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Account for autograph forgeries.

As a collector of autographs, rock memorabilia, I feel that I need to allow for a percentage of forgeries that I may have purchased over my time of collecting. Well I hope to keep the percentage small, but I think it's almost impossible to have a 100 percent success rate ,not being an expert that is. Even these days people are disagreeing with tpa.

Well that seems to be the reality for me , how about you and your collection?

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Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on August 18, 2016 at 4:43am

Yes, they are all fake.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 18, 2016 at 4:53am

It would be an interesting thread if we could share pics of the items the tpas were passing that are forged and the autographs we believe are genuine that they fail.

Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on August 18, 2016 at 4:56am

I agree, in a perfect world....we could do just that. As many members as we have here that want to learn....but, we likely have just as many lurkers waiting to be tipped off on how to perfect their forgeries.

Permalink Reply by larson e whipsned on August 18, 2016 at 11:10am

so who doesn't certify fakes pete

Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on August 18, 2016 at 11:20am

Everyone makes mistakes, but when the same TPA company get's (half the items or more of) the same celebrity wrong, and we see them hit the market in a given period of time.....alarm bells start to ring.

JSA has an issue certifying Carrie Fisher TTM secretarial autographs.

Every company has issues......that is why they need specialists.

Permalink Reply by Samuel John Clifford on August 14, 2016 at 12:59am

I've amassed a collection of In person sellers off of Ebay to only really buy from. Sometimes I'll stray away but first I get an opinion if it's on a graph I don't really know that well through here. When I first started collecting I started off just buying from a seller that was out of the UK, but he had a lot of forgeries in his collection so I got burned twice from him. Nowadays the graphs I really know from studying so much are of the Runaways and having about 30-50 examples from each member of The Runaways is really helpful plus Cherie Currie has her own store so that really helps out knowing it's a 100% authentic sample of her graph. Other graphs I'm getting better at and have a ton of examples of that are authentic are, "Bruce Wills", "Christoph Waltz", "Jessica Alba", "Kate Beckinsale" "Tim Roth" "Rose Mcgowan" etc. Just some of the Actors and Actress from movies I really like, because I'm a huge movie fan and I watch movies every week. For me I can't really go out and meet people because I live in a very small town there is really nothing here, it's a retirement community here. Really the only ways I can get graphs for now is through online, Facebook, Ebay, etc. This Website has been very helpful to me and I've learned a lot. Pete Chuka's the person whose helped me out the most out of anyone on here and he's straight forward and tells you weather or not it would be a good buy or not, if it's authentic, or a poor graph but authentic, etc. It also helps out he knows a lot of graphs that I'm looking to collect, it seems as if almost no one on here really has the same type of interest in modern celebs I want to collect or has the knowledge of these modern celebs I'm looking to collect like Pete does, so I have thank you Pete for helping out so much. As far as TPAs, there are some graphs out there that come from crooked seller that have an "in" with PSA, and it seems as if every item they get sent to PSA comes back as Authentic even though it's not, not sure what the deal is there.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 14, 2016 at 1:18am

Thanks for the comment Sam, theres a lot of experience in your comment and uncle Pete is a go to guy without a doubt. In Australia it difficult to get big name graphs so your forced into buying of someone,it's another story if the artist has passed.

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Permalink Reply by Barry S on August 14, 2016 at 11:59am

Good discussion Paul. I've thought about it also. I have 80 pieces on the wall in my game room. I know I have a fake Jeter hanging that my wife bought me years ago for Christmas. I have taken my Ali/Clay down, it's sitting in my spare room up against the wall, don't really know what to do with it. I'm hoping everything else is real but I know there could possibly be a couple in there. I think I'm the only person to actually frame up their big mistake as a reminder. I've mentioned before that I bought a fake Led Zeppelin guitar. I had it framed with pictures of the signing, a playbill from Wolfgangs Vault, and an original concert ticket. I framed it all up (minus the guitar) with a statement from Jimmy Page saying he didn't sign my guitar.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 14, 2016 at 1:13pm

I bet the zep guitar was expensive.

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Permalink Reply by Barry S on August 14, 2016 at 2:01pm

$2750 no Bonham. But picture proof!

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Permalink Reply by KathB on August 14, 2016 at 4:54pm

The vast majority of my autos were obtained in person at comic/sci-fi conventions, but I bought an Alan Rickman soon after he died which I have doubts about (purely because as I've started to look at more autos online, I realise how many of them are fake and how many dodgy sellers there are). Now I've joined here I will post it to get opinions.

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Permalink Reply by Paul on August 15, 2016 at 3:16pm

I tell you what it's a laborious task trying to get autographs passed tpa, that's after you bought them.
I've heard many stories from members here and from experience.