Open letter to STAT and Christopher Morales

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Posted By: <b>CS Bolay</b><p>One thing I have thought about in regard to Morales/ Frangipani (and again, I must stress I am a complete legal ignoramus, so don't laugh at me <img src="/images/happy.gif" height=14 width=14> ) is their use as witnesses in court cases. <br /><br />Considering their shaky history in the autograph field, is it possible that defense lawyers could start using all their questionable 'forensic authentications' against them, or even to attempt to have convictions or testimony thrown out? I mean, if you mess up Babe Ruth a zillion times, how could render an opinion on Joe Schmo? <br /><br />Secondly, one thing that really drives me nuts is the increasing influence of the 'big acroynms' in the autograph world, PSA/GAI/STAT or whatever. Half of the guys there in said companies I've barely heard of, and some of the others certainly wouldn't be my first choice in their fields. <br /><br />But so many people act as if their opinions are oh-so-infallible, just because they have big advertising budgets or because Poodlydoop Auctions from SCD or Beckett uses them. <br /><br />I'd take the opinion of experienced, longtime dealers like Rich, Bill, Ron Gordon, James Lowe, Bill Ecker or Joyce Muns over Alphabet Soup anyday. But how many casual autograph collectors have ever heard of them? And how many would purchase from them before they would the same item with a fancy acronym stamped on it? <br /><br />Very few, I suspect, and that's unfortunate, one of the great tragedies in the current-day autograph hobby. The willingness of many collectors to blindly rely on forensic bigshots or big-money Alphabet Soup companies has lead to many of the same problems we are discussing in this thread.