because the discussion is in a dealer promo thread, I can't comment.
so I'm starting this fresh here
pay attention: Barbara Streisand is as likely to sign at I Magnum as I am to buy Beanie Babies.. and I am as likely to buy Beanie Babies as I am to fly to Mars
as a matter of fact, Streisand is known as one of the most uncooperative stars there is when it comes to signing stuff.
I have 5 signed items by Barb, 3 are fake.
I'll be shooting pics later today of stuff for my site, I'll pull out the record album with authentic sigs & shoot that so I can post it and you can see what a real piece looks like
More evidence the one Tang mentioned in the other thread is fake is that it went for a paltry $19
A real signature sells for $300 or more and it is most common to see them priced in the $500 range, or even more depending on what it's signed on,
so clearly, anyone who knows what a real sig is was not bidding. the $19 result should tell anyone they have a fake
So what do you do?
well it's like this, the first thing you do is buy some books. There are authentication books that show real signatures that you can match them against
secondly, unless you are 100% certain that your own expertise helps you determine authenticity - you don't sell them.
I have a short pile of autographs for such stars as Lennon, James Dean, Stooges and others that would be worth lots of money if they were real, but I got suckered for them, sadly in a collection that o/w had real material, so not only are the fakes bad, the rest of the collection becomes suspect by association - that's life! I'll take the beating, rather than shuffle that on to others. Considering that I have thousands of autographed items, it's a drop in the bucket anyway
Looking at that selection the Streisand came from, I can see the suspected work of at least one known faker - known as the Valley Forger (he was in the San Fernando Valley for some part of his 'career') and I'm sure that fakers are taking advantage of dealers from coast to coast & overseas who aren't expert enough to understand what they are offering. You have to be able to tell the difference between authentic, secretarial, auto-pen, printed, fake...
Burt Lancaster used an auto-pen! I have several signed pieces. They look real. The pen head impressed into the paper, it's actual ink... but you can take a stack of Lancasters and find that a good portion of them all have the very same signature (I'll see if I can find them easily, I probably can't this week). Auto-pen at work!
There is material that has a high percentage of likely authenticity - if you have a contract that is signed, it almost certainly real (it could be secretarial for some stars)
People who don't understand autographs really shouldn't be selling them and hand such material off to experts to deal with.
That's the only way that fakers can be affected negatively - you remove the outlet. But factually, there is so much crap out there now, it's pathetic and you probably can't stop the flood.
When I go to the mall and see those stores selling signed stuff I stop at the window and laugh. Brando was notoriously uncooperative, yet these stores have an endless supply of cast signed Godfather posters or cast signed Star Wars posters
There is one thing that any serious dealer CAN DO .... when you sell autographed items, you need to guarantee them for as long as necessary to protect the consumer. That is 100% the protection a consumer deserves
90% of all the autographed material I see in stores are not real, and like that Streisand should be sold as 'faux collectibles' - not authentic signed items.