Grading question involving cards signed by the collector, NOT the player

[bobbyw8469]

I subbed some cards to PSA about a year ago to PSA under their "Swinging Sixties Special". I had a few that were "signed" in cursive by a kid. The kid signed them with the players name, but obviously the autographs did NOT belong to that player. Anyway, the sub finally went into grading tonight and those cards were tagged "Needs PSA/DNA. No grade, no charge". I am not sending them to PSA/DNA because I know the autographs are obviously no good, but will PSA not grade them due to the false signatures?? Any help is appreciated.

[steve B]

To me they should get the MK qualifier, maybe with a note that they're not autographed.

But of course PSA has to wring a few more bucks out of things.

[JustinD]

Certainly annoying, but I would venture a guess that this is a reaction to the Topps rookie premier scandals and the similar ones. For many years they have been selling both fake autographed cards and fake factory autos on ebay that were backdoored blanks like this 2007 Rookie Premier series -



The scam was submitting a real card with a fake auto for an Auth grade and then listing them to the clueless as "Authentic Autos" on eBay. There was hundreds of thousands of dollars scammed this way. This also worked with actual grading as 10 years ago you could submit a factory signed card with an auto and just get a red grade and not a dna grade, meaning the grader would ignore the auto. This was perfect for backdoor and autopen cards as it was graded a 9 or 10 with a red label. People completely overlooked that there was no auto grade and thought, rather logically if you are uninformed, that this meant the entire card was sound.

I believe in the case of the Rookie Premiers it got to the point they were at a time completely blacklisted on Ebay as far more than the majority were fake autos. There are more red labeled number graded cards of that series with fake autos than real...by a sizable percentage.

[JollyElm]

I can see the basic problem PSA has. If the card sat in a slab with an 'MK' qualifier, a skeevy (is that how it's spelled?) seller could sell the card as being legitimately autographed by the player himself, but "The graders say it has a mark* on it somewhere, but I can't find it." That type of scenario really opens itself up to scammers. Obviously, you're not one of those people, but you can see the can of worms it could open in an imperfect world.


*Hence the MK.