gary paris wrote:to coach, ive been thinking on this alot and marinos paintings were well respected back in the early 90s or the stars would NOT have had thier picture taken with the artist and the painting. the way i see it things went to hell when his sons started forging signatures. you with me so far? now when that started who knows but it was surely after at the very earliest 94. so anyway you look at it the lithographs themselves are perfectly LEGAL. wher it goes wrong is when there fraudually signed. the only one i have that is signed is my jordan. but ive got some other lithos that are NOT signed. so i will put a litho in the frame thats not signed.so i know the litho itself isnt junk a fake autograph would make it junk. so i can still have my stuff displayed and be proud of it. to bad they got greedy later in the 90s but people are generally good til they brake the law. i still think it was his sons that got that junk stuff started because angelo was a good man at one time or the stars wouldnt have had anything to do with him. so im changing litho my frame to an unsigned litho. maybe someday i can have it checked for authenticity. after all its from 93 so if its fake its trash if not then i didnt get ripped off after all.all the rest is 91 and 92 so there PERFECTLY LEGAL. the crack about my family members getting busted with them was WAY off base. they lived 2500 miles away. so keep you mouth shut about my parents. iwould call you some name but the people in the forum have pretty well used them all. i looked up 20 pages of the forum and out of 30 or so posts there was exactly 1 congrats on there.also one thank you to a soldier. the rest was the same old thing its probably fake or something trying to show how smart you are. then you want johnny unitas address. OOPS

Campbell999 wrote:Oh and as an aside,
Coach is correct, MJ never has done a site down signing like you see today, at say ComicCon.
And you will never seem him doing this.
What people have to learn, is that COAs are absolutely worthless, you can print one out right now at home. Forgers will lie and tell you everything in the world to get you to buy. Pictures of celebs signing mean nothing.
Here is a very interesting example most should know about, has anyone out their ever heard of a man named Jerry Gladstone of American Royal Arts?
This man was recently exposed and was sued over being a forger. What he was doing was fairly clever. He was selling primarily signed guitars, and with each example he would have pictures of that celebrity signing the guitar. Well, the truth was, that he was photoshopping real photos and putting guitars in front of the celebrity. Eventually someone who was their at one of these signings recognized one of these pictures and realized that their was no guitar even close to the celeb, and that the celeb was actually signing a picture. Gladstone had photoshopped the guitar into the hands of the celeb. And it looked **** near perfect. AFter that, the walls came crushing down and it was found that every pic on his site was photoshopped in this way. Scamming people out of millions. Someone on his personal staff even got tired of him forging these and was mistreated as an employee, so he revealed an email from Gladstone to his assoicate, in which Gladstone is telling this associate to get together several guitars that the bands in question would probably play and sign them this way or that way. So please people, never ever ever let photos trick you into believing something. Do the research, pay for a quality opinion. For music, their is no better than Roger Epperson.. A simple trick is just to google the name of the autograph company, or the person in charge, with the term forger after it. Most of the time you will see right off whats going on.
Forgers are everywhere and they take advantage of false and misleading info and pictures. They prey on those who believe a COA means something has to be real. Lots get fooled by the so called money back guarantee if your not completely satisfied. Yet what you will find with most of these, is that if you try and get your money back, they will tell you that they dont trust the authenticator that you got the item looked at by, and thus you are out of luck. Instead they will give you the name of someone like Chris Morales who certs everything, and when it comes back good from him, they will of course argue that the item was genuine.
Also, be very wary of AFTAL and UACC members. AT one time, a registered dealer from these organizations meant that you could trust them. But now, thats not the case. Their are some great ones out their, but their are also bad ones mixed in. And be sure to not the difference between registered dealers and members. If your just a member of AFTAL or UACC then you dont have to abide by any standards, where as a dealer has too and can be kicked out.
Please just watch out people, their are forgers and dishonest dealers out their that outnumber the good ones many times over.