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Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on January 25, 2018 at 7:07pm

It looks like even reputable celeb sellers have been beaten by the czar!

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Permalink Reply by logantrky on January 25, 2018 at 7:08pm

Sorry what does this mean? Fake? Haha

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Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on January 25, 2018 at 7:23pm

A forger with the nickname autographczar (because a large percentage of his material was sold on ebay by a user of that name) signed that piece. He was most prominent on ebay about 5-10 years ago.

Now it is being offered by a celebrity on ebay, that celeb was fooled and beaten out of his money and he is unwittingly passing this forgery on to another collector.

Yes this all means it is Fake!

  

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on January 25, 2018 at 7:59pm

Pete,

Mind telling the Autograph Czar story?

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Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on January 25, 2018 at 8:22pm

That major points were covered above, but the forger was very good and banged out hundreds of different modern celebs. He was very active in the 1990's thru the early 2000's and he made a point to be out there in the streets getting material signed daily. He had photos with just about every celeb you can imagine, and if he got 1 piece signed or a stack, he always had plenty of matching blanks to sign himself, and dump into the marketplace. 

I still can't say with any factual evidence that he ran the autographczar ebay store, but it was his "photo with" images plastered all over the ebay pages. Therefore the name stuck whenever he was discussed.

Ebay finally removed the seller and things went quiet for a few years, unfortunately  these pieces are still out there and have begun being offered for sale by the original buyers.   

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Permalink Reply by Todd Johnson on January 25, 2018 at 11:28pm

Ha, I believe I have one photo of Bruce Willis I bought from the Czar back in my early collecting days.  Will find and post for an opinion, but probably a strike against it already!

On that note Pete, were you familiar with any history of Starr Autographs Inc owned by Cindy Starr?  Believe she passed some years ago, ran her own auction site I frequented way back, had employees/runners/hounds whatever called back then along the east coast chasing for the autographs on pretty much just 8x10s.  Any idea how legit they were?

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Permalink Reply by Pete Bendu on January 26, 2018 at 4:29am

I remember seeing ads for the company, but I didn't do any business with them. Happy to look at anything that you might still have. 

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on January 26, 2018 at 3:10am

Thanks, Pete. There was autographczar.com, too. I heard that a well known forger in the UK used to run around with him. 

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Permalink Reply by logantrky on January 27, 2018 at 5:59am

Thanks for your help, everyone. Saved me some $$ :)

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