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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..

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..

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..

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"....

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..

"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..

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..

I get calls on a very regular basis regarding signed posters. These are almost always multi signed posters from the latest films and signed by all the biggest stars, Star Wars and The Godfather seem to be the most common. The question I get is always the same "Are these signatures on the poster genuine, as I am now not sure!" Most of these posters ..

Have you ever bought a signed item on eBay and then found out that its printed, or simply not authentic? Then you will know just how difficult it is to obtain a refund, unless you know which buttons to press! As we all know, eBay do not like losing money, so they don't make it too easy for you to obtain any kind of refund, and seem to be constantly..

I offer a Quick Opinion service for signed items via the "Quick Opinion" service on the site, and recently i have been getting an increasing number of requests to check Christmas cards signed by Prince Charles and Diana, and Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip. In almost every case these items contain Autopen signed signatures but are being sold as ..