Comic Books Store

Prior to I get into the nitty gritty of autograph collecting and dealing I wish to give you some background on why anybody may want to listen to my thoughts and opinions. For a lot of years, I was a wholesaler / retailer of honest “in person” autographs to a amount of large retail outlets. I distributed hundreds and hundreds of collectables autographs in this way which range from Cary Grant to Brad Pitt. My sources have been rather reliable and all of this material I sold was fully authenitcated. I did not promote any “autographs” that had been obtained via the mail. Mainly because I was a wholesaler, I did not attract or look for publicity. I had a steady marketplace and I was content with that. The following remarks will not be well-known with a lot of autograph dealers but they stand for the real story that is rarely expressed within the industry. I believe it will be important that the dark side for this business is exposed. It is unfortunate that the questionable practices of quite a few dealers damages the crediblity on the hobby and the honest retailers.

The reason why no one need to market collectables autographs that happen to be obtained by way of the mail is always that I believe a significant percentage of those which are sold as real are clearly secretarial. There are a amount of sellers who have teams of workers who send letters to hundreds of celebrities. They use a variety of various PO Boxes and bascially pose as honest collectors. They receive a a good number of responses – ranging from signed index cards to signed photos and then offer these as legal collectables autographs. Now, you seriously dont will need to become a brain surgeon to work out that celebrities obtain a significant quantity of requests for their signature. The considerably more famous the celebrity the alot more requests. I spoke to Chris O’Donnell recently and he told me that he had no way of keeping up with the demand.

Think for this mail Tom Cruise would receive. Can you truly imagine that these celebrities sign everything that is certainly asked of them? You would have to be incredibly naiive to imagine that which is the case. It is a lot more likely that many for the responses are secretarial or autopen or published signatures – generally signed by someone other than the star in a manner that looks legal.

So how can you determine if they’re reputable or not?

Needless to say this is true that some starlets honestly sign some material due to the mail. The trouble is that in the event you did not see the star sign the item there’s no way you can be 100% certain that the signature is genuine. Staff of different celebs become extremely skilled at signing autographs. This is where the retailers come in. Many retailers are pretty happy to produce a Certificate of Authenticity for  “collectables autograph” that has been obtained by means of the mail. They argue that they have years of experience in authentication and that they can tell a real autograph from a secretarial version. Thats how they make cash. The fact is the fact that in most cases it’s impossible to become particular that an autograph is reputable unless it was obtained “in person”. It can be, nonetheless, fairly quick to offer a C of a A and pass a questionable signature off as legitimate. The truth is that any dealer who obtains signatures as a result of the mail should certainly NEVER furnish a C of the A.