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What do you think about REPRINTS and PREPRINTS?

This is something that really grinds my gears... people selling Reprints and Preprints. I like surfing through eBay to look for certain autographed items to add to my collection, but it seems for every 1 real autograph, there are 10-20 Reprints or Preprints as well. Now, I could see a reprint of say, George Washington. Heck, I don't even mind reprints if they are a very nice autograph, but to have reprints of fake autographs is disgusting. To me, that is like saying that they know the autograph is fake, but they can sell it to you as a reprint. Additionally, I believe that the majority of reprints, especially those of NASCAR drivers, are illegal because of the copyright of the photo/hero card.

Thoughts?

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Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on January 10, 2010 at 10:59pm: JB3,

I think you're spot-on. I think that properly licensed reprints and preprints made from genuine autographs are fine. And I like that new or potential collectors, particularly those on very limited budgets, can get their feet wet with them. But like you, I've noticed that most of the reprints are reprints of forgeries, and you know that the chances they're paying royalties on the photos are virtually zero.

What percentage of real autographs do you find on eBay compared to actual forgeries that aren't reprinted?

Comment by JB3 on January 11, 2010 at 3:47pm: Steve,

I just did a quick search on eBay for Dale Earnhardt + (autograph, autographed, signed), and came up with 335 items of both Jr and Sr. Of those, there were approximately 65 were reprints. Of those reprints, nearly all of the Earnhardt Sr's (about 15) were reprints of fake autographs. Not totally scientific, but I think it paints the picture.

Interestingly, some of the Dale Earnhardt Jr reprint photos were stolen images from me. I have contacted eBay, but they state that I can not prove it. I had the photos listed last year, and other than the autograph, I know they were mine because they were authenticated by Global, and I had the certificate number because I keep all of those in a spreadsheet. Since I no longer have them, eBay won't do anything. I use photobucket and large images so that customers can see the quality and a close up of the autograph they are looking to purchase.

As for the potential ratio of real autographs to fake autographs, here is my take. I think for NASCAR autographs, it would probably be 10:1 fake to real. However, because it is monitored so well, I think it is probably closer to 3:1 fake to real. Thanks to Brandon Mysinger working with eBay, as long as he is giving them his opinion, it will only get lower. They should pay him to just monitor all listings, and if they are deemed questionable, have them removed.

- John

Comment by Sheldon Gajarian on January 11, 2010 at 7:42pm: Funny you bring this up, I have several 50's hollywood autographs, I was looking some up on Ebay for comparison, geez, even simple things like how a person rolls an R or there first initial were not even close. So then I started comparing sigs that I have gotten myself, same thing, BLATANT! But what really irritated me, was trying to search through all the Title Spamming of reprint, preprint whatever, to get to an actual autograph....If I'm selling a 33Ford grille, I don't Title it as a 33 or 32 to draw more attention, just p***** me off, more and more people just can't follow the rules, got to push that envelope or flat lie, and nobody does anything..That's part of our cultural problem in my opinon, people to lazy to go after and stop these issues. Ebay wants to make money, period, they are not seller friendly and rarely back you up. I've been luckly over the years, only had a couple of problems, enough to know I better cover myself...