OT: HBO's Real Sports - A Must See Episode

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Posted By: DJ

I have found myself enjoying the autograph business less and less as the years go by (I have been collecting for roughly 25+ years) and will probably find it A LOT less enjoyable in five years as I don't see it cleaning itself up, but the problem growing. I see what I believe to be more politics, more arguments about what's good and what's bad, more authenticators hating on other authenticators, more homeade authenticating houses that will be featured in future "Real Sports" episodes, a lazy public that doesn't educate themselves and I see really "good artists" fooling these good authenticators.

After all, if you can do a perfect Babe Ruth forgery, would you ever have to work again when you can crank out maybe 4-5 perfect baseballs a year at $20K each? Hmmm...

So when it comes to experts, I kind of like the person that has been involved in the hobby for many, many years and who has gained an education throughout in handling the material. Of course the debate goes that an expert or authenticator like Rich or Mike also sell autographs and that's where the argument comes in favor of those authenticators who simply authenticate like the ones mentioned in the video in a "bad" way and have no education and understand that if they fail things, that takes away from the money they could be making.

When it comes down to it, I mean really, isn't it simply matching signatures? Couldn't you simply take any person off the street and teach him a little about the rapid way a person signs, look for stops, look for strange wrist motions and give him a loaded database of exemplars and he could do the job, right?

Everytime you see a person added to one of these big legit authenticating firms, you wonder who in the world it is. Most of the PSA/DNA guys seem to be chasers (outside of the hiring of Mike). Wasn't Steve Grad a chaser before joining PSA/DNA? When PSA/DNA's passes something, is Mike looking at it or is it a chaser? Who is authenticating my Thomas Jefferson, Shirley Temple and my Bo Jackson?

I'm not anti-PSA/DNA either so the above is only for the sake of argument. I am anti-those who pass anything.

IMO...

DJ