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New here and have questions

Hi all. I live in Florida and collect Beatles, Stones and Dylan autographs and dabble in US presidents, authors and a few others. I've basically been dealing with only three auction sources. I've known about liveauctioneers.com for a while but for some reason never had much interest in diving deeper into their offerings.

That changed recently and I have found myself navigating the treacherous waters of liveauctioneers after all. When I found this forum, I started compiling questions that liveauctioneers brought up for me, in hopes of getting them answered by the membership here, which seems to be quite knowledgable. Here goes:

1. There is one auction house in particular that sells, from what I can tell, mostly fakes, at least of the famous people whose autographs I'm familiar with. Is there no accountability to protect unwitting bidders from unscrupulous (or naive or indifferent) auctioneers?

2. I've seen some conversation here and other places relating to PSA DNA being grossly overrated. Some go so far as to say they make a lot of mistakes and can't be trusted. I don't know about that, but from years of collecting, I can tell you that given two similar authentic autographs, one with a PSA COA and one without, the one with the PSA COA will fetch a much higher price. Comments?

3. People here and elsewhere, while attempting to authenticate, place undue value on signature consistency. For instance, if a signature usually has a loop or an underscore connecting one letter to another, and then one encounters what appears to me to be a perfectly good signature but it's lacking those features, they automatically declare it fake. I don't quite get that because it's pretty common knowledge nobody signs exactly the same way all the time. You should see Bob Dylan! I sometimes have loops or other characteristics in my signature, or sometimes I spell out letters and other times just scribble them. Signature style is fluid in more ways than one. What do you think?

4. I've been amazed watching Beatles signatures estimated at, say $10,000 by the auction house, and then they sell for about $200! Do the auction houses have no shame? They must know the piece was bid on so low because it's counterfeit! Don't they care?

Thanks for any input!

Tags: Beatles, PSA

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on December 1, 2023 at 2:55pm

"2. I've seen some conversation here and other places relating to PSA DNA being grossly overrated. Some go so far as to say they make a lot of mistakes and can't be trusted. I don't know about that, but from years of collecting, I can tell you that given two similar authentic autographs, one with a PSA COA and one without, the one with the PSA COA will fetch a much higher price. Comments?"

All services make mistakes, from authenticating forgeries, secretarials and even preprints. I just had a thread where I showed certified PSA and JSA certified forgeries (at one point, PSA Autograph Facts Jackie Gleason page was nearly all forgeries and secretarials, but that has been remedied by showing them some research). Reputable dealers sometimes make mistakes as well. Overall they try very hard not to. Most do a very good job, but the collector still needs to be very well educated to protect himself. Obviously, buying on the strength of any sticker or paper alone is a recipe for disaster of some sort, sooner or later. Yes, speaking generally, an autograph with PSA papers will sell for more, but it also depends to who. Not to me. Many, myself included, do not collect any certified or stickered items as the sticker is viewed as damage, or the items will be fully or even over priced, and of course finding and buying items in the wild w/o papers can save a lot of money, if you are able to correctly authenticate the item yourself. There are a few sets of eyes here that I trust more than any service.

Here is one of my favorite signed photos, bought w/o any COA:

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Permalink Reply by LiverpoolWalrus on December 1, 2023 at 4:41pm

Well said, Eric, thanks. And I agree about those silly stickers and even worse, "encapsulation." Not for me.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on December 1, 2023 at 4:51pm

Thank you Liverpool Walrus. I want to make a correction/clarification. When I said "(at one point, PSA Autograph Facts page was nearly all forgeries and secretarials, but that has been remedied by showing them some research)" I was referring to the Jackie Gleason page only.