Are your Sports Memorabilia Faux or ..

There is great interest in sports memorabilia, and sports-related items include signed commemorative photos, baseballs, football, basketballs, pucks and jerseys. A Google search engine of companies that sell these articles comes up with almost 5 million companies!

Some of the offers cost thousands of dollars.

Where there are so many enthusiastic and gullible customers, fraud will surely appear. A San Diego federal judge who recently sentenced several sports car forgers to prison said: "The life, liberty and pursuit of the national pastime have been removed." The prosecution came out of an FBI investigation called Operation Bullpen, which closes a professional criminal organization that forms and sells fake autographs.

60 search warrants were served, more than a dozen were arrested, and a $ 10 million warehouse was seized for counterfeit goods. The leaders received 3 years in prison and a deadline or assets to the IRS. Both current and "vintage" items were involved. Any sports fan who has a signed souvenir may now want to doubt its authenticity.

Phil Halpren, a U.S. assistant attorney who has worked to prosecute counterfeiters, said the fraud is so prevalent in the sports memorabilia market that unless you personally see an item signed by the athlete, the chances are greater than fifty percent that it is false. The most famous athletes in the public eye are also popular with counterfeiters. Halpren said: "If you look at Mark McGuire's signature, it's almost a guarantee, 99.9 percent is counterfeit." Certificates of authenticity can be made as easily as the collectible item they are supposed to validate, so this is not protection.

Vendors are fighting back in an effort to maintain market integrity. Disney, which owns ESPN, will begin next year to auction off online sports memorabilia. Disney says it will authenticate signatures with encrypted holograms with item identification information and package stamps, and record the entire process on video.

Refined counterfeiters can even produce holographic seals that, after random inspection, appear to be real. However, most counterfeiters are amateurs, and the more sophisticated the anti-counterfeiting system, the less likely it is for criminals to copy it.

Baseball and football are the most popular in America, but a few famous hockey players like Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr are also popular targets for counterfeiting.

With all the items available, both online and online, fans can prevent a lot of fraud by using common sense. For example, a baseball signed by Babe Ruth that sells for $ 500 is obviously fake, because such a price is incredibly low, too low for real market conditions. Also, it is good to know a little about the development of baseballs and pens. If you see baseballs that were probably painted with Sharpie pens in the 1920s and 1930s, they are obviously fake, because these pens were not invented at the time. To quote Phil Halpren: "I saw Babe Ruth's balls shot on a Bobby Brown American League Presidential ball. Who, you know, was president in the early '80s. Impossible to do. But one did."

That, while it's nice to own a piece of sports history, the motto is to follow: the buyer beware. Unless you are a professional retailer who knows how to authenticate your merchandise, do not buy an item strictly for its potential resale value, as you may be disappointed with what you end up getting for it. Buy an item that you personally like and intend to keep, and don't spend thousands of dollars. This will ensure that you will be happy when looking at your purchase, without the permanent doubt that you have wasted a large sum of money on something of dubious value.