July 20, 2010

New from Inkworks! Artist Proof Cards!

Filed under: Inkworks,Upper Deck,news — webjon @ 4:47 pm

The latest thing I’ve encountered from the demise of Inkworks are blank Inkworks sketch cards. I’ve seen these from Family Guy (the seller indicates they have both Family Guy 1 and 2 available), as well as some from Alien Vs. Predator.

I’m sure if Inkworks were still around they would have a big problem with these as they certainly aren’t going to go through any approval process. . . at least they aren’t numbered like the official sketches from the series are so you can tell the legitimate ones from the ones that were ‘lost,’ only to be found later, sketched on unofficially and sold.

This probably bothers me more than it should. . . but when does it stop? How many of these blanks are out there? Inkworks was always great about trying to protect the integrity of their sketch cards — no other company numbered all of their cards, and no other companies posted as many scans of their sketch cards as Inkworks did. I wish other companies followed Inkworks’ lead on this. . .

For example Upper Deck — Mark Irwin (former Upper Deck art director) is offering up an artist proof from Iron Man 2 — a set he never worked on . . . and he doesn’t see a problem with that.

Sheesh.

Jon

March 15, 2010

Field Report Update. Gillian Anderson.

Filed under: General,Inkworks,bad eBay experiences,counterfeit and questionable cards,news — webjon @ 10:16 pm

Mark B is the second buyer I’ve been in contact with who wound up with a fake Gillian Anderson autograph. As he states in his comment on the Feb 10 posting about fake Anderson autographs the card be bought from loveandnewyork is identical to the one that Michael M bought from gbapack. That’s right, identical looking counterfeits were sold by both sellers. Are they the same person? Are they buying from the same source? I don’t know, but it’s something to think about. Here is Mark B’s Anderson:

Mark has been trying to get a refund, and he recently sent me an update about his situation:

The auction was Item# 280335295791 and payment was sent April 23, 2009. The auction closed probably that day or up to a couple days before. I’ve already tried Paypal and they won’t refund me any money. I have contacted loveandnewyorkthrough ebay and he came back with a story about him only listing the card for someone else and he is unable to contact that person now. He did offer me $100 refund if I returned the card first. I have no intention of returning the card so it doesn’t end up in the market again.

Obviously it’s incredibly shady of loveandnewyork to offer a partial refund for a fake card. It’s extremely unfortunate that Mark hasn’t had any luck getting a refund. It’s also noble that he’s refused a partial refund to keep the card off the market.

Unbelievably loveandnewyork currently has 500 auctions listed on eBay, including high end autographs and sketch cards. This guy has sold several known counterfeit cards and is still selling on eBay??? I can’t fathom why he hasn’t been banned from eBay. . . or put in jail.

Jon

February 22, 2010

Field Report: Alyssa Milano Charmed Conversations Auto.

Filed under: General,Inkworks,counterfeit and questionable cards,news — webjon @ 9:43 pm

Michael M. unfortunately has three gbapack cards in his collection, and as of now he’s determined they all are counterfeit. . .

Here’s the skinny on my Alyssa Milano Charmed: Conversations autograph card. It appears authentic (to my untrained eye). I see no obvious differences between my card and your scans, and my card has an easily-distinguished watermark.

Up until now I haven’t looked very closely at the autograph (i.e. under a magnifying lens). It looked good to the naked eye and the card is watermarked, so I felt fairly confident. To be perfectly honest, this card has been in my “to sell” pile for a while, and until recently I wouldn’t have had second thoughts about listing it. Well, I had second thoughts so I examined it again under a lens. That was (to me) inconclusive. There appear to be dots at the ends of the signature (i.e. autopen), but not blatant ones. Finally, I did some high resolution scans and that settled the whole question.

Yes, there are dots at the ends of each pen stroke, but here is the damning evidence: the autograph is signed backwards. The autograph is so crisp and clear, you can see the actual pen strokes. If you look carefully, you can see that “Milano” is signed first (starting correctly with the ‘M’). You can see that the ‘l” is superimposed by the ‘sa’ in ‘Alyssa’. If you look at the way ‘Alyssa’ is signed, you can see the tail on the final ‘a’ is superimposed by the second ‘s’. Perhaps most obviously, the strokes on the initial ‘A’ are completely reversed.

You have to look closely at the scan (the full scan sent to me is available here), but if you trace the outline of the A in Alyssa you can see what Michael is saying — it is indeed signed backwards.

I examined the card closely and noticed the autopen dots, as well as the offset Inkworks authentic foil stamp noted by Steve. I took Michael’s scan as well as a couple of scans that I have of known authentic Milano autographs, including one from Ink Vault and I drew lines on ‘em with photo editing software.

As a reference point I started with the ‘C’ in the word ‘Conversations’ in the Charmed Conversations logo at the bottom of the card. I lined all of those up horizontally with a black line. Then I drew another black line at the top of the ‘dots’ in the Inkworks Authentic foil stamp. As you can see Michael’s card (the card at the right) has a logo that is slightly lower than the other two, which line up perfectly. Vertically I started at outside of the right most dot in the Inkworks Authentic Foil stamp and drew a line down. The line crosses the ‘Charmed’ logos through the ‘d’ on the legitimate cards. On the counterfeit card that line falls between the ‘m’ and the ‘e’

Thank you very much to Michael for sharing his story about this card and helping out the community.

Jon

February 18, 2010

Field Report: Dafoe, Dushku and Carpenter

Filed under: Inkworks,Rittenhouse Archives,counterfeit and questionable cards — webjon @ 9:32 pm


NonSportsCardForum member JerS86 was kind enough share some questionable cards in their collection.

In these unfortunate collecting days it is great to see collectors continuously reaching out to share their stories and contact other buyers of questionable cards. . .

