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What's up with PSA "Quick Opinion"?

I submitted three items yesterday for PSA to give me a "Quick Opinion" as to authenticity. All three are from Ahlers and Ogletree Auctions in Atlanta. Two were Charles Dickens autographed signed letters and one was a Mark Twain ALS. You can search their items, including these, on liveauctioneers.com. Put Ahlers & Ogletree in the search box. They currently have several Dickens and Twain items.

All three PSA opinions came back as "Likely Not Authentic." I'm no expert, but the writing is similar to other examples and these are multi-page letters. How often do forgers forge multiple pages and make up content that is wholly relevant to the subject? The cynic in me is wondering if PSA deems almost everything "Likely Not Authentic" because it's more efficient for them to do so. Or perhaps a machine is doing the quick opinion "authentication"?

For example, here is one of the two Charles Dickens items they say is "Likely Not Authentic."

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/169997640_charles-dickens-hand...

I'd like to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

Tags: Dickens, PSA, Twain

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Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on February 1, 2024 at 11:06pm

They’re actually still in business. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know if it’s still his.

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Permalink Reply by Yony Mark on February 2, 2024 at 1:53am

Wow... this is not only a forgery store, but a very cringey forgery store...

https://autographcentral.net/product/beatles/

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Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on February 2, 2024 at 8:30am

Here’s the item that received a positive Quick Opinion:

This example of the same forgery style was offered by Autograph Central for $295:

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Permalink Reply by Yony Mark on February 2, 2024 at 9:12am

Yep. It's one of the common forgery styles I've seen for Beatles autographs. Definitely the same forger behind these two... I wonder how PSA got duped into slabbing this.

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Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on February 2, 2024 at 9:23am

That isn’t the only one they authenticated. It was discussed here:

https://live.autographmagazine.com/forum/topics/mccartney-and-starr...

Permalink Reply by Yony Mark on February 1, 2024 at 1:03pm

I tried the PSA Quick Opinion thing only once in my life, and it was a waste of time and money.

I submitted a Megadeth signed Tour Program from 2008, that was sold on eBay last year. I knew it was authentic, but I wanted to see what PSA thought about it. If you search for this tour program online, you will always see it signed. Always. This was a limited edition item only available for people who went to see the band on that tour. I just googled it again, and it looks like the previous guitarist for the band, Chris Broderick, sold it on his eBay a few years ago.

PSA's Quick Opinion result was "Likely Not Genuine".

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on February 1, 2024 at 1:20pm

Would you translate this for me Yonny?

"They mention themselves that quick opinion != full authentication"

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Permalink Reply by Yony Mark on February 2, 2024 at 1:54am

They state that their quick opinion process is not equivelant to a full authentication process. I remember reading that when going to their Quick Opinion Purchase page.

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Permalink Reply by 0800Autocollect on February 2, 2024 at 4:50am

A quick process is probably someone looking at the photo, comparing it to known examples and then giving their opinion on it. that means anything non typical, hard to see, strange or bizarre will not be labelled as geniue.

It is very hard to authenticate items from just a photo, also people will take a positive quick opinion as absolute proof of it's authenticity no matter how many disclaimers they put up so they have to be harsh. I doubt anything but the most cut and dried examples are labelled as genuine in the quick process.