A Good Reason Not To Trust PSA Or Any Auto Authentication Service

Posted on 01/08/2010 by gellman

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If you arent familiar with Kevin Burge, start learning. He has rightfully earned the reputation as the hobby devil, and he is starting to get more and more adept at what he does. I reported a while ago that he had gotten a fake Adrian Peterson through PSA’s grading, and PSA tried to brush me off by saying they only authenticate the cards. Well, looks like Burge wins again, because here is the newest batch.

Here is a real Reggie Wayne rookie premiere auto from 2001. Notice all of the finer points of the signature and its positioning on the card. Here is one done by Burge’s notorious account shoeless-joejackson. They dont even compare.

REAL:

FAKE:

Need more convincing? Here are the two signatures next to each other. They dont even look remotely close. Fake on left, real on right.

As you can tell, the slant of the real autograph is much more to the right and much more pronounced. The fake isnt even slanted. Also, notice the pen thickness of the fake, versus the real. Lastly, the complexity of the real signature is that so Burge is unable to replicate it. PSA didnt even bother to notice before grading this card.

Burge also has a number of graded PSA 10’s on his screen name, which makes me question how PSA is really paying attention to his scams. I have received numerous reports from different PSA experts stating that they make arrangements with their biggest clients to assign more 10’s than not, and after seeing how Wolverine 24 and Burges people crank out 10’s, im not surprised if this turns out to be true.

Regardless of the graded 10’s, im not as concerned as I am with the number of Fake RPAs he has gotten through. He has a fake PSA Todd Heap one up as well, and according to the people who collect the rookie premieres, Heap was never made in the original set.

It keeps getting better and better.

A New Way To Combat Fakes?

Posted on 09/14/2009 by gellman

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A few days ago I talked about the fake Peterson logo patch that had been retardedly created from a legit 3 color SPA. Well, that auction was taken down after a few people got together and bid the item up to over $250,000. Oh, so much win.

Now, the item is back up, and so is the bidding. The seller is famed faker shoelessjoejackson Kevin Burge, and I know a lot of people are tired of his multiple accounts and endless stream of fucking stupid fakes. Is this the new way to handle the douchey fakes? I say yes.

Here is a screen shot before it is taken down:

(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

NOTE: It has been brought to my attention that the scan is so tiny because the card is trimmed. For those of you unfamiliar, Trimming is when the douche cuts off parts of the edges to remove perceived damage. The card looks much better, but is still considered to be much less valuable due to the alterations. Trimming is to bad edges and corners what patch faking is to one color patches, or in this case THREE.

A Band Of Theives May Be Materializing…

Posted on 06/30/2009 by gellman

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Ever since the fake patch industry exploded, there have been a few people that have always been at the center of it. One of them, shoelessjoejackson has evaded every bit of retiribution, and has continued to process fake after fake after fake. We now know that they are also in cahoots, as the fake rookie premiere autos that have made their way around eBay have popped up on the seller list of just about every single one of these people.

Shoelessjoejackson has since changed his name to peopleschoice7373, and continues to run scams aplenty. He has been known to sell fake patches, trimmed cards, and just about every other scam there is. Wolverine24 is part of this group, selling similar fake patches, as well as the fake Rookie Premiere Autos, which could be being produced by either person, or one of the other six to seven that are involved in the scam. Ebay has expressed NO want to help us take down these assholes, mainly because they are sellers who do thousands in revenue each month.

The one defense we have against these people is pretty huge though: ALL OF THEM are dumb as rocks stupid. Check this out:

See, they try to throw you with the whole “sample” label, but im sure this was either a blank card with no swatches, or it was a card that had this sample label printed on it. Hell, the sample lable could be on the holder. We don’t know. What we do know is that no one in their right mind would ever pay for this card.

I cant really think of any other way to bring these people down other than going straight to the card companies. However, they may not be able to do anything either. I encourage you to contact Topps and Donruss (they are prime targets for both sellers) so that all of these guys can be IP banned from eBay for processing fraudulent items.

The one thing I am worried about is that someone had a list of all of the scammers somewhere and has utilized that list to start the RPA fakes. If they continue to band together, the rule of multiples will always hurt people more than we can counteract here. Think about it, if one person is selling the fakes, its an obvious fake to most people because that ONE guy is the one who is making the cards. If ten people are selling the fakes, not only do they become more attractive to idiot buyers because more people have them, but it is harder to pin down who is perpetuating this scam.

Watch your ass people.

h/t Joe from the D