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Do these Schmidt and Kaline Signatures Look Typical to You?

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_odkw=mike+schmidt&_osacat=27259...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mike-Schmidt-Signed-1995-Hall-Of-Fame-Baseb...

Mike Schmidt and Al Kaline signatures have been rock solid consistent over the years. These two examples, offered by MVP Marketing Management, look way off to me. If you do a search on Kaline and Schmidt signatures currently on ebay, and compare to these, there is nothing even close to them.

Does anyone see this differently?

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Permalink Reply by Drew C on October 24, 2012 at 9:49pm

Did some poking, it appears that as a company they are/were owned/run by Mario Monteleone. Kind of a mixed history there. After a long stint digging I found that he was also a high up with "Elite Sports Marketing" who was tied to Coach's Corner. And on the other hand he is also an A-Rod broker.

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Permalink Reply by Drew C on October 24, 2012 at 10:11pm

http://www.allauthentic.com/2006/08/arod-authenticity.html discussion that talks about Elite during the end of Mario's stint.

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Permalink Reply by terrier8HOF on October 25, 2012 at 3:05am

interesting site, I was not aware of that one.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on October 25, 2012 at 7:34am

From what I've heard, Elite had good autographs, but once they got into game used equipment, things got dicey. Elite had Robinson Cano as a rookie and you still see a lot of Cano items with the Elite hologram.

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Permalink Reply by Drew C on October 24, 2012 at 10:30pm

As far as MVP goes, I was looking at 2 of the apparently same ball from them. One from a reseller where you can see the MVP decal on it, that has also passed PSA/DNA back in 2010, and the one they're selling now which has only the MVP tag on it, and Pujols apparently decided to misspell Philippians in two different ways on the balls and got a case of the shakes on the newly listed one.

MVP - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Albert-Pujols-Signed-Official-MLB-Baseball-...

Reseller - http://www.ebay.com/itm/Albert-Pujols-Autographed-Signed-INSCRIBED-...

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Permalink Reply by terrier8HOF on October 25, 2012 at 3:07am

Pujols has always thrown me. he has an early signature style, and a current one that I am familiar with, but there are some certed by JSA that I always thought were forgeries, but there are enough of them to make me wonder if there is a third "transitional" style, because the two extremes are so different.

His current signature always appears shaky to me. not sure but these balls could be good.

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Permalink Reply by Peter leone on October 25, 2012 at 9:23am

Elite Sports Marketing (ESM) was co owned by Mario Monteleone (who currently owns MVP Sports Marketing). Mario and his Brother (or Brother in Law not sure which one) were partners in that business for many years. They did have alot of connections with past and current players and even though several if not all had exclusive contracts with other companies including Tri Star, Steiner, etc. It was not out of the ordinary for them to obtain 1) signatures from these athletes and 2) game used items. Although some were given to them directly from the players a good number of those items actually came from club house workers that would bring them piles of bats, gloves, wristbands etc. If everyone can recall the Stolen Derek Jeter glove by Ruben Rivera I believe Mario and or his brother in law were the ones that actually bought that glove and subsequently gave it back to Derek.

Not sure of the exact year but they did have Alex Rodriguez under an exclusive contract but apparently arod voided that contract when there was some baseballs produced to be a limited edition without his ok so Arod voided that deal. Soon after that there was a falling out with Monteleone and his Brother (-inlaw) and Mario went on to start MVP Sports Marketing who opperated a retail store directly behind legends field. At some point Mario managed to make amends with ARod and ended up with an exclusive with him as MVP Sports. ARod did several signings with MVP and although Steiner tried very hard to get that exclusive it never happened for one reason or another. At some point Mario was contacted by Steiner to obtain some signed ARod items which Mario ended up trading out for Jeter items. What happened was Steiner had Jeter sign the ARod balls and Mario had ARod sign the Jeter balls hence the combo Jeter/Arod balls some with Steiner coa and others with MVP coa's.

At some point during the ARod/MVP era there was another falling out I believe over the money ARod wanted for signings. Following this ARod was not exclusive with anyone for a while until he did a few signings with Park Avenue authentics (Ithink that is the name of the company). That lasted a short time and ARod has been with Kevin Friestat from KLF ever since.

Just a quick note Robinson Cano never had an exclusive with either Elite or MVP he was always with Mead Chasky until Cano went to Steiner. Cano did however do some signings with both companies in the presence of Mead just as Sheffield did during his playing days.

As far as what Drew stated about Elite and Coach's Corner being conected I do not think that is a true statement, it is possible that Elite consigned items to them but they were never partners to my knowledge.

Alot of people are under the impression that "Exclusive" actually means that no one will ever get items except for the company that has that exclusive contract which is not the case. Players for one sign for fans and give out game used items to fans but the workers in the club house actually have more access to items than let's say Steiner. These workers work directly with the players daily and are often given items and are even paid by the players in either autographs and/or game used items.

What alot of people do not understand is that players have to actually pay the clubhouse workers out of their own pockets for doing their laundry, Packing their stuff for road trips etc. Most of the times workers will take signatures or ask for game used items in exchange for the cash because they know they can resell them for more money. This ends up being a win win for the players and the workers because because the players do not have to come out of pocket and the workers can actually make more money off of the items. With all of this being said alot of times these workers would find a company like MVP and sell them the signed and/or game used items so to say that the game used items are not real is not always the case. Now I am not saying some of these people may have game issued items that were never used by the player and throw some dirt on them and now they are game used, that may or may not also be the case but realistly how do we know that every bat that steiner sells was actually used by that athlete? We don't because players often use another palyers bats and also when a player leaves a team they usually leave their bats behind and other players use them for BP so that may also be the case. I know one year when Sheffield was with the Yankees he used to wear the Derek Jeter Model cleats so how do we know some of those cleats being sold as Jeter gamers were not actually used by Sheffield? Not saying there is but anything is possible.

For the case of the Pujols Balls with the inscriptions the inscription does look a little off. I know that Mario and Kevin are friends and do alot of business together so that is most likely where the Pujols balls came from since Kevin has the exclusive with Pujols. It would be interesting to see what Kevin has to say about the inscriptions but I highly doubt they were added on by anyone other than Pujols because Mario is not going to risk his business and friendship with Kevin over that. Mario is a straight up guy and does get all of his items in person or is their when they are signed for one of his many workers. I've never seen or heard of Mario selling a bad autograph.

Hopefully this helps out a little with the history of these players and companies.

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Permalink Reply by Drew C on October 25, 2012 at 9:37am

Yea, glad to see you weigh in, a lot of what I found was heresay, including someone claiming that these guys were also involved with something called bornetrade or something. The Coach's Corner one was a person from there claiming that Elite was one of their top 3 consignors. That also could have very well been after Mario left Elite. I know a lot of what I saw online was very negative about a Scot, and a lot of people do comment on Mario being a good guy. And several threads referring to a 'murse" that apparently was at one point notorious enough to make it onto an inscription.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on October 25, 2012 at 9:48am

Great info. Thanks for clearing it up. Now that I think of it, my Cano bat has an Elite and Mead Chasky hologram on the knob. I recall they had very reasonable prices and I wish I stocked up on more Cano bats at $49 each. LOL