Big Fan Autographs and Collectibles has been trading and selling autographs for years now and we naturally have bought their share of fakes and are joining other retailers and dealers to “clean-up” the business of autograph dealing by educating autograph collectors about what to look out for.

Here is a list of some of the techniques that people will use to try and fool you:

1. Proxygraph - This is when a celebrity has their secretary or assistant, etc. sign their signature for them. Some signed photos where the secretaries signature is very good and hard to detect but most of the time it is not even close to what it should look like. The best way to detect this is to compare the autograph with known samples.

2. Pre-Print - This is when the celebrity signs one photo and has many copies made from it. This is pretty easy to spot since the autograph is part of the photo.

3. Rubber Stamp - A rubber stamp is made from a signature and it definitely looks like a signature that has been rubber stamped.

4. Autopen – The autopen is a machine that traces a signature from a pattern or metal template. The signatures look machine manufactured and start with the same indentation mark as they end. They are fairly easy to spot since the machine leaves a large indention in the paper that a Sharpie won’t make and a ball point pen won’t make as deep. Also, the autopen makes identical copies which a human being never signs exactly the same way twice.

5. Forgeries - The best defense against buying a forgery is to educate yourself on what the specific autograph you are looking for looks like, use a reputable dealer with a good reputation and compare your autograph with known autograph samples.

Big Fan Autographs and Collectibles is already one of the few dealers who have established a long history of excellent customer satisfaction by offering a lifetime unconditional guarantee of authenticity for every autograph they sell. But now they are going a step further by offering a free autograph sample guide to help educate their customers and other collectors to authenticate their autograph collections and offering free consultation and authentication for autographs and other collectibles.

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