What a coincidence that since eBay has allowed its users to write and submit "guides" to assist others with their biddings, "autograph experts" have come forward as if they had won the Powerball Lottery.

Collecting authentic autographs is difficult enough due to the flood of forgeries, but these know-it-all's who's only qualification to give advise is that they have bought and sold a good number of autographs, generally since eBay has been in existence, are passing on their opinions and speculations as though they were THE authority on the subject. I have said this in the past, and I will say it again. The ONLY people who are qualified to make a determination regarding the authenticity of a signature are college graduates who studied handwriting analysis and are considered experts in the field. You can find the majority of them at the Federal Building in Washington DC. They work for the FBI.

At this time, there is an authenticator who is considered by many to be the best. This company began as a baseball card grading service and expanded to autograph authentication. How does one get promoted from a card grader to an autograph expert? Is there a class available at a Junior College somewhere, or did they just assume they were qualified because they have seen a lot of autographs? Over the years this company has been under the gun a few times due to incidents such as authenticating a bulk lot of autographs by only checking a few, and thumbing through the remainder. They have been scrutinized on a number of occasions for questionable calls, so I was not surprised when I saw a John Belushi signature authenticated by them and encapsulated in a tamper-proff plastic holder. The signature read "John Belushi '91", however, Belushi died in 1982.

One of this company's top authenticator's is also the owner of an auction house that runs a large monthly autograph auction, and provides a Certificate of Authenticity with everything that he sells. Now this is a conflict of interest if I've ever seen it. He also will sell your items on consignment, and I took advantage of this once since he was providing a COA, which would net more money than if I sold on eBay. I submitted 12 signatures, 6 of which I personaly witnessed being signed, and all but one was turned away as "not able to authenticate at this time." All six of the signatures that I witnessed the signing of were refused. This is an authenticator? I also received a message saying not to let this incident prevent me from submitting autographs in the future.

Getting back to the "expert advice" on eBay, like I was saying  it's all opinion and speculation. But one clown caught my eye, and that was the guy who proclaims to be world's leading authority on fake astronaut autographs, with emphasis on autopen signatures. He tells you about all the articles he has written, the publications he has articles in, and the books or books he has published. The "guide" that he wrote was far too intense and so full of inconsistencies that I began to get suspicious. Going to his feedback I looked at many of the autographs that he recently sold, and I can't be sure, but I saw some that looked to be autopens, the one point that he stressed upon watching out for.

In his guide he accused a large number of astronauts of providing "fake autographs" saying that this guy used an autopen, and so did this guy, and so on. The fact is that the only thing that these astronauts did was to sign their name for NASA so they could set up an autopen. NASA was where the requests were going, not to the men themselves. The autopen signature signatures come from NASA since they do not want the astronauts to be under any type of undue stress, and hundreds af autograph requests a day will do that. If this "space expert" were on the ball he'd have known that.

This is my point exactly; heresay, opinion and speculation. A lot more damaging to the collector than saying nothing at all. But the bottom line on Mr. Autograph is that I saw a Lady Bird Johnson signature that he sold that I thought was a dead ringer for an autopen, but the scan wasn't that clear to accuse. However, on the next page was another that he had sold. I copied both and put them together. Identical. Either copies or an autopen. I had a suspicion when I saw the words "trust me" at the end of the description. It's always the ones who say "trust me."

So, after all that, what good can you get out of all this? I'm not an expert, and will never claim to be, even though I've told hundreds of autographs without one incident. My advice is to not read these so-called guides regarding what is genuine and what is not. If you want expert feedback, write a letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Handwriting Analysis Department. Peace.