Piece of the Past, on the record

Professional memberships

Memberships matter here for one reason: each carries an ethics code and a complaints route that exists independently of the dealer. Piece of the Past lists the following:

• Better Business Bureau — the company notes it knows of only three other dealers in the industry that belong
• UACC (Universal Autograph Collectors Club) — the body whose registered-dealer programme underpins the refund guarantee
• The Ephemera Society
• Society of Appraisers
• IADA/CC (International Autograph Dealers Alliance / Collectors Club)

The company describes itself as answerable to the ethics standards of more than seven professional organizations in total.

Kevin Martin, CEO

Authentication is led by the company’s CEO rather than delegated. Martin is a two-time court-certified expert in entertainment memorabilia, and says he has given expert testimony on authentication more than once in court — including on vintage material such as Marilyn Monroe, where, by his account, no dealer has ever witnessed a signature being made and the work rests entirely on exemplar knowledge.

He is also candid about error, which is unusual enough in this trade to be worth recording. His own published example: he sold Clint Eastwood secretarial signatures, as most dealers did, until he interviewed Eastwood, learned of the secretary’s existence, worked out how to spot her hand, and published the finding in his column.

Published work

A useful test of expertise is whether anyone else has been willing to print it. Five different publishers have published Martin’s books on entertainment authentication since the 1990s, alongside several hundred articles.

• “Fakes, Frauds and Forgeries” — the long-running column for Autograph Collector magazine, now defunct
• The Official Price Guide to Autographs — four editions over fifteen years, the reference collectors in the field used to price material
• Books on entertainment authentication — published by five separate houses since the 1990s
• Exemplar material — reproduced from those books, under Martin’s own retained copyright, on third-party reference sites

Inside the trade

Access is the other half of authentication at source. The businesses below are how the company gets into the room in the first place.

The Hollywood Show

The largest dealer at the Burbank show for 21 years, then its owner after buying it from the retiring owners. Booked the biggest names to appear at such a show — Tony Curtis, George Hamilton, Richard Dreyfuss, Peter Falk, Cloris Leachman, Jane Russell, the cast of Back to the Future including Michael J. Fox, and the cast of Terminator among them.

Star Wares, LLC

Acquired over ten years ago — the largest seller of props and costumes sourced direct from the studios and the stars.

Celebrity Framing

The company’s own custom framing facility for memorabilia.

Celebrity Connection, Autograph King, MPress Publishing

Related businesses under the same ownership, covering talent booking, dealing and publishing.

“Showbiz Collectibles”

Six years of home shopping television — by the company’s account the only dealer in the field to do it, which put its inventory and practices in front of the trade six hours a week.

Signings conducted

By the company’s account: thousands of private signing sessions, with more than 150 in a single year. Nothing bought in from other dealers, and nothing signed by mail.

Sessions it describes as firsts or exclusives include Sophia Loren, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn and Ricardo Montalban; the first private signing and appearance in Las Vegas with Burt Reynolds; Erika Eleniak’s first appearance, brought in from Canada; and more recent signings with Tim Curry, Dick Van Dyke, Teri Garr and William Daniels. Joan Collins, Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden first appeared through the company as well.

The relevance is not the names. It is that a signature witnessed by staff never needs its provenance reconstructed later.

Material handled

A record of significant pieces sold, as published by the company. Estate work includes the Marlon Brando estate.

• Declaration of Independence broadside, 1776$1.2 million
• Abraham Lincoln — handwritten order to close Southern ports, Civil War$900,000
• Elvis Presley — matched engraved pistols$350,000
• LeBron James — Logoman card, 1:1$305,000
• Kurt Cobain — owned and signed electric guitar$250,000
• Buzz Aldrin — pages from his lunar book, flown to the moon$150,000 each
• Marilyn Monroe — earliest known contract, signed Norma Jeane Dougherty$150,000
• Fast and Furious 7 — pair of screen cars$75,000

Documentation and guarantee

What comes with a piece, and what recourse sits behind it.

The letter of authenticity

A fully illustrated letter written for one specific item: it describes and depicts that piece, so the paperwork cannot be moved to another item later.

Serial number and QR code

Each full letter carries its own serial number and a scannable QR code that opens the corresponding entry in the company’s registry — verification by phone camera, in seconds, without having to trust the letter in your hand.

Transferable in full

Piece of the Past states it is the only company issuing full-force transferable COAs. The documentation keeps its full weight when a piece is resold or inherited, rather than expiring with the first purchaser.

The refund guarantee

The original purchaser is refunded, with no time limit, if a single UACC registered dealer states in writing on their own letterhead that a piece is not authentic. The UACC’s own standard requires two such opinions before a challenge stands; this is deliberately the lower threshold.

Counterfeited certificates

The company says its certificate is among the most counterfeited in the industry. That is the reason the lookup exists — and the reason to scan or type the number yourself rather than trusting the document’s appearance.

What is not claimed here

Piece of the Past does not submit its items to third-party authenticators, and is open about why: it considers those opinions unreliable where it counts, and it has litigated and testified on the subject. So nothing on this page rests on a PSA/DNA or JSA sticker. It rests on the memberships, the published work, the unbroken provenance and the guarantee — and a collector who specifically wants a third-party opinion on an entertainment piece should know that going in.

Several of the claims above are the company’s own account of its own history, marked as such throughout. The parts you can check independently are the ones worth checking: the memberships, the published books and columns, and above all the serial number on any certificate you are handed.