Ebay Seller kugelhupf1 sold me forged David Bowie Autograph Beware

Hi I am new to this site but wanted to warn you guys about buying autographs from seller kugelhupf1 on ebay.

I recently bought a David Bowie autograph from him for (€) 208 and the only reason I bought it was because it came with a Sony letter of authenticity.

I thought that was good provenance and I was going to spend even more money on it to have it framed but just thought I would contact the Sony employee on the letter of authenticity to just confirm its authenticity.

Much to my shock and disgust, the Sony employee told me he never met Bowie and certainly never signed any letter of authenticity and that the letter along with the Bowie autograph was a fake.

Ive opened a case on paypal at the time of writing to get my money back and the Sony employer who was a victim of identity theft has now contacted Sony's legal team.

Ive reported this seller to ebay 3 times and despite e-mailing them the e-mails between me and the Sony employee they have not taken any action against the seller and he is still freely selling his autographs.

Sellers like this spoil this hobby and I am disgusted with ebay.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on October 22, 2019 at 5:42pm

Hi, welcome and thank you. That looks nothing like Bowie's signature.

You wrote - "...the only reason I bought it was because it came with a Sony letter of authenticity. I thought that was good provenance..."

Sorry this has occurred. This brings light on my worry about the false sense of security any of these papers bring. That is not PROVENance IMO. Did you research the signature before buying? Persist with your efforts with eBay etc. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on October 22, 2019 at 6:22pm

PS - I "liked" your thread as you are trying to warn others. Thanks! :) Class act.

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Permalink Reply by Gratefulphish on October 22, 2019 at 7:00pm

Sorry that this happened, but it seems more and more that aside from purely bogus COAs, there is now an industry in faking what might otherwise appear to be legitimate ones. This makes it really hard for novice collectors to have any sense of security, especially since most never do anything close to what you have done here.

You should be fully protected by eBay, but assuming that you paid via paypal, you should also register a dispute there as well, just to cover all possible bases, and depending on when you purchased it, paypal's time window is much longer than eBay's.