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Looks like Lionel Messi has been at it again! It has been rumoured more than once that Messi gets his brother to signed items for him the lazy so and so! He gets paid very well for signing items for at least two companies, and it looks as though he has done it again with Topps! I am amazed that such a large company are seemingly unable to ensure th..

Almost every week i am asked to give an opinion on a Muhammad Ali signed item that is also signed aka Cassius Clay. These signed images are most common in the larger sizes and were sold i believe in the hundreds by various sellers here in the UK in the early 2000's. In some cases they were multi signed and sold as "Champions Forever" with various o..

It's not uncommon for people to approach us with offers to sell letters or other items signed by famous individuals, with Winston Churchill being one of the most popular. However, most of these letters are standard, with no personal salutation and often just thank you notes. In fact, they are usually sent out by Churchill's office during his many y..

If you want to sell your autograph collection then today you have many choices. The internet means that you find a dealer near you or sell directly via ebay, but selling via ebay can provide problems as buyers will often only buy an autograph if it has been properly authenticated, and dealing with this kind of thing on ebay can be very difficult.Yo..

First let me say that there are some very good autograph auction houses around. They tend to specialise in this field and in most cases will guarantee that an item is what they say it is without question, but they are few and far between. The real culprits are the ones who make claims to be "fine art dealers" or similar, but in fact are really onl..

I have written a short piece warning about these sellers before, and now at last one of them has been jailed! Douglas Duren  ran a number of autograph related websites, one of which was the well known NEautographs.com in the USA. Duren was jailed for over 3 years in Birmingham, Alabama USA for mail fraud and other fraud related crimes. His websit..

The best COA for an autograph? Not an easy question to answer, as most genuine dealers will tell you that a COA is in most cases a worthless piece of paper! A COA only has a value if it has been provided by a reputable company, and one that backs that item with a full lifetime guarantee. A COA from a third party (i.e. not the person who is sell..

Should you frame your valuable autographs? Simple answer, no! Framing autographs or signed photos can be a costly business and in many cases may ruin your valuable signed item. We see a lot of framed items that have been ruined by careless framers, and framing an item will make it far more difficult to sell at a later date. We are offered items eve..

Over the past couple of years I have had some decent results in helping customers obtain refunds for fake signed items purchased both here and abroad. The USA based sales are the key ones as they will never give you a refund and put all kinds of obstacles in the way. Many of these items can be very expensive too sometimes amounting to a £1000 or mo..

If you're considering selling your autograph collection, an auction may seem like an obvious choice. However, it's important to find the right auction house that specialises in your specific items. Many of the smaller auction houses claim expertise in all areas but may not have the specialist knowledge necessary to sell your autographs for their tr..

Buying autographs on eBay can be a minefield and with the Corona Virus in full swing the forgers appear to have added thousand of fake items on to eBay in order to make some quick easy money, although is a minefield eBay have recently made it slightly easier for you to pick the good from the bad, and I think that with the tips i show you below, you..

Every day I am asked to check items for authenticity via my "Quick Opinion" service. The bad news is that over 50% prove to be fake in some way, but many of the buyers will simply not accept that what they have purchased is not authentic, and send me all kinds of reasons why the item must be genuine! "It has a COA with it so it must be genuine"....

UPDATE 2023! The scam site mentioned here now seems to have gone, but give them time and i am sure they will be back!All collectors need to be aware of a new scam that is becoming more prolific. Very simply it appears that some very clever scammers are "skimming" the details of items on genuine sites and then adding them to their own site and offer..

Updated again Feb 2026!  I am so pleased that this article has proved to be so useful for so many people, and enabled many buyers to get thousands of £'s worth of refunds for sellers of fakes. But eBay are always moving the goalposts, so here is an update based on what my readers have told me and my own experience on the site this past few weeks...

How much is my autograph worth, and do you buy or value autographs? Well yes, we do buy autographs, but, the big question, how much are they worth? is one which is not so easily answered as it can depend so much on so many different things, so we have put this together to help you work it out yourself. Whose signature is it? How rare is t..

I know I have covered this before but its a question that is asked so often by customers "hello, is this autograph genuine" asked when looking to buy an item from our website, and a very common question asked of any dealer. Two old sayings come to mind here the first "there is no such thing as a dumb question, only dumb people who ask questions" an..

Every now and again we will all find a nice bargain on eBay. Sometimes, after it has turned up, it turns out to be not what we thought but on occasion we have something to celebrate! One of my best buys was a Muhammad Ali signed book which cost the seller more to post than I paid for it at less than £6 and on another occasion I won a fabulous signe..

If you have read part one you will now have a basic understanding of how an Autopen machine creates a signature, and if you have studied the John Lennon signature previously shown you should now be able to see that its not exactly as it should be, in other words it does not look as though its been done by a human hand, but neither does it look as t..

Every day I am asked about the authenticity of an item that the customer has just found on Facebook or eBay etc. In so many cases the item is a hopeless fake and should easily be spotted without paying me to check it out first. So my first suggestion has to be "educate yourself regarding autographs" as all the resources are available via the intern..

"Robographs" (a name I have coined for want of something better) are autographs created by a robot machine.  These are now becoming the scourge of the autograph world, and are becoming increasingly difficult to spot as the forgers get more proficient. These are even now fooling some good dealers and auction houses, so beware! I first spotted these ..

If you have purchased a signed item which you now believe to not be authentic, then you may want to get a refund! however, that is not always as easy as it seems as most forgers are clever enough to distance themselves from you in a number of ways. First, where did you buy it? UK or overseas? If you bought it overseas then the chances of you gettin..

Every day I receive items through the post for authentication. In most cases they have survived the postal system, but in some cases they have not. So here are a few tips from someone who both sends and receives mail every day. If I am sending out mail, every item will firstly be put into a plastic sleeve, as this will help to protect the item shou..

If you need a signed item checked, then you will see that there are a number of companies around that will give you a free authentication on your signed items, but before you send off your scans or items you should ask yourself why they would offer this not so easy service for free? You might think that its a good business ploy, offer a free serv..

Any dealer will tell you that this is a very common question asked of them, and certainly not an easy one to answer. The simple answer from the dealers point of view is "you don't, but I do!" After all the dealer has very likely spent many years learning his trade, possibly spent hours researching the signature, maybe asked other dealers for a seco..