How to Verify an Autograph Before You Buy It

The autograph market has a forgery problem. Everyone in it knows this, and the honest dealers live with the consequences, because a customer who has been burned once tends not to come back to the category at all.

The answer is not to trust the dealer. It is to not need to.

The one-minute check

Every properly authenticated item carries a numbered, tamper-evident hologram or sticker. The number on it resolves in the authenticator’s own database, which the dealer does not control.

1. Find the hologram or sticker on the item. It is usually on the back of a photo, the lower corner of a framed piece, or directly on a ball or helmet.
2. Read the serial number off it.
3. Enter that number on the authenticator’s own lookup page, not a link the seller sent you. Go to the authenticator’s site yourself.
4. Compare what the database returns against the item in front of you. It should describe the same item, signed by the same person.

If step four does not match, stop.

Who the authenticators are

The names you will see most in this market:

• Beckett Authentication Services, which uses a tamper-evident sticker with an online lookup
• JSA, James Spence Authentication, numbered holograms matched to their database
• PSA, Professional Sports Authenticator, most common on graded trading cards
• Fanatics Authentic, applied at league-sanctioned signings
• Steiner Sports and TRISTAR Productions, both long-established in player memorabilia

None of these is a guarantee of value. They are a guarantee of process, which is different and more useful.

What a certificate of authenticity is not

A printed certificate on its own means very little. Anyone can produce a nice-looking document, and plenty of people do. The document is only worth what the issuing organisation is worth, and if you have not heard of the issuer, assume the answer is nothing.

What actually carries weight is the third-party hologram with an independent lookup. The certificate is the paperwork. The hologram is the evidence.

The strongest provenance there is

Buying from a signing beats buying from the secondary market, every time. At an organised signing the authenticator is physically in the room watching the pen touch the item. There is no chain of custody to reconstruct because there is no chain.

That is the model we work on. Most of what we sell is signed at events we host, which is why we can tell you where a specific signature came from rather than where we bought it from. Our authentication page explains it in more detail.

Red flags

• A price well below what the same item goes for elsewhere. Forgeries are priced to move.
• No third-party authentication, only the seller’s own certificate.
• A hologram number the seller will not give you before purchase.
• A seller who cannot say where the item was signed.
• Stock photography rather than a photograph of the actual item.

If something fails to verify

If you have bought from us and a hologram does not resolve, contact us and we will make it right. That is not a policy we expect to use. It is the one that matters.