Piedmont Cards / ACE Authenticated Babe Ruth Signed Silver Certificates

[mighty bombjack]

Originally Posted by GrayGhost

And of course, as Chris and others have said, what MORON customer would not be curious as to how a dealer gets SO MANY similar "cuts" and such of difficult and/or popular signatures. Blind faith can get get you ripped off.

This was what raised my curiosity. I saw that Piedmont Sports had listed a Christy Mathewson signed "Won in the Ninth" presentation copy on ebay. I saw that it had an ACE cert, and had not only never heard of that company, but had heard (on this very MB among other places) that some of the presentation copies of that particular book were secretarily signed. Why would this book, of all treasured items, have a lower-tier cert attached to it?

The book vanished from ebay after a couple of days (no doubt due to the cert), so I went to Piedmont Cards' website and my jaw dropped when I saw the sheer number of Mathewson, Ruth, and Gehrig autos for sale with ACE and AMA (?) certs. I've never seen such an inventory (but then again, no one else has, either).

That was more than enough for me to write off the legitimacy of ACE and AMA. Sadly, it makes me want to write off Piedmont Sports as well. To his credit, Frank has taken the stuff off of his website. To his detriment, he listed it in the first place. At best he is a rube who got taken, and at worst he is a party to the growing number of pre-war autograph forgeries that are turning up.

I'd still like to see that Matty book and get some of the other members' opinions of it. Not that I could afford a legit copy right now.

Wayne Walker