Hobby Hustle Documentary 2-16-25

[oldjudge]

I saw the documentary last night and agree with those saying it was pretty bad. The forger who is a big part of the show is scarey good though. After seeing him and based on my own limited experience with autograph authentication I think anyone who relies on authenticators to tell them if their autographs are good is, to put it kindly, rolling the dice. My experience is the opposite of most. I had an autograph which was 100% good called fake by PSA. The history of this is in the mid-1990s I hosted customer dinners and would have star athletes present for the customers to meet. One customer dinner was with Jim Brown. As part of the evening the athlete would take pictures with guests and autograph things for them. When Jim was there we had Browns mini-helmets to get autographs on. I got a few extras signed to send to any customers who were unable to attend but wanted one. Fast forward to last year. I had an extra left in my closet and I consigned it to LOTG game. Not a big item, probably worth $100-$200, but I didn't need it and I thought someone might like it. Al sent it to PSA for authentication and it came back bad. Not only did they say it was bad but they had a laundry list of things that they said was wrong with it (Al sent me their analysis). Makes me pretty skeptical of the process.