In looking at the scans JerS86 set, I am in complete agreement. Here are JerS86′s comments as to why the cards were being questioned:

I noticed the Dafoe was fake when I saw what someone on this forum posted about ilovenewyork. It’s the same as the one’s he was selling.

Then, I started looking at all of my autograph cards under a 10x magnifying glass and I pulled out the ones that looked a little too perfect.

I originally suspected the Dushku was a fake when I saw how bold and perfect the signature was. I compared it to all of the Dushku’s I could find on eBay and none of them looked as bold as mine. Also here’s an auction that prooves it’s a fake, same exact signature: eBay item: 360221543215, Seller: whysteve.

The Carpenter signature was also a little too perfect. So, I checked eBay and found the same exact card being sold by ihatehappypeople.

I hope this helps.

The Dafoe and Dushku cards that have been questioned multiple times, but this is the first Charisma Carpenter Veronica Mars autograph I’ve seen a collection question. As you can see the Dafoe and Carpenter autos have the tell tale ‘dots’ at the ends of the lines in the signatures, and the Dushku is an exact copy of several others that have been sold.

I have been hoping to do a detailed analysis of these cards, but I haven’t been able to find the time, it’ll come at some point. Thank you very much to JerS86, hopefully this will have more field reports in the future, with any luck it’ll simply be alerts to eBay auctions, and not about cards that have already been purchased.

Jon

February 10, 2010

Gillian Anderson counterfeited ?!? The truth is in here.

Filed under: General,Inkworks,bad eBay experiences,counterfeit and questionable cards — webjon @ 6:52 pm

A couple of days ago Michael M posted a couple of comments on Webjon in the loveandnewyork thread. Michael had the misfortune of buying a Gillian Anderson autograph card from gbapack, so he had the right to be concerned. He compared his Anderson to some other cards, and here is what he found:

Well, here are scans (front and back of the card). As you can see, it’s
identical to the one that loveandnewyork had listed last year. I purchased
mine from gbapack on 3/10/08. Interestingly enough, I also purchased an
Alyssa Milano/Charmed Conversations card from him around the same time, and it appears to be authentic with a nicely visible watermark.

You can see on the reverse at the bottom, the “F” is missing in “X-Files”.
This may or may not be on the original card.

When comparing it to other Inkworks cards (in particular a Juliet
Landau/Spike card), it is cut to the same size. However, it seems to be a
slightly lighter stock and has a matte finish front and back; other Inkworks
cards have a glossier finish on the back. I also compared it to a Mimi
Rogers/X-Files Connections card from Razor. Along with the matte finish, the
biggest difference appears to be the color of the character’s name written
vertically in bold on the reverse. On the Gillian Anderson card, the name is
in a light or pale yellow, while on the Mimi Rogers card the name is in a
more golden yellow. The same may be true of the names on the front, but the
lettering is smaller so it’s harder for me to judge.

The real clincher (for me) is the autograph itself. You can clearly see that
both “Gillian” and “Anderson” end in hard dots; other examples of her
autograph show smooth lines. More telling are the two dashes, which are
actually dots over the i’s in “Gillian”. Again, other (all?) examples of her
autograph show a hard dot followed by a lighter trailing dash as she’s
quickly moving her pen. This autograph shows a hard dot, followed by a
thick, sold line, ending in another hard dot. And this happens twice in the
same autograph.

At this point, it looks like I just get to write this up as a learning
experience (a $275 dollar one, at that). But if I can share any information
that will save other people their hard-earned money, I’m all for that.

Michael’s analysis is dead on, in comparing his scan to other scans provided to me I’ve seen everything he’s described, from the slightly different font / color in the character name to the missing ‘F’ in X-Files in the copyright on the back of the card. Additionally on the back of the card the letter ‘w’ is missing in the word ‘winning,’ and the Inkworks Authentic Foil Stamp is in a slightly different place. He also confirmed to me that the Anderson card does not have an Inkworks watermark. Like with the Maggie Grace card we will never be able to get Inkworks to confirm this is a counterfeit, but it certainly is.



January 30, 2010

Maggie Grace Counterfeit? I’d vote yes.

Filed under: Inkworks,counterfeit and questionable cards — webjon @ 11:48 pm

After determining the James Franco sold by eBay seller sharpmarbles was likely counterfeit I was contacted by the buyer of sharpmarbles’ Alicia Silverstone autograph who was concerned about it’s legitimacy after reading about the Franco. The Silverstone is a tough card to find, and there aren’t many good scans out there that are easily accessible. Looking at the card I was a little concerned that the signature didn’t look quite right. . . but I didn’t really have much to compare it to.

Since I couldn’t directly help that buyer with the Silverstone I decided to take a look at sharpmarbles other items, and something about their Maggie Grace didn’t sit well with me. After staring at the card for a while I realized that it was simply the last little line in the zig-zag under her signature wasn’t smooth. Obviously that’s not something that’s impossible, for sure, but I too sometimes add a line under my name when I sign, and it’s always the smoothest line in my signature because it doesn’t mean anything — it’s just a little ‘zip’ on the paper and it’s done. . . it might be too long, or short, or in the wrong place, but it’s always smooth since it’s done so quickly.

I forwarded it to Steve, who I nearly always collaborate on this stuff, and he didn’t seem too concerned about my zig-zag, but he didn’t like the placement of the Inkworks seal on the card. He said it was too far to the left, and was a bit on top of the ‘LOST’ logo. I wasn’t too concerned about his logo, and he wasn’t too concerned about my zig-zag. . . but we were both concerned. . . so I decided to look closer.

Thankfully, in this case, there are a bunch of Maggie Grace cards on eBay in current and recent sales. Obviously you can’t compare zig-zags reliably, but