Trustworthy Signed Made Easy

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great sports town like Detroit sports memorabilia is always in high demand and can fetch a big price but when one local man spent a fortune on dozens of prized autographs he says he was taken for a ride tonight seven investigator Russ Jones is looking into what went wrong and how you can protect yourself from buying phony Goods I have 65 jerseys 30 hockey sticks 250 hockey pucks Paul wedding of Auburn Hills has been collecting sports memorabilia for years from Brett Favre to Tom Brady Wayne Gretzky to Sidney Crosby he spent thousands on a hobby he loves over thirteen thousand dollars and he bought it all online from an Internet auction company out of state selling memorabilia from some of the biggest names in sports Paul's is an incredible collection except for one problem I have no reason to believe any of it is real it was earlier this year while showing off his collection than one of his friends another collector pulled him aside I got to tell you something Paul the stuffs fake all of it all of it came from this place coach's corner supports auctions a popular Pennsylvania based online auction site for sports memorabilia from around the country from signed baseballs like this one from Babe Ruth to sign photos like this from Muhammad Ali right now the website lists more than 2,000 pieces currently up for auction it doesn't have a good reputation and are in the industry Kevin Keaton is a nationally recognized autograph Authenticator whose work with the FBI during its investigations into the memorabilia industry when he looked at some of the items Paul bought no no it's the same thing yeah that's definitely a forgery yeah it's definitely not Gretzky they were all really bad attempts at the forgeries there are signs you could look for when trying to spot fake signatures some bad forgeries can be avoided just by comparing the signature with an authenticated one found online but the biggest red flag Keating says can be the price a lot of people purchase items based on price comparisons and if something is priced below what the general going rate appears to be that should be a red flag right there last month our sister station in Philadelphia tried to catch up with Scott Malek the owner of Coaches Corner I want to talk to you about allegations you're peddling fake sports memorabilia let's go Gina can we talk to you now why can't we talk to you about this a day later his general manager Lee trifle called our sister station and defended the company denying fraud he said coaches corner can't examine the thousands of pieces that others put up for auction each month on his site and he estimates twenty percent of the lower priced items under a couple hundred bucks can be forgeries and a likely higher percentage for more expensive items adding authenticating pieces is a game we can't play...