Lou Gehrig's Babe

[Runscott]

Originally Posted by Bpm0014

He stated that there a lot of "authenticated" Ruth signatures out there....that look questionable. And I just wanted to see these "authenticated" signatures that look questionable. But no worries!

I would also like to see them. This will never happen, but I would like to see all authenticated (by the big ones) Ruths gradually looked at by a group of non-paid Ruth experts and each put in a category;e.g.-'real in our opinion', bad, 'don't know. If it were gratis I think it would be enlightening for some here. There are too many problems with such an idea to discuss here - it would have to probably be done in secret and you would have to give a super-secret handshake to get access to results.

I would also tag the 'bad' and some of the 'I don't know' with a 'probable forger' code if one is known.

[Bpm0014]

but I would like to see all authenticated (by the big ones) Ruths gradually looked at by a group of non-paid Ruth experts and each put in a category;e.g.-'real in our opinion', bad, 'don't know.

I'd be down with this. I'll gladly opine on any Ruth autograph questions thrown my way!

[Runscott]

Brendan, it won't happen. Only way would be a super-secret society of authentication that no one would benefit from except the 'authenticators' themselves.

The big TPA's have a strangle-hold on ALL autograph authentication, and it benefits all the big players (AH's, consignors, etc) financially to such an extent that nothing is going to change.

I avoided TPA's for twenty years, but recently dealt with both PSA and JSA and was very impressed with the expertise of each. Given the authenticated Ruth's we've seen, it's easy to see that this is about money - not expertise.