A quick education update on autograph collecting:

Hello, we wanted to take a moment to educate you bit about autograph collecting and eBay.
We are very sorry to have to say this but eBay can be a very hostile place. There are millions of registered accounts worldwide and most eBay users are trustworthy and are an asset to eBay.


Suspect Users:

However, there are some users who are anything but an asset to eBay. One example is the self-appointed autograph expert. This eBay user has a bit of knowledge on an autograph and maybe even met the celebrity once or twice but
probably purchased most of their autograph collection from eBay and has looked at 1000s of bad autographs on eBay over the years and was duped into believing many bad autographs were good. They then automatically assume they are an expert and waste their precious time searching for what they think are forgeries and emailing the bidders on these items telling them they are an expert and collector for most of their life and that the item in question is a forgery.

We were recently made aware of one of these types who claims to have collected a certain type of autograph for over 30 years yet this person states he/she is only 34 years old. We guess he/she was a fan right from birth! It is important to understand that it is just an opinion and often wrong.

If someone emails you, ask them to backup their claims. Pointing you to their free myspace page is not proof. What stops them from posting bad autographs and then claiming they are real? As a matter of fact, have them give you their phone number and call them so you can discuss their extensive forensic background and how they have met theses stars 100's of times and observed every type of way they sign their autograph.
Additionally, please let us know when they email you (we will not be offended). We have nothing to hide and will be glad to talk to anyone. We have turned a few of these types into customers this way. Give us their contact info and we will be happy to call them. Sadly, a lot of these types will not respond as it is easy to hide behind an email and simply have their own best interest in mind. It takes real integrity to give out your number and actually talk to a person. A true scumbag will email someone behind their back and then run away. Some of these people are actually sellers of questionable material and quite a few of them were kicked off of ebay.



Forgers:

Thanks to the wide reach of ebay auctions and lack of real enforcement , many sellers quickly realized that they could simply manufacture their own autographed items at home and try to list them on ebay. All they needed was a sharpie marker, some photos or index cards and a printer to make a COA. Sadly, this fools a bidder who is unaware of how to recognize an authentic autograph. Every seller states his/her items are authentic. Why would they say anything different? Unfortunately, this has become the norm on ebay. Ebay does not police the autographs. A third party does but, predominately at the request of other ebay bidders.Ebay does have a Trust and Safety team and if they find something suspicions they will take action but most of it just slips on by. In our opinion, it would be dangerous, legally, for ebay to take action. If they did police autographs, they would set themselves up for a class action lawsuit. After all, it would just be an opinion and it is best for them to only be a venue to sell goods. We assume a change will be coming in the near future in the eBay autograph area (we hope anyway). We can assure you that the demand for autographed memorabilia would easily out pace the supply of authentic material. We search ebay daily for authentic memorabilia and we don't find that much of it. We mostly find unscrupulous sellers who have only one desire- to rip of eBay bidders. We simply ask that you be careful and buy from us. They do hate it when we list the real stuff. It makes their forgeries look real bad, and remember, it is all about the money.

(Update)
Watch out for sellers who claim they work for an authenticator. Any real authenticator will not brag about his job and simply list items that come with authentication papers. This type of seller states he/she is an employee to try and pass of their forgeries because they know that no authenticator will be fooled by their junk.


Via-The-Mail Collectors:

Sure, some sellers are trying to be honest and we applaud them. There is plenty of room for them in the market.
Unfortunately, many sellers collect their autographs through the mail. How is a seller who lives in places like Erie, Pennsylvania or Fargo, North Dakota going to meet a lot of celebrities? Sure celebrities might come to town but odds are it just will not happen. You really have to be in NY, CA, NV and London to meet these people on a regular basis. Simple as that. They must rely on via-the-mail requests (and of course other ebay sellers-dangerous at best). It is true that there are many celebrity address databases and one can easily write their favorite star in hopes of getting an autograph. Unfortunately, the world has changed and most stars no longer sign the items. If you get lucky and get a reply, the item was often signed by their assistant, friend, sister or etc. It is true that some authentic autographs can be obtained in this manner but many sellers just list everything they receive in the mail on eBay without any research or comparison to known good examples. If you were in this business long enough you would learn who actually signs authentically through the mail and find that it is a very short ever evolving list. Plus, once a working celebrity address gets published they get overwhelmed with requests and soon after stop responding to them.
You may find this amusing but, sometimes we even receive email from the celebrity and/or their assistant informing us that they are happy to see we our listing authentic items.We bet you will not find too many other sellers with that kind of history.
Update:
We recently were approached by one of these via the mail collectors who was kicked off eBay for selling inauthentic autographs (obtained mostly via the mail) to try and sell us his collection. We laughed. He had over 200 photos and we determined that maybe one of them was any good. We told him we would pass. Guess what? He found another eBay seller who had no idea what an authentic autograph looked like and sold them to him. As soon as that seller started listing the forgeries eBay caught on and cancelled all that sellers auctions and put him on an autograph suspension for 30 days. Lesson: Buy from us and you will never have to worry about purchasing suspect products.



Pre-prints:

The last category of seller we want to discuss is the seller of so called 'pre-prints'. With the advent of cheap scanners, low cost ink-jet printers and even low cost photo lab processing, it has opened up the market to another seller to avoid. Although these prints are not a always a negative thing and we can appreciate the value they would have in certain circumstances the problem lies in the deceptive way in which they are marketed.
This type of seller scans an autographed photo (authentic or not) and then sells copies of it. They usually use very tricky language in their auction description and place it in odd categories. The quality can be quite good and fool and unsuspecting victim. Please see our eBay review page article for help on how to spot these. This practice fools a lot of buyers and they think they have obtained an authentic autographed photo at a bargain price. Sometimes not even at a bargain. We sometimes see pre-prints at prices above $100 when a celebrity dies. Often, the sellers never even admits its a copy. You have to be very careful and read every auction description very carefully (you should be doing that no matter what you buy at any website). Also look at what category the item is listed in. Ebay does have categories for these types of items. It is our opinion, that with the passing of the Digital Millennium Copyright act, these copies are actually illegal. However, eBay does allow the sale of these items at this time. We hope that will change someday.


Third party authenticators

Even though we utilize third party authenticators we will come right out and state that we do not like to use them.They make mistakes all the time. I can tell you that every time we submit items some are rejected as no good or unable to make an opinion. These are items we actually obtain ourselves in-person. An autograph can never be 100% authenticated unless the authenticator witnessed the signing. How can an authenticator that may have never even met the celebrity make a good judgment on their autograph? They really can't. All they can do is look at it and determine if it at least has some of the characteristics that celebrity has shown in the past. It at least gives the buyer some proof that there is a likely chance the item is authentic and that some guy did not just sign it in his basement that night.We can understand why eBay would prefer authenticated items on their site. We would rather never waste our time and money on these services. However, we do it for the benefit of eBay. It keeps eBay's Trust and Safety department happy and we obtain new customers. Not to mention our new customers learn that all of out autographs are good and begin to purchase at our website where our prices are lower because we do not pre-certify the items. We can always help with the certification process if our customers want the items we sell them checked out.
Update:
We recently found out via inside sources that one of the third party authenticators has hired a well known Kiss autograph forger to work for them. This way he can state that any of his forgeries that show up for authentication are good. They already had one guy who sells forgeries on his own website working as one of their authenticators. Now this? What a shame. It will end up on the news one day I am sure. Be careful out there!


Conclusion:

Our autographs speak for themselves. The collectors who know authentic signatures buy our autographed items
and know they have made a wise investment. We have been in this business in one manner or another for over 10 years. We did not just obtain all our inventory over night and just because you see it listed does not mean we just obtained it the day before. We have a considerable investment of time and money in our inventory. We obtain 99% of our inventory in-person. That does not mean that just one of us runs around all day obtaining autographs (this is true on some days). We also have partners whose only job (OK, some do have real jobs during the day and run for us at night) is to be a 'runner'. They spend their time chasing celebrities and they know how to find them via their social network. We also have a few great connections to the rock world that no one else has. This gets us backstage at major events with free reign and even inside the recording studios. You must know that rock stars treat other insiders differently than the fan that comes from the outside.
We fully appreciate how hard it is hard to believe when you see all the impossible stuff we have.This is partially why we decided to start getting everything authenticated.We were causing too much of a stir in the market and the competition was out to get us (we received a lot of hate mail from many unscrupulous sellers letting us know this fact).We know our autographs are authentic but ultimately how does the average customer customer really know what we sell its authentic? Now you can bid on items that were verified by other autograph experts. These experts may not be perfect and can probably be fooled on occasion but, the odds are if were were manufacturing autographs they would not be fooled for long. Collectively they sure know a lot more about autographs than most anyone in the business.

Remember, autograph collecting is fun. However, once you get to know the main players in this business and realize how much money is at stake you will realize that it is a very dirty business and some of these dealers will do whatever it takes to stop any competitor.


Please educate yourself, buy smart, buy from us and let us know if we can help!

Sincerely,

World of Autographs

P.S. Remember to have some fun and not take life too seriously!


NOW TAKE YOUR NEW KNOWLEDGE AND GO BID ON SOME OF OUR AUTHENTIC AUTOGRAPHS!


Click here to view our auctions and ebay store.

Click here & visit about me page + get access to our free database.

To all readers of  this guide, if you found this information useful a YES vote would be appreciated.
If you did not find this guide helpful would you please contact us and let us know what we could change to make it better.