Fakes, Ebay etc

allstars · Jan 7, 2015

Why doesn't Ebay just throw a quarter million at one of PSA/DNA's or Spence's top authenticators, and have the guy spend his days pulling fakes down? be it cards or memorabilia, what a great service it would provide. I got to thinking about this while reading that half the Mike Trout auos on the market are bogus.

I also think that the info gathered could help identify just who's putting the crap in the marketplace.

Please skip the "because Ebay would loose trillions of dollars they make annually From sales of counterfeit autographs" yadayada

smapdi · Jan 7, 2015

So you want someone to sit there and just nerf auctions for autographs from potato-quality cellphone pics and pay them $250,000 to do it? Any "authenticator" willing to do that is not one who can be trusted.

An easier solution would be to only allow sales of pack-issued autographs. But of course not all of them are real, either.

Even easier: no autograph sales. Problem solved.

JoshHamilton · Jan 7, 2015

allstars said:
Please skip the "because Ebay would loose trillions of dollars they make annually From sales of counterfeit autographs" yadayada

...so you don't want to know the real reason?

Casebusters · Jan 7, 2015

Ebay wants their members to do that for free...

MansGame · Jan 7, 2015

Only in the perfect world would something like that even be imaginable. Why does eBay give a rats a$$ honestly? I mean so they don't want to sell fake stuff... got it... but they also probably take the stand that they can't possibly stop all criminals and they're not going to throw good money at bad in this situation.

homerun28aa · Jan 7, 2015

What business sense does this make for eBay? This is like asking, after work why don't you go and give every homeless person you see on your way home $100? Ideally, yes that'd be really cool but there is no reason eBay as the business should do this. You also assume autographed memorabilia is their main transactions, which isn't true.

At the end of the day the question is: Will eBay gain an extra $250,000 by hiring someone to authenticate autographs on their website? Absolutely not, it will not attract any new business hence it wouldn't make sense for them to do it.

P.S. - they used to offer a great service I'm not sure if they still do I forget what it was called. You can select to have someone from eBay (for a fee) take a look at your autograph and give their opinion if it's legit or not and that would be displayed in the auction. Obviously this is not a binding authentication like PSA/Spence/etc. but it was usually pretty accurate and at least good at detecting obvious fakes.

michaelstepper · Jan 7, 2015

Can't stop people from listing deliberate fakes. Annoying, yes but something you'll have to live with
Psa does offer a quick opinion for under $10 with a coupon for a discounted slab price later on. I've done this on a few and enjoy the service.

jbhofmann · Jan 7, 2015

eBay hires guys away from PSA/JSA/SGC and provides a link on every autograph auction page that provides a quick opinion service.

Ebay gets money from the the prospective buyer for their service, and they can terminate auctions they see as frauds.

eBay, I'll gladly take 1% of all profits you pull in from this idea.

homerun28aa · Jan 7, 2015

Yes that "quick opinion" service was the one I was referring to. Great tool for buyers/sellers and again from when I've come across it it's seemed accurate to me for the most part.

gpenko826 · Jan 7, 2015

homerun28aa said:
What business sense does this make for eBay? This is like asking, after work why don't you go and give every homeless person you see on your way home $100? Ideally, yes that'd be really cool but there is no reason eBay as the business should do this. You also assume autographed memorabilia is their main transactions, which isn't true.

At the end of the day the question is: Will eBay gain an extra $250,000 by hiring someone to authenticate autographs on their website? Absolutely not, it will not attract any new business hence it wouldn't make sense for them to do it.

P.S. - they used to offer a great service I'm not sure if they still do I forget what it was called. You can select to have someone from eBay (for a fee) take a look at your autograph and give their opinion if it's legit or not and that would be displayed in the auction. Obviously this is not a binding authentication like PSA/Spence/etc. but it was usually pretty accurate and at least good at detecting obvious fakes.

I'm gonna play devils advocate here and say - yeah, they might just. I know that I'm very hesitant to buy a non-pack issued or non-certified autograph off if eBay, and I know that I'd be much more willing to spend money if I knew for sure the auto WAS authentic. I can't be alone in this line of thought - how many more sales would go through and how many more autos would be listed knowing that the buyer could purchase with confidence?

Don't forget - sports card autos are just a small percentage of the autos on eBay. Think of the entertainment, historical, political, literary, and other autographs that are up for sale. For eBay (a multi billion dollar company), spending $250000 to make $1,000,000 in listing and final value fees is a no brainer....

homerun28aa · Jan 7, 2015

gpenko826 said:
I'm gonna play devils advocate here and say - yeah, they might just. I know that I'm very hesitant to buy a non-pack issued or non-certified autograph off if eBay, and I know that I'd be much more willing to spend money if I knew for sure the auto WAS authentic. I can't be alone in this line of thought - how many more sales would go through and how many more autos would be listed knowing that the buyer could purchase with confidence?

Don't forget - sports card autos are just a small percentage of the autos on eBay. Think of the entertainment, historical, political, literary, and other autographs that are up for sale. For eBay (a multi billion dollar company), spending $250000 to make $1,000,000 in listing and final value fees is a no brainer....

You cannot authenticate an auto officially based on just seeing a picture of it. You need to actually physically examine the autograph if there would be any kind of binding and credible authentication placed on it. This would require actually sending the auto to eBay, now eBay authentication is competing with PSA/DNA something they certainly don't want to do. This is why the quick opinion works so well it's just a non-binding opinion that most eBayers trust but I would not feel confident in an authentication where the autograph was not physically examined.

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Fakes, Ebay etc

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