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Beatles signed guitar in sale a few days ago

Hello Steve, I am the sucker that bought the alleged Beatles signed guitar in the High Memorabilia sale a few days ago. Studying all examples of authentic Beatles autographs available online, and studying very closely at little details such as shapes of loops on Harrison's r's the shape and slant of Lennon's.. the "j" is shaped properly.. McCartney's c's correct, his P correct... out of all the alleged Beatles signed guitars MMP has, this one looked the best to me. It's the red Hagstrom. In your opinion are these signatures fake? Should we all just say anything from MMP is garbage because they've sold lots of garbage and never acquire authentic pieces? I have not paid for the item yet and really would appreciate your opinion and the opinion of other Beatles collectors here on the site. Thank you. PS The story with the guitar is that a young girl in the midwest was set to interview the Beatles for her school newspaper when they came to town and took along her brother's guitar for them to sign. The brother kept the guitar into the mid 1990's and pawned it in Las Vegas and MMP allegedly acquired it. The story went on to say that the man's sister became a respected and well known rock journalist. I wonder, if the signatures are authentic, that this could have been the brother of popular and well known rock writer Jane Scott of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She passed away a few years back, but DID interview the Beatles in the late 1960's when they came to Cleveland for her school newspaper and there are photos of her with the Beatles in Cleveland. That was her claim to fame so to speak. She became a very well respected rock journalist. Would interesting to find it if was her brother that pawned the guitar in Vegas, supposedly the original owner's name is with the paper work I would receive. When looking at all the other lame and blatantly fake Beatles signatures on other merchandise on their MMP site, the signatures on my guitar when I compare them in detail are different than all the others and are pretty damn close to authentic examples online. Is it possible this one at least was good? Or is it just the best forged example they have. I haven't paid for it yet, could use some advice. Thanks so much everyone!

Tags: Beatles, MMP, guitar, signed

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Permalink Reply by mc on September 26, 2018 at 10:28pm

Do not pay him any money, everything on his website is fake...He has never sold anything genuine.

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Permalink Reply by Bruce Juice on September 27, 2018 at 1:25pm

Why not post a pic of the guitar? 99.9% chance that it is fake -- as there is only one known fully signed Beatles guitar known to exist.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on September 28, 2018 at 11:42am

Hi Mark,

Do you mean High End Memorabilia, selling through auctions on LiveAuctioneers and Invaluable? I didn't think they were owned by MMP collectibles. I thought they were a part of LuxeWest. LuxeWest sells similar memorabilia with a COA from Antiquities of California—or at least they used to use that COA.

High End was auctioning two Beatles "band-signed" guitars and last time I looked, one was at $700 and the other at $100. The last intact genuine Beatles signed guitar was an acoustic that sold for about $60,000 in around 1998. It was destroyed in a landslide in Malibu in about 2002.

MMP Collectibles in Las Vegas is owned by Brian Burkel, who used to own Autographs America. I've seen maybe 6-8 "band-signed" Beatles guitars on their site, none which I thought were real. Nor did I think that anything else on their site was real.

This is pretty telling: Import Genius is a site that tracks imports into the US. They report that MMP Collectibles imported 7,700 pounds of guitars from China on Oct. 16, 2017.

Here's the link: https://www.importgenius.com/importers/mmp-collectibles

The manufacturer they bought them from is Changle Shengyun Musical Instrument Factory. They do not sell signed guitars.

Regarding the Beatles guitar:

John Lennon died in 1980.

George Harrison died in 2001.

Changle Shengyun Musical Instrument Factory was founded in 2002.

Here's their FB page: https://www.facebook.com/shengyunguitar/

The chance that John and George signed any of those guitars is fairly slim.