I love when people think they can slip one past the goalie in terms of fake autos on non-auto cards. Most of the time, the ideas are pretty well conceived due to a number of reasons stemming from a lack of design difference between the unsigned cards and the signed ones. Whether its fake stickers on cards that were never meant to be autographs or just signing a card that has a hard signed parallel, the people who create the scams know how to take advantage of the uneducated collectors out there.

The newest incarnation of this phenomenon is from 2008 Upper Deck Sweet Spot football. The background on Sweet Spot is long, but the gist of it focuses on the product’s main hit of signed plastic helmets. For the first (and only) time in 2008, Upper Deck inserted unsigned plastic helmets along with signed ones in the same set. Although the unsigned ones were not serially numbered, they are basically indistinguishable from the signed ones. What these criminals have decided to do, is take a sharpie and forge the signatures that would normally be there on every other year of Sweet Spot cards. Aaron Rodgers is big part of this set, and the fakes have sold for a reasonable amount of money despite the laughable autograph attempts on them.

Here are some examples:

2008 Aaron Rodgers Unsigned Sweet Spot Helmet – Unsigned Example

2008 Aaron Rodgers Unsigned Sweet Spot Helmet w/ Fake Auto – Thickness of the marker, slant of the writing, and overall appearance is all wrong.

2008 Aaron Rodgers Unsigned Sweet Spot Helmet w/ Fake Auto #2 – I love that this guy was dumb enough to scan the back of the card confirming its not autographed to begin with.

Again, I have wholeheartedly urged all the mainstream hobby news sources to take a stand against fakes, but have generally been met with the smug and aloof attitude that always permeates through their approach on these matters. No one wants to admit that fakes have overrun the secondary market, and for a magazine focused on hobby news reporting, it sickens me that they refuse to report on any problem out of fear of alienating collectors. Manufacturers arent much better in that regard, but its a little different when its your own product. I hate that Beckett greets every new collector in the hobby for more reasons than I can count (just search back on the blog), but its ridiculous how little information there is on running problems that pollute the experiences of so many people who buy every single day.

As I say every article dealing with scams and fakes, your only protection is yourself and your knowledge. Dont buy anything you arent 100% confident in, and always ask someone if you have a question. Message boards are filled with people who are more than happy to help.