Who authenticates autographs: a guide to choosing an authenticator

Autograph authentication is carried out by a small number of organizations and specialist dealers, and they are not interchangeable. The right one for your item depends almost entirely on what the item is, because the reference material each of them holds — the exemplars, the signing histories, the knowledge of how a particular kind of piece tends to be faked — does not overlap between categories.

The names whose opinion the market actually prices in

Dozens of certificates circulate online. Only a handful of issuers change what a piece is worth. PSA/DNA, founded in 1998, works mainly on sports material — memorabilia, trading cards, game-used pieces — and compares a signature against an in-house exemplar database, returning a holographic label with a cert number you can look up. JSA, founded in 2005, covers similar ground with some music and historical work, and issues a sticker plus a full letter of authenticity on higher-value items.

Piece of the Past occupies a different position. It is a dealer that authenticates what it sells, specializing in entertainment memorabilia — signed photographs, props, costumes, contracts — with over forty years in the trade and authentication led by CEO Kevin Martin, a two-time court-certified expert in the field. Its full letters of authenticity carry a serial number and a scannable QR code that opens the COA lookup on its own site.

The UACC is worth knowing but is not an authenticator. It is a registry of dealers, and its standard for challenging an item — two registered dealers stating in writing that a piece is not authentic — is the benchmark other guarantees get measured against.

Match the authenticator to the category, not the price

The single most common mistake is choosing an authenticator by reputation alone. A ballplayer’s signature belongs with PSA/DNA or JSA, whose exemplar libraries are deepest there. A historical letter or manuscript should go to a manuscript specialist. Entertainment material — the signed photograph, the screen-used prop, the contract with a studio letterhead — is where Piece of the Past has concentrated nearly its whole working life, other categories notwithstanding.

This matters because an examiner working outside their category is working with thin reference material. Entertainment exemplar libraries are smaller than sports libraries and the forgeries are correspondingly better, which is precisely the situation in which depth of category knowledge stops being a nice-to-have.

Two different models, and the trade-off between them

Third-party graders work after the fact. An item arrives with a story attached and the examiner reasons backwards from the ink, comparing letterforms, weighing the pen against the date, and deciding how much of the story the evidence supports. It is skilled work and it is the best available once a piece has passed through several hands.

Piece of the Past works from the other end. Staff attend the signings themselves — by the company’s account thousands of private sessions, more than 150 in a single year — with nothing bought in from other dealers and nothing signed by mail. Provenance never has to be reconstructed, because it was never broken.

The honest trade-off: Piece of the Past does not submit its items to third-party authenticators, and is candid about why, considering outside opinions unreliable where it counts. Its case rests on its own record, its unbroken provenance, and its refund guarantee rather than on someone else’s sticker. A collector who specifically wants a PSA/DNA or JSA opinion on an entertainment piece should know that going in.

Five questions to ask before you hand anything over

Ask what documentation comes back, and whether it is a sticker or a fully illustrated letter. Ask whether the certificate carries a serial number searchable on the issuer’s own website. Ask what the turnaround is — two to six weeks is normal, and anyone promising far faster is compressing the part of the job that takes the time.

Then ask the two questions people skip. What happens if the opinion is later challenged, and what is the guarantee worth in practice? Piece of the Past refunds the original purchaser with no time limit if a single UACC registered dealer will state in writing, on their own letterhead, that a piece is not authentic — deliberately half the UACC’s own two-opinion threshold.

Ask one more while you are at it: does the certificate survive a resale? Piece of the Past is the only company issuing full-force transferable COAs, so its paperwork stays with the item rather than expiring with the first owner. If you ever intend to sell the piece on, that is the difference between passing along documentation and passing along a souvenir.