ok.. this is a tricky one. I went to a Guitar buyer recently (they travel around and advertise that they are buying vintage guitars etc.). I'm looking to sell my autographed guitars and signed pickgards- i have too many autographs and not enough room to display them so my wife said to get rid of these- which i'm fine with- i'd rather just go back to buying vintage and concert used guitars anyway. 

so here's the story. Their ad said "WE BUY SIGNED GUITARS." as well as everything else they were buying. so i took a few over there to see what they were willing to pay and what they were buying. The items in Question:

1) Metallica signed guitar from 2008- a james hetfield model guitar Truckster from 2008 signed by the whole band.

2) a Les Paul special (fairly cheap gibson guitar) signed by Roger Waters

3) a les paul special (also a cheaper model guitar) signed by REM's 3 members. 

now i'm sure that they are just doing all this because they are really hoping someone will bring in something special that they don't know the value of. I already understood that this is a bunch of vultures hoping to pick on some people who are out of work and NEED the money (this area has lost over 400,000 jobs in the past 4 years) and will sell cheap. but i have a specific price i want for the items and i figured that if they came close, i'd be happy. but i don't NEED the money by any means and could hang this stuff in the restaurant in the bowling alley if i want to. so here's what happened.

There was a lady who met me at the door. her job was to greet and get people to fill out the form of what they were selling and provide a name and contact information. that was fine.. but then she started to explain something interesting.

"WE are looking for stuff that has been examined by a licensed authenticator." which really got to me.. who is a LICENSED AUTHENTICATOR? I had asked her, but she kind of explained to me that this is someone with a governed type of licensing. Like there's a Government agency testing and licensing signature authenticators. 

I did ask if she was talking about PSA DNA, JSA etc. and she didn't really know what i was talking about. She did know who PSA DNA was and that they take stuff that's been authenticated by them before. But I don't think that any of those guys are licensed to do anything? Are they? There's no licensing board or administrative board giving these guys licenses is there? this is the question I'm asking. 

in the end. I ended up spending a few hours with the buyers talking about autographs etc. they wouldn't sell me a guitar I wanted for myself because this was just a middleman service and they weren't there to sell guitars. after seeing my proof pics and seeing that you can see the precise autograph being signed onto the guitar they made me a few offers... basically- $50 per autograph above the cost of the guitar. they tried telling me that since everyone I had was still alive and not very valuable as a result (no one over there apparently knows how tough michael stipe or james hetfield are- especially on guitars). They tried telling me that the guys in Metallica are really only worth $10 an autograph- even after i told them that I sold a James Hetfield 8x10 on ebay for $80.

Then a guy came in with a guitar signed by The Eagles- complete. with a letter of authenticity from Ballpark collectibles. he had no proof pics and no licensed authenticator letter. and when they tried to call Ballpark collectibles, every phone number didn't work. so they didn't even make an offer.. 

After all this, i'm sure they were just hoping to unearth some kind of treasure like a guitar signed by buddy holly or something and get it cheap... cause i saw what kind of guitars they were buying and some of the stuff they turned down was pretty nice too.. i didn't see another autograph come through the door though. 

AGAIN THOUGH. DO PSA DNA, GAI, JSA HOLD ANY TYPE OF LICENSE OTHER THAN YOUR STANDARD BUSINESS LICENSE???