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PAAS Certified Autographs Removed From eBay, Allowed Back Within a Few Months

Update: PAAS certified autographs with their new COAs and LOAs, which came out in May or June 2012 are now allowed on eBay again.

eBay has removed virtually all autograph listings with PAAS (Professional Autograph Authentication Service) COAs, apparently due to authenticity concerns.

It is estimated that approximately 800 listings were wiped out, and less than a dozen remained. eBay sellers reported that all of their PAAS autographs were removed except those also certified by other third-party authenticators. Sellers were told they would face possible suspension if they attempted to list them again.

While there has been no official statement by eBay, Michael Frost, PAAS's president and authenticator, acknowledged eBay's actions when I asked by email, but would not say why, suggesting we contact eBay. However he denied it was due to authenticity concerns.

However, emails from eBay provided to us by recipients contradict that.:

Why were the listings for my autographed items ended?
- We received reports regarding the authenticity of the autographs in your listings. Please be aware that we regularly receive such reports from rights owners, law enforcement officials and members of the eBay community. These reports were not the determining factor for why your listings were removed but they were taken into consideration.

In the past, blanket removal of a company's COA by eBay has been followed within a few months by an official listing on eBay's banned COA list. More on this situation as it develops.

Tags: banned, ebay, frost, p.a.a.s., paas, professional autograph authentication service

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Permalink Reply by Thomas Marcotte on May 5, 2020 at 11:05am

Hi Rich,

Thank you for the information. I've been a member of eBay for 10 or so years but didn't start selling on it until the past year or so. and most of that was for non-collectables I was selling in an Estate Sale of my mother valuable possessions. Most of my Autograph transactions occur not on eBay, but with people I trust and that I've had relationships for many years. Most of them attend the same card shows around the country every year. I don't go to authenticators outside of the more reputable ones and know full well they can and will get it wrong sometimes. My only other recourse isn't as reliable. If you know of a great place to go for authentication please let me know who it might be.

You are right about eBay. They do sell many items I can see even in the small window and know it is a forgery. I thought from the discussion I was reading that eBay was cracking down on authenticators who are known to be signature mills. If that's not the case then I'm disheartened. Too many people don't know what to look for in a signature they want to collect. Thankfully I have learned over the decades (I lost money early on) how to identify the frauds, and even then there are some good ones that are tough to determine, but I won't touch. The mass majority on eBay and elsewhere however are pretty obvious.

Thank you for letting me know eBay is not the stand up company I was hoping it was trying to be.

Best regards,

Tom

Permalink Reply by terrier8HOF on May 5, 2020 at 12:42pm

also, the thread you responded to is old, and back then ebay was trying to clean things up

Permalink Reply by CJCollector on May 5, 2020 at 12:20pm

I'm curious, Thomas, how do you know that Ebay "Wants everyone to know they are doing the best they can to limit the presence of false signatures for sale on their site?"

Permalink Reply by terrier8HOF on May 5, 2020 at 12:41pm

Tom, Ebay is not privately held, they went public years ago. At one point, it appeared that they were serious about clamping down on forgeries and they had a program in place that did a very good job in eliminating most of them. But they did away with it years ago, and now do NOTHING to prevent innocent collectors from getting screwed by these low life sellers of forgeries.