On April 12, 1961, Soviet Air Force pilot Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space. Launched aboard his Vostok spacecraft, Gagarin orbited the Earth and beat American Alan Shepard into space by 23 days. 

On March 27, 1968, Yuri Gagarin was killed in a training flight crash at the age of 34.

Despite not being as much of a "household name" as Alan Shepard, John Glenn or Neil Armstrong, Gagarin is a tremendous historical figure and there is strong demand for his…

Astute collectors know that crooked sellers use phony proof pictures to sell their fakes all the time. They steal images from other signings, pluck a photo from an internet search, and so on.

These so-called proof pictures rarely prove anything, but in this case, it proves the item is a fake, or at least, it is not the same photo that is being offered!

Here is a photo supposedly signed by Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin and Mickey Mantle.…

What are the top five most dangerous space autographs? What space autograph is fake 75% of the time in my opinion? You may be surprised at some of the names.

I wrote the attached article for the Fall 2014 edition of the…

This article originally appeared in my blog, Steve Zarelli presents: The Collecting Obsession.

James Stewart was a willing through-the-mail signer for many years. However, after suffering medical problems in the 1990s, his office fulfilled mail requests with secretarial signatures and an Autopen machine.

The proxy signatures -- typically signed "James…