like the provenance and other known factors surrounding an autographed item, are simply contributing factors used by the public to decide for themselves if they will accept an alleged autograph is authentic, or not. And in the case of this alleged Jackson autograph it is never more true as you have "experts" giving completely opposite opinions, making other factors such as provenance, all the more important in shaping final public opinion.
And don't discount the fact that the public sees someone pony up $1.4M for the item, and a very large portion become swayed and lean towards thinking no one in their right mind would pay that kind of money for something that wasn't authentic. That in and of itself goes a long way for saying it is a legit auto, and has already been accepted as such by a large part of the collecting public, regardless of what any of us think or say on here.