Michael Jackson and the underbelly of EBAY

Do you desperately have to have a real Michael Jackson autographed photo?

Looking for one on EBAY?

Buyer beware!!

EBAY can be a useful resource for autograph collectors. Many private collectors will sell extra autographed photos that they have and many autograph dealers will use the site to try sell their excess photos. Like every other business on EBAY, the autograph sellers can range from highly reputable autograph dealers all the way down to outright crooks who forge celebrity signatures and then try to pass them off as authentic to unsuspecting buyers.

Like I have always said…..the ONLY autographs that YOU know are 100% real are the ones where YOU saw the celebrity sign the photo or item in person. Everything else out there in the world has a chance of being a fake. YOU may have seen the celebrity sign the photo….but if you try to sell it on EBAY….then, of course, the buyer is in the boat of having to have faith that your signature is indeed real. After all, they DID NOT see the Celebrity sign it, they are taking your word for it’s authenticity.

As you know, EBAY sellers, especially commercial businesses, rely heavily on the feedback system used by EBAY to allow buyers to rate sellers and vice-versa. Obviously, if a seller or dealer of autographs starts peddling obvious fakes or misrepresents the photos…..they are going to get bad feedback and this will be reflected on their EBAY page. I have bought a few photos from reputable dealers on EBAY. What do I consider reputable? I only look at dealers that have a 99.9% satisfaction rating or higher. With every business in the world, there is always going to be a small amount of customers that are not happy, no matter what, so I figure 99.9% satisfaction is pretty darn good. There are quite a few memorabilia dealers with that high of a rating on EBAY.

Michael Jackson died a few days ago. He was well known in the hobby to be a very hard autograph to obtain. You look on EBAY today and literally thousands upon thousands of people are on the site trying to sell their cherished Michael Jackson autographs. For a guy who apparently signed very few actual real autographs in his career….they sure are coming out of the woodwork now after his death. Looking through the listings of autographs, alarm bells are screaming all over the place that most of these are not real autographs or are reprint autographs being passed off as authentic. There is a big difference. Michael Jackson might have signed one 8×10 photo. That is the original, authentic, hand-signed autograph. Someone might have then made 1,000 copies of that autographed photo. These 1,000 photos are REPRINTS. They are not, repeat…NOT authentic autographs. The only authentic autograph was on the one original photo that was signed. ALL these other photos…..are copies. Look REAL close at the wording on some of the EBAY ads for autographed Michael Jackson photos. Some use terms like “AUTHENTIC HAND-SIGNED REPRINT”. Many people just zero in on the words “Authentic” or “Hand-Signed” and block out the word reprint. These signatures are NOT real! You would normally see a reprint autographed photo of a celebrity going for anywhere from $1-$5 on most days on EBAY. There are sellers on EBAY right now that have hooked suckers into buying reprint photos of Jackson for over $100……all because the unsuspecting, naive buyer thinks that they are buying an actual autographed photo. Looking through the listings of autographed photos of Michael Jackson….I see the same exact photos popping up from lots of different sellers….all with widely varying prices. All suggest that “THEY” have the one “Real” authentic photo. Looking at the photos….they are all identical. I would bet than no one is actually selling the one real photo that Jackson actually signed sometime in the past……all that are being peddled are reprints or fakes. The reputable dealers on EBAY who have actual real authentic autographed photos of Michael Jackson all have very high bids on their products and small numbers of bidders. The people peddling the fakes, have tons of bidders and prices a lot lower….but still way more than should be paid for what they are actually getting. I like EBAY but it is really sad that they don’t have more oversight on their posts to try to protect all these naive bidders that are getting ripped off. I am not an autograph expert by any means but I would guess that if you bought a Michael Jackson autograph on EBAY anytime in the next few months….you are probably looking at least a 90% chance that your photograph is either a reprint or a fake.

If you put in a bid for an autographed photo on EBAY….you might want to surf through all the listings REAL CLOSE and make sure you do not find that exact same photo for sale by the same seller or another seller. If you are buying a true authentic signed photo….no other photos will look EXACTLY like it. Be very careful!!

If you want to take that chance, good luck.

$1-$5 for a reprint is fine. There is no limit to the number of reprint autographs that may be floating around out there. If more are needed, someone just makes thousands more copies and the supply is endless. There is however, a finite number of real authentic autographs. People who pay $100 for a reprint photo are being royally ripped off.

Don’t know if you have a reprint? Easy test….. Take your photo and get a fingernail file or something else with a sharp edge. Get a magnifying glass. Take your photo and use the file to try to scrape off a tiny portion of the signature on the photo. If you can scrape some of the ink off the photo, then the photo was actually signed. (by somebody) If you cannot…..the photo is a COPY. Now, even if you are able to scrape off ink….that still does not make it a 100% real autograph. If you did not see Big Bird sign it yourself….then who knows who actually signed it….. It might have been Kermit, Miss Piggy, Big Bird’s secretary, the janitor, etc. You get the idea. And then of course, there are autopen signatures…..but don’t even get me started on those……I’ll leave that to another post.