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Is JSA now authenticating forgeries?

I am a new member although I do frequently read articles and forum posts from this site because they populate in Google search when I do research on various autographs.

Let me say first and foremost that this post is not to cause drama or ill feelings. I realize that there are a lot of people who are partial to TPA's and in all truthfulness, I myself prefer items that are certified by major 3rd party authentication companies.

I frequent eBay and make the majority of my purchases from ebay and like many of you, I usually add PSA or JSA to the search bar with whatever I am looking to buy. For instance, If I am looking to buy a Mickey Mantle signed baseball, I might query ( Mickey Mantle baseball PSA ).

While I am very capable of telling whether a Mantle is real or fake, I realize that should I ever want to resell the item that having a TPA on it will certainly help me. So, typically I buy items that are already certified. At the very least, it is a second opinion on what I already feel about the item. I don't buy simply based on the sticker, because I have seen a lot of items that I disagree with TPA's on.

My reason for this post is to call in to question James Spence ( JSA ) on some very questionable items I have been seeing as of late. Most of the items that I have seen have been Music and Entertainment. Has anyone else noticed that JSA is seemingly giving blanket authentication to items as of late. This concerns me as someone who has a large portion of my collection authenticated by JSA. While, I know that my JSA authenticated items are real, if they ruin their reputation, the resell value of these items will tank. This is very concerning. I wanted to get some opinions as to what is going on here? Is JSA going the route of Global? As a long time collector I remember when Global was actually a legitimate authentication company but in no time seemed to turn in to a blanket authentication company.

I am not trying to bash JSA but from what I've been seeing the last few months, I feel about 500% more confident in PSA when it comes to Music and Entertainment autographs. What made me decide to make this post was a conversation I had today with a guy I met at a show a while back. I would occasionally get him to have stuff authenticated if a major TPA was at a show he was going to. Well, he called me tonight out of the blue and said that James Spence and his son were going to be at his house and asked me if I had any items I needed authenticated.

This conversation made me feel that perhaps Spence is a bit to chummy with people he is authenticating for. I don't like that one bit. I don't want the authenticator drinking an ice cold beer with the person selling the autographs. It seems to be a serious conflict of interest and in all honesty, I have felt a serious decline in my level of trust in JSA.

Another interesting thing I want to touch base on is a company called GFA. There is one specific seller who is using about 5 different ebay ids to pump out countless amounts of forgeries from this supposed forensic expert.

This seller has used 5 names to sell well over 75,000 dollars in forgeries all certified by GFA. I have reported his items to eBay but because he is a power seller they seem to never pull the listings. I decided to do a PSA quick opinion on several of his offerings and all 4 of the quick opinions failed. I notified him that the items failed PSA Quick Opinion and this was his response

" It's not even worth dignifying this with a response but if the stuff I've been selling is fake, then I've been ripped off for the past year by my merchandiser. I gave up on those idiots at the "big authentication companies" when I sent them items that I had personally witnessed being signed and they came back as "likely not authentic". Why is it "likely"? Because it's their opinion..

As you can see, GFA is another company that gives blanket authentication and should absolutely be added to eBay's banned COA list.

Here is a few active auctions with GFA certs.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mickey-Mantle-Signed-8x10-Photo-Autographed...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dale-Earnhardt-Richard-Petty-Signed-8x10-Ph...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mickey-Mantle-Signed-8x10-Photo-Autographed...

In closing, I sincerely hope that I haven't offended anyone with my first post. It just bothers me to see JSA authenticating so many questionable entertainment items. It would be horribly sad to see them sell out for the quick buck.

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on October 20, 2014 at 6:38pm

Not authentic.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Poulos on October 20, 2014 at 7:26pm

Looks like i'm not the only one who thinks the Mantle is no good. Thanks for the input.

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Permalink Reply by Randy on October 20, 2014 at 7:44pm

Yes, looks like I am in a minority on the Mantle opinion.

Perhaps JSA missed the boat on this Mantle but it is very rare if so on him and although I am not personally convinced, I will defer to the widely accepted Mantle experts on this forum.

I personally think that losing Larry Studebaker as an authenticator has hurt JSA. I heard many different things about his departure but have no direct knowledge whether he left on his own or was shown the door. I do think he was a key player in their system and was knowledgeable.

Maybe I am too trusting of JSA but I don't think they will ever go the way of Global. You are correct that when Global started authenticating autographs in 2007, they were legitimate because they had Mike Gutierrez heading up the program. When he left, they did not attempt to replace him with a legitimate authenticator and passed the reins to Justin Priddy which was a disaster. When they were close to defunct, they authenticated the thousands of Mantle, Williams, and Dimaggios with the Mike Baker certs to raise cash and try to stay in business.

Christopher Williams is correct that those thousands of bogus autographs will haunt the hobby for years. I was offered a large lot of them at the time and knew they were bad. They were being offered for ridiculously low prices in bulk which was a dead giveaway they were bad without even looking closely at them.

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Permalink Reply by Null on October 24, 2014 at 9:13am

I am just seeing this article, and yes JSA authenticated that Mantle forgery TWICE.

Randy, it's a 100% forgery, CeeGee/Zipper agree and PSA/DNA has failed items from the same forger. No doubt about it.

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Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on October 20, 2014 at 5:16pm

I am an Entertainment collector and I have been studying the auctographs of the celebs that I collect for 30 years. Most people come to me with questions about Star Wars autographs and just in the last few months, all of these fakes have been offered on ebay.

You get the idea.....there is plenty more where those came from.

JSA is fine with sports stuff, but they really do need to stop the guessing at Celeb graphs.

They went so far as to authenticate George Lucas' inscription "To Scott" as a Tony Scott autograph.

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Permalink Reply by Mike T on October 20, 2014 at 5:45pm

Haha! I remember this from RS. Tony Scott... That's funny. Sad, but funny. My main area is music and JSA is definitely lacking expertise in that field. Some of the JSA certed Zeppelin items I've seen recently are atrocious.

With all third party authenticators you have to remember it's a numbers game. They simply give you additional assurance or a better shot at buying authentic signatures. If JSA has certified 1,000,000 items and has a success rate of 85% across the board (it would be easy to argue that it's lower) - that leaves 150,000 forgeries with JSA certificates. Everytime you see a JSA item, there's a 15% chance it's fake. On the flip side, if you know nothing about the signature, there's an 85% chance it's real.. Which is where their value comes in. I'd take those odds over buying blind any day.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Poulos on October 20, 2014 at 7:28pm

Mike,

I think JSA is in the 85 to 90% range on sports but have a hard time believing they are anywhere near that in music/celebrity graphs. I would say more in the 60% range in those fields.

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Permalink Reply by Mike T on October 20, 2014 at 7:41pm

In my opinion they are better than 60% (hardly better than a coin flip) on music items, especially when Epperson was authenticating for them (he still may be?). Regardless of the number the logic still stands, veteran collectors should not be collecting items based on the authentication and amateur collectors stand to benefit by sticking to authenticated items, especially since the values maintain as long as PSA and JSA are accepted in major auction houses.

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Permalink Reply by Jason Poulos on October 20, 2014 at 7:45pm

I am well aware of Roger Epperson and to be honest, and I think he is amazing when it comes to music memorabilia. The problem I have is that JSA seems to pass a LOT of garbage without consulting Roger.

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Permalink Reply by Mike T on October 20, 2014 at 7:53pm

Agreed, I don't know exactly what their relationship is, but it is clear Roger does not look at every music item they authenticate. It's too bad, they would be much better if he did.