We recently stumbled upon a promising new seller of a vast array of vintage modern rock and pop culture autographs. Promising, that is, until we looked at the first example that popped-up.
Autograph Central's web site (www.autographcentral.net) has hundreds of autographs on albums, guitars, photos, and sheet music priced at about 20-30% below market, and they provide a mailing address and telephone number in Lake Villa, Illinois. Sounds like quite a deal, and we could easily drop $100,000 on their material..if only it was authentic. As a matter of fact, we had a hard time finding ANYTHING authentic on the entire site!
Take a look at the signatures above. The Einstein ($695) is wildly off-target, despite the attempt to legitimize it by putting it within an antique setting. The Abbott and "Cosetto" ($375) speaks for itself, the Charlie Chaplin signature ($250) is too "open" with malformation of several letters, and "Scarface" Al Capone's signature ($1,850) bears a closer resemblance to Shirley Temple's hand than that of the famous Chicago gangster. (By the way - forgers out there just can't seem to perfect their Capones and should probably stick to Kevin Kostner's "K--------"!)
Here's what's especially intriguing: Autograph Central offers an extra service to their customers. As their site reads:
"If you are looking for a particular autograph that you do not see here drop us a line and we will use our extensive network of resource contacts to locate even some of the rarest autographs!"
Makes you kinda wonder...
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