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BEWARE... FAKE JSA COA'S ARE IN THE MARKET PLACE... HERE IS THE PROOF.....

After many years of speculation the proof is finally here.

I recently purchased a Matt Barkley signed USC jersey with JSA coa off of ebay. There was no clear photo of the coa, hologram or any mention of the coa number. I did however buy the jersey based on the fact that it was "authenticated" by JSA.

Please allow me to back up just a little bit. I have been collecting, selling and doing autograph signings for almost 20 years so i am in no means new to the whole autograph and "authentication" process.

At any rate I received the jersey in the mail within 4 days, once I opened the jersey I immediately realized that the signature was indeed a counterfeit. I am not by any means claiming to be an autograph expert or a Matt Barkley expert for that matter however without even comparing the signature to an "authentic" one I can tell that it was slowly signed with many stops and skips. I then was examining the coa card and being around the hobby for almost 20 years and seeing coas from JSA since they opened their business I realized that the feel of the paper that this coa was printed on was not the typical paper normally used for the JSA coa, I then decided to grab one of my own JSA coa's to compare to and this is where it all started to come together. (you will see from the photo's I post below)

I then decided to look on ebay and compare the signatures to others certed by JSA (because I am not an expert on Matt Barkley signatures). I came across a listing from another member selling a Barkley jersey so i pulled up the listing. I was surprised when I noticed that the coa number was in fact the same coa number I had on my jersey. After comparing the coa's I noticed the big mistakes made by the printers of these fake coa's. You will see this in my photo's that I post below.

ABOVE IS THE ORIGINAL EBAY LISTING FOR THE FAKE JERSEY WITH FAKE COA...

HERE IS THE REAL JERSEY WITH REAL JSA COA. NOTE THE COA NUMBER..

HERE IS THE FAKE JSA COA AND FAKE SIGNATURE (THIS IS NOW IN MY POSSESION)

HERE IS A CLOSE UP OF THE ORIGINAL JSA COA AND HOLOGRAM, PLEASE NOTICE THE (F42843) NUMBER ON THE COA AND COMPARE THIS COA TO THE ONE POSTED JUST ABOVE (THE FAKE ONE)..

HERE'S A CLOSE UP OF THE FAKE COA

HERE IS A CLOSE UP OF THE REAL JSA COA AND HOLOGRAM. NOTICE HOW PERFECTLY THE LETTER "F" LINES UP WITH THE NUMBERS..

HERE IS THE FAKE JSA COA, NOTICE 1) THE FONT IN THE NUMBERS AND HOW THEY ARE PRINTED ON TOP OF THE CARD AND NOT STAMPED INTO THE CARD LIKE THE JSA CARDS. 2) NOTICE HOW THE "F" AND THE NUMBERS ARE NOT LINED UP AS IT IS WITH THE REAL COA.

(apparently I cannot upload any other photo's for some reason because I have many more but I must have uploaded too many already on the site???)

I would like to clear up that this is in no way a shot on JSA, the purpose for me posting this is to inform other buyers that there are fake coa's out there in the hobby and what to look for when buying an item already authenticated. I can assure everyone that this is most likely not the only fake coa on the market, I am sure that there was not only 1 coa and sticker made only for a Matt Barkley jersey. I have heard that PSA/DNA has had the same issue which is why they now have a hologram burned into the coa's however no one has ever pointed out what to look for with the fake PSA/DNA coa's, hopefully it's as easy as this was to figure out.

I would also like to add that I did speak to a field agent from the FBI both yesterday and today and in fact have a meeting in Manhattan on Friday with a field agent from FBI.

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Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on September 25, 2012 at 8:45pm: Peter,

Thank you for telling us about this. You should be able to post all the photos you want. Send me the ones that you can't upload and I'll check them out to find find out what's wrong and post them if you want. My email is editor@autographmagazine.com.

Comment by James Sonier on September 25, 2012 at 9:00pm: Peter all i can say is wow. Good job exposing this. I guess these forgers will stop at nothing to push this phoney product around. Thanks for the post and insight.

Comment by Rick Meyer on September 25, 2012 at 9:04pm: WOW. Nice work.

Comment by Brandon Mysinger on September 26, 2012 at 2:49am: This type of finding spoils the whole jug of milk. The sad part is that usually when things like this are discovered, the market is already flooded with these items.

Comment by CEE GEE on September 26, 2012 at 4:31am: Sick...

Comment by Peter leone on September 26, 2012 at 4:52am: Steve, Thank you, I will try to upload the other photos if it still wont let me i will email them to you.

Brandon, I think it's safe to say the milk has been spoiled for a while. People can not be left in the dark about what is out there. Everyone should also be aware that this is most likely not the first time or the first company to have their cards and stickers duplicated.

As I stated in the original post this is in NO WAY an attack on JSA however people do need to be made aware of this and what to look for when buying this stuff. To a novice collector this looks like any other JSA coa and hologram. Also note that JSA has changed the look of their holograms and cert cards as did PSA/DNA. As I also stated in my original post it has been said that this has also happened to PSA/DNA which is why they went to "burning" their logo into the cert card to make it much harder to duplicate.

Comment by Peter leone on September 26, 2012 at 5:03am: Here is the fake hologram

Something I forgot to mention is the texture of the cert card, the back part of the card has a waxy type feel to it the stock of paper is not what is used to make the real JSA cert cards.

These next 2 photo's are of the back of the cert cards, when you look around the edges you will see the color bleeding through the card which is not typical on the real cards.

Comment by Mike Shepherd on September 26, 2012 at 5:06am: I said it before and I'll say it again. I know it sounds crazy but if I ever purchase a PSA or JSA authenticated item on eBay I may just resubmit it. With all of the technological advances out there the forgers are becoming more and more sophisticated. It's very frustrating. It's only a matter of time before the slight variations are no longer apparent.

Comment by Scott Paul on September 26, 2012 at 6:28am: This is a great post and very helpful I am sure to many. What would be very helpful is to know if JSA has changed their logo's over the years to see examples of them. I am beginning to think I may have bought a fake one. I do not have the item yet but the sticker does not appear to be like the one on here. It does not appear to have any numbers on the sticker itself.

Comment by Peter leone on September 26, 2012 at 7:51am: Scott, If the sticker does not have a number on it than it is called "JSA Stamp" which they usually use on ONLY 8x10 photo's and smaller (flats ONLY) with a retail value of under $20. They do that because the value of the item is so low that it may not be worth it for someon to pay a $20+ authentication fee for an item with a value of less than $20. The "stamp" cost between $2-$10 depending on the day. lol.. However I do recall a few years ago that there was a lot of items that had the "Stamp" on them that should not have had the stamp such as 11x14 photo's, Baseballs and most notably a slew of Derek Jeter photo's which would NEVER have the "stamp" affixed to them.

Since there is no Number on the "stamp" there is no record of it logged into the JSA database and is also very easy to duplicate in mass numbers. In my opinion the "stamp" is not a good thing because of the obvious reasons but I do understand why they do it. For a novice collector that does'nt know any better all they really care about is, who authenticated an item and because they may have heard of JSA they feel comfortable with buying the item.

Here is what that stamp looks like

Here is also the new cert card and hologram now being used