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Forgeries sold at major conventions such as Fan Expo Canada, Wizard World Etc....

Last weekend, I attended Fan Expo Canada and during downtime, I walked through some of the vendor booths.  Many vendors where selling autographs from actors/atheletes who frequent the "convention signing circuit"....while one major vendor in particular caught my eye.  This vendor had a large and prime sized and very attractive booth space....selling many rare and highly sought after signatures. Upon inspection...i noticed several forgeries from whitney houston, the beatles, madonna and elvis presley with price tags all below 500.00. I also attended Fan Expo Dallas back in May and noticed forgeries for sale there too. All the autographs where framed and matted very nicely and professionally.....so to the regular convention attendee, it could be an easy sell.  So Beware when buying from conventions where you are often made to feel confident in autograph purchases. I took pictures of the Madonna and Elvis forgeries that where offered for sale. 

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I also cant stress enough to fellow collectors at all kinds of "cons" to beware of forgeries. Ive been attending these things since the  early eighties and its only getting worse. Unfortunately most here have sense to beware. The poor average person has no idea and falls for this garbage.

I know the booth you're talking about. It was right outside the entrance to the other building right? I saw a few  Mantle/DiMaggio/Williams forgeries and Muhammad Ali forgeries. I managed to take some pictures of what I believe to be forgeries as well, maybe you remember seeing them.

Here's pictures of the Springsteen and Keith Moon/Doors pieces.

I remember seeing some odd ones like Geronimo, a full George H. Ruth, couple of U.S. presidents as well. Many had Christopher Morales LOAs or some random ones I've never seen before.

So easy to get away with it. They need to start policing this or fans will turn against these things and stop buying.

Mentioned this in another thread, but I saw a notorious Ebay forger's items at one of the booths at Wizard World Chicago a couple weeks back.  Awful stuff that anyone with an once of common sense would avoid.

I remember that booth.

I don't have a good eye for forgeries, but even I shook my head at the audacity.

If nothing else, the prices gave it away. I shouldn't be able to afford "Let it Be" signed by all 4 Beatles. Not on my paycheck... But I could afford 2 from that guy, with money to spare.

I talked with someone else who said basically the same thing as we were looking through his stuff.  He found the Sinatra in the plastic sleeve hung on the rack loosely with metal clips amusing.

Figuring this one out didn't take an eye for forgery, just a decent dose of common sense.

That was another thing that tipped me off.

When I was looking through it at C2E2, the guy was nowhere in sight. Yeah, because you'd leave signed Beatles, Stones, Eagles, etc. albums unattended in a large convention hall filled with people... Riiiiiiiiiiight.

Who arranges these things, and isn't there any authenticating services on site (legit authenticating services not the crappy ones we all know pass b.s.) 

JSA was here last year but there were still forgeries (just not as many).

This is what I don't get.  That places like this, as well as the charity type auctions rob people in broad daylight in person, and nothing is done about it.

These show promoters and people who put it all together don't seem like the brightest people from what I've seen.

At Fan Expo Canada traffic was a huge problem, placement wasnt very well done in my opinion and information that was put up on the website, such as prices, was different than what was at the show.

There was a service a few years back where they would both witness and cert your autograph, but it was a brand new company, too expensive, and I'm not even sure if they even still exist.

As far as PSA/JSA - I think PSA does the Hollywood Show in Burbank, but that's probably about it as far as non-sport celebrity autograph shows go.

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