Publisher's Synopsis
Introduction Every day, uneducated buyers spend good money on non-authentic autographs. Most thinking they are getting a great deal or "nobody else must know about this!" Sadly, most educated buyers do and watch in wonderment why someone would spend hundreds (even thousands) of dollars on a worthless item. This can be seen at local live auctions, online auctions/sales and even retail stores. That is the core reason why we spent the time and effort on creating this guide. Although there are only 50 profiles within this book, we feel it covers a large magnitude of the most common forgeries currently available to buyers. How to Use This Guide The purpose of the guide is to help educate and show buyers, collectors and dealers what to look for when reviewing an autograph and to make a better decision on whether or not to buy. Although this guide is very comprehensive and has an in depth view of what's good and bad, it shouldn't be viewed as the "final authority" for authenticating autographs. An educated buyer is a smart buyer, but we encourage you to use authentication services when purchasing your valuable collectibles. We hope this information will help you avoid bad purchases and make wiser buying decisions. Autograph Examples Each profile will have a variety of different examples on different items such as: Balls, Jerseys, Bats/Sticks, Helmets, Gloves, Flats (Photos, Index Cards, Postcards), etc. Our attempt was to get high resolution examples for both authentic and non-authentic signatures - in some cases that was difficult (mainly forgeries). As for authenticity, we used certified authentic examples and the non-authentic examples are, in our opinion, not authentic. All authentic signatures will have a black border framing the image, the non-authentic will have a grey border.
