PSA/DNA "Blanket" LOA

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Posted By: JT

Hey,
There's been some discussion about PSA/DNA blanket letters of authenticity that come with large auction lots. I'm interested in your thoughts. Suppose I buy one of these lots with 1000 autographs and a blanket LOA. I decide to send in the "big ones" to have them individually encapsulated and authenticated by PSA/DNA for resale. What happens if some of them (or all of them) come back as not authentic? Have the auction houses and/or PSA/DNA covered themselves to protect them from any recourse?

JT

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Posted By: Lee Behrens

Way too many open windows for my good. I would not even touch the situation. The Brian Daniels example is good proof why. It sounds to me like a lazy mans way to authenticate. I don't understand why they offer the service, if someone does not want ot pay for everything authenticated, than the company should autenticate only what they are willing to pay for.

Lee

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Posted By: davidcycleback

I think that the discussion of about the nature of giving LOA's to large lots is legitimate, so I am not damning this topic. My problem is that I think some people try to make authenticity problems where there isn't evidence of one. For example, people are complaining about this one LOA per large lot rule, yet no one has complained about a specific instance where one of these group lots had authenticity problems (The recent complaint was about condition, not authenticity of the signatures).

If you buy a large group lot from MastroNet or Mike Gutierrez that has a single LOA, you can get individual LOAs or COAs for each autograph you want. It's just that it's not free. I beleive Mike Gutierrez charges $30 per extra LOA. (Did you think it would be free?)

If you want to argue that if you buy a lot 1,000 autographs and one of them is secretarial you should get 1/1,000th of your money back, I won't argue with that. If this is another post about suing in Federal Court for pain and suffering and loss of spousal affection because a Micky Moradinie signed 3x5 is bad, I'm tired of the posts about lawsuits.

My feeling is that people should pick and choose what they wish to purchase, and should be particularly thoughtful when purchasing autographs. If a board member or other collector is uncomfortable with these large group lots and their authentication, I would recommend they choose not to purchase them and to choose something they are more confident with. I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with chosing not to bid on something, because you are not comfortable with the lot or its authentication methods. As a collector, your ultimate weapon is to not bid.

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Posted By: jay behrens

And the stupid observation of the day, can I submit a bunch of t206s and get a blanket grade to cover all the cards? What if I slip a fake Wagner in there and it gets past them? I am sure they grade more cards than they authenticate sigs. There can't be that much more time invovled.

This whole thing seems disengeuous on the part of the authenticators. If you are willing to say a lot of 500 sigs is good, then you better prepared at write an LOA for each and every one. Otherwise, they shouldn't be offering blanket LOAs. And whos' to say that when someone buys one of these lots that they can't sell off the good sigs and slip in bogus ones, then dump the lots with a bunch of bad sigs.

Just another reason why I don't both with the autograph thing unless I get it in person for myself, which is very rare.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: Judge Dred

Jay beat me to the point -

"And whos' to say that when someone buys one of these lots that they can't sell off the good sigs and slip in bogus ones, then dump the lots with a bunch of bad sigs."

What happens if the lot owner slips in a fake "tough" autograph and then sends it to PSA and wants to have it individually authenticated based on the blanket LOA?

David's point regarding the cost of an LOA is valid. It would cost thousands of $$$ to authenticate a huge lot. But isn't the purpose of an LOA supposed to be a true authentication of the item which it supports? There should not be any errors when an LOA is being used (my opinion). But we all know better than that.

I think a blanket LOA on two thousand autographs was very irresponsible. Think about it. If the authenticator actually took 2 minutes to examine each autograph that would be 4,000 minutes or about 67 hours!!! Lets just say the authenticator spent one minute on each autograph - that's 33+ hours. Cmonnow - do they actually expect someone to believe that they actually took the time to look at all of them. Doesn't the issuance of the LOA indicate that the item(s) in question have been reviewed by the authenticator? Not only that, is there an autograph authenticator that has an eidetic memory that gives them the ability to know what each and every autograph is supposed to look like? Do they know which hand each person wrote with? That's a pretty large stretch to accept. One of these days it's going to open these suppliers of LOAs to some serious litigation.

COMMON SENSE - Where is it these days?

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Posted By: Anonymous

I purchased a large lot last year from a major auction house and the highlights were mentioned in the catalog ad and on the Internet. The lot consisted of 600 pieces and I believe 75 were mentioned in the ad, names like Mantle, Williams, DiMaggio etc. Pretty much expect to get a grab bag of good and bad after that.

The question put forth on the thread was interesting. The truth of the matter is that if PSA/DNA issues a blanket LOA, then that means 'they looked at it' and there shouldn't be an afterthought if re-submitted for slabbing.

The truth of the matter (again) is that it's not a guarantee that they'll approve it a second time. There have been countless stories of resubmissions failing or passing a second time but compared to how many items they pass, I can't really see much of a problem of them failing items that were once passed in blanket form. Maybe include the LOA with the submission to say 'Hey guys, look, you thought this bundle was good already!'.

Mixing and matching is a popular 'autograph crime' when dealing with 'blanket LOA's'. I have seen a few sellers who will pay big bucks for a lot and while the LOA states that there was a Tony Lazzeri in the lot, looking at old catalogs, the Lazzeri in the catalog photo and the Lazzeri that was up for sale were 100% different.

Blanket LOA's are a lazy way of dealing with things and nothing but trouble.

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Posted By: jay behrens

What's the point of a blanket LOA if you can't give them indiviual sigs from the lot and automatically get an LOA, even if it costs you money? once again, this jsut proves that an LOA is worthless piece of paper and the that PSA/DNA and others are just a bunch charlatans if they are issuing blanket LOAs.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: jay behrens

What's the point of a blanket LOA if you can't give them indiviual sigs from the lot and automatically get an LOA, even if it costs you money? once again, this jsut proves that an LOA is worthless piece of paper and the that PSA/DNA and others are just a bunch charlatans if they are issuing blanket LOAs.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: JT

Anonymous,
I'm in a similar boat as you. I purchased a large lot with a blanket COA. I'm torn by the dilemma: I can sell them "raw" and tell buyers that they came from this lot with a blanket COA. On the other hand, I can probably get more for them if I get them slabbed individually. But if I sent them in and they came back not authentic, I couldn't (in good conscience) sell them raw as if I hadn't sent them in. So I guess I could be more direct with my question: If you wanted to sell such a lot, what would you do?

JT

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Posted By: JNBrooks

Hello First Time Poster, Long Time Reader,

My area of expertise is autographs and come to the VBC for baseball card chatter. I do not respond to the baseball cards as I am out of my league. Why do baseball card people feel a need to respond to autograph posts? And the stupid observation of the day is....Thank you Jay, Captain Obvious for your opinion. Has there ever been a thread that you didn't want to respond to? Do you just sit around and wait for a new thread to evolve so you can dispense your two cents? I cracked..I simply had enough of your postings. Sorry Board for my rant. Sure Blanket's are worthless, but in some regards, they are a necessary evil. After all, you can't authenticate EVERY signature in a lot if a large majority of the items in the lot are crap items. Card people, we know there is a big problem in the autograph community that is way beyond 'Blanket-Gate' here and I believe this topic was discussed in an early thread.

Thank You,
Jim

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Posted By: Cap

JT,

When I bought the lot, what I did was simply make a copy of the Blanket LOA and included it with every signature that was purchased.

Did I get top dollar? Not really. I could have done better by 'slabbing' or getting individual LOA's. My purpose was to sell off the rest of the items in hopes of paying for the two dozen items that I put in my collection which I did. The collection I bought was a 'mish-mash of photos' and of the 505, I kept 18 for myself, sold 430 on eBay, 20 to others and threw away about forty because they were secreterials, didn't like the signatures or were unknown players from the 1980's. I accomplished my goal and made a couple hundred bucks. At that time, I noticed a few interesting things on eBay at one time involving Cool Papa Bell signed photo(and I'm pretty sure I could pinpoint this to any sports somewhat common signature).

A signed photo w/o PSA/DNA LOA sold for $15.
A signed photo w/ copy of blanket (mine) sold for $26.
A signed photo w/ original blanket LOA sold for $36.
(this of course could just be a coincidence)

I'm not exactly sure how you want to distribute these items for resale. Ebay? If so, how many items are you going to be slabbing? How many are you going to sell without a slab?

I would probably make a pile of signatures that I want slabbed and send them in. I would trust that PSA/DNA would make the right decision in authenticating them again. After all, they thought they were good once. I would include a copy of the blanket LOA just to let the guys know that they passed it once.

If they do fail it, throw them up on eBay with a copy of the blanket LOA with the rest of the items that you chose not to slab.

Hope this helps!

Cap

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Posted By: PASJD

I don't see the issue, as long as there is no deception. If the terms of the blanket LOA are disclosed, and it is unsatisfactory to the collector, the collector should not bid, or should discount the lot taking into account the nature of the LOA.

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Posted By: Howie

I see the auction house blanket LOA as a single use document between the auction house and the buyer. The auction house describes the group and obtains a letter from a 3rd party stating that the auction house description is accurate. The buyer gets the group and then sells the items using his own reputation as a seller. He can offer a copy of the LOA and hope the people believe that the item they're buying did come from that big Mastro lot. He can offer his reputation as a seller and provide his own LOA and back his product. Or he can obtain a 3rd party LOA that people who know him may not need, but it could enhance the value to people who aren't familiar with his reputation.

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Posted By: jay behrens

Jim, I'm obviously an opinionated guy that isn't afraid to speak his mind.

Howie, what you say would make sense. The blanket LOA is a one time use document that is meaningless beyond the auction it was written for. I guess I could live with that explanation. Still doesn't make me feel any better about autographs.

Jay

I've just reached Upper Lower Class. I am now officially a babe magnet for poor chicks.

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Posted By: Cap

Howie hit it on the head.

I don't have a problem with a blanket LOA, but I can see where others would and how easy it is for a person to profit from deceit when the document is that vague.

When you come down to it, doesn't it seem like we put more emphasis on the minds that said the item was good instead of the item that goes into our collection?

True story. I was watching a table for a friend at an Eastcoast show and a kid had just paid $85 for a Phil Simms autograph. He asked me if I knew where the PSA/DNA booth was. He told me he had no intention of selling the football. Even though he just witnessed Phil signing the ball, he wanted further proof that it was authentic. So he paid $85 for the signature. $90 for the ball...and what is it? $150 for a cert?

Cap


Yes, I received your letter yesterday. (About the time the door knob broke). When you asked how I was doing. Was that some kind of joke?- Bob Dylan