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Permalink Reply by Sportsguys on December 13, 2019 at 3:12pm

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Permalink Reply by Sportsguys on December 13, 2019 at 3:28pm

Some background...I know very little about autograph verification and I have collected on and off over the years. 

Some of these are recent purchases with active return policies. I’d like to keep one or two and gift one to my brother. I figured it would be good to get some experienced eyes on them outside of the PSA/DNA/Beckett team.

It seems like the Pinnacle cards are pretty reliable. And the Pinnacle card with the Yankee Clipper Enterprises sticker seems pretty good. If you were me, which of these pieces is worth holding onto?

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Permalink Reply by James on December 13, 2019 at 5:38pm

Going top to bottom, the second one, imo, is a slam dunk authentic Joe D.  

Also, I think the others are likely authentic.

However, I’m much better with Joe DiMaggio signed baseballs, so I’d wait for clarification on the others besides the second one.

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Permalink Reply by Sportsguys on December 13, 2019 at 6:07pm

Thanks James. Is there anything specific you look for on his signature that wouldn’t be immediately apparent to an untrained eye like mine?

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Permalink Reply by James on December 13, 2019 at 11:44pm

For me, it’s really a question of experience.  I’m certainly no DiMaggio expert, even on a baseball, but for whatever reason it’s easier for me to spot the real vs the fake on baseballs.  I’ve been a member of this site for almost 6 years now.  And I’ve learned a ton.  

I’ve learned the most on DiMaggio from members Terrier and Christopher Williams.  Those two I would probably call experts.  And there are several more vintage baseball guys on here that are really good.  John Spillane, Steve Zarelli, Randy, and my new friend Daniel S. They know their stuff.  And for the others please don’t feel offended if I didn’t say your name because there are many very proficient members here.  I am but a student.

I did purchase my first Joe DiMaggio baseball about 20 years ago.  I think it was shortly after Joe passed away.  I bought one from the estate with the inscription “Yankee Clipper”.  I wish I still had that one.  I sold it at some point because I know I was working towards buying something else.  What that was I don’t recall now.

But for quite awhile I had trouble distinguishing real from fake.  Well...it was more a question of spotting fakes.  I had a pretty good idea of what was definitely real.  But I didn’t study particularly hard, you might say, until after I joined here.  I think at some point a light goes off, and you kind of get it...and this will happen for you too.

I know we have some great “studies” here on AML regarding good and bad Mantles.  I can’t remeber if we have one for Joe D. or not.  You might check with Christopher.  He would probably know.

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Permalink Reply by Sportsguys on December 14, 2019 at 6:57am

Thanks again James. I genuinely appreciate your willingness to respond here and fill me in. Hopefully some of the Joe D experts can chime in too.

All of these items have either PSA/Beckett/JSA authentication. Should that give me piece of mind? How do people feel about those services around here?

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Permalink Reply by James on December 14, 2019 at 2:36pm

Well, if you read through some of the discussions, you will see that there are genuine issues with the major third-party authentication services.  I’m certain they get the majority (more than 50%) right, but they make their fair share of mistakes too.  So that PSA/DNA, JSA, or BAS sticker certainly doesn’t guarantee authenticity as some novice collectors think.

However, PSA/DNA has had a reputation of being very good with vintage baseball autographs like DiMaggio...not perfect, of course, however.

But with DiMaggio, they are very likely to get it right, and I think they probably did get these all correct.

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