Opinions about COA's at shows.

[drcy]

Yes, it should be included.

[Bigdaddy]

Keep your auto ticket and take a picture with your phone of the athlete signing your item. There's your COA.

Tom

[Lordstan]

I agree that for the prices the public is paying the cert should be included, but the one thing that is missing in your calculations is that the promoter COA costs nothing for them to give out except a little in printing costs. PSA/JSA are separate companies that the promoters would have to pay to provide the service. That would cut into their profit or would mean that the autos would be $10 more.
The reality is that for those who need certs to buy autos, a show cert may not mean much. The TPAs are "independant" and have successfully marketed themselves as "The" authorities, so they can get away with charging more for their services. Right or wrong, there is a portion of the population that will only buy certed items.
Personally, I would never pay for certification of anything unless I was going to be selling it in the short term, especially if I just saw it autographed in front of me.

[mcgwirecom]

Always take a picture. If it is a unique item then it is proof positive. The cool thing about in person autographs was that they used to let you take a picture for free. Look at my icon of me and Joe D. But they pretty much stopped letting you do that. But you can still get a picture of them signing your item.

[Huck]

COAs are a license to print money. There was a time when each signer had a stack of COAs next to them at the table. Then COAs started costing $5-$10. Then the big sell was online COA. Look up the COA for the signed item at any time, day or night! The thing is when these COA companies go belly-up (and they will) will the COA database remain online in perpetuity? The answer is "no". Case in point. The former owner of CSA, used to have online COA at every show. I don't know if the former owner had a piece of the COA business or the business was subbed out to another company. In any event COA online is toast. It will take the collective memory of hobbiests to remember if such a coa company even existed. Hobbiests will likely remember JSA, Upper Deck, perhaps Schwartz, Steiner to name a few. As another poster said take a picture. Keep the ticket stub (if possible, CSA does, MAB does not). Keep a show flier, advertisement in the paper, email from the company, something that proves the event took place, there is no reason to spend money on a COA.

[lrspaulp]

Great discussion. And I thank everyone thus far for their opinions.

[mrmopar]

A COA is only "necessary" if you are looking to sell an item at a later date and want a little extra comfort for the potential buyer. The problem is that fake autos often come with COAs as well. It is a sad reality of autograph collecting that turned into big business and wherever there is a chance for fraud in business, it will materialize.

Perhaps I will take a small profit loss if I ever sell my stuff, but I really don't care. I have never collected with the intention of selling, so if I lose a few $$ because I don't have a COA, so be it. I certainly would never pay extra for a COA.

[Gary Dunaier]

These COAs they sell at shows... do the people who issue them actually see the item being signed? Or is it "a matter of trust?"

A few years ago, there was an autograph show at Citi Field. PSA/DNA provided authentication services. If memory serves me right, the way it worked was that once you got your autograph and left the area, you'd go to another table, show the receipt for your autograph, and the representative would look at the item, place a hologram sticker on it, and enter the information in the computer - but the representative did not actually see the items being signed.

Is this method still done, or was what I saw not the norm?