Thoughts on Ali autograph

I bought this 20+years ago. At the time wasn't a big collector the price was good and the piece looked nice. That said wasn't as in to if it was authentic or not back then. Now the industry being what it is would like to get an opinion. The company in question I can no longer find. The phone number is not in use anymore last time I called. The picture is nicely secured and I have yet to open the back as not to ruin it. Any thoughts from anyone would be appreciated.

Tags: Ali

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Permalink Reply by rob kunne on November 20, 2018 at 12:22pm

the autograph looks good to me but don't know about the coa.

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Permalink Reply by RVK on November 20, 2018 at 12:32pm

Again this was way before I heard of PSA and JSA and Beckett. Thanks for the input

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Permalink Reply by HangingOnTheWall on November 21, 2018 at 12:02am

Hey. Sorry to disappoint, but this looks very similar to a fake I bought in the early 2000s when I first started collecting. Google Operation Bullpen and Muhammad Ali and you’ll see the market was flooded with this type of forgery at that time. This looks like one of those to me.

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Permalink Reply by RVK on November 21, 2018 at 5:44am

No, thanks for the reply. I had heard about a big forgery operation just not the specifics. That’s why I got on here to see what people think. It’s the one in my collection that i always thought about.

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Permalink Reply by HangingOnTheWall on November 21, 2018 at 10:17am

I had a VERY similar one in my collection - and on the same photo. I believe the forger was a guy called John Olsen - a very high profile case. If you look at examples from Online Authenics, which was an official Ali dealer, the signatures are actually quite different - legit ones have much more rounded letters and the surname is different too. It shows, at least, that companies selling them didn’t do the diligence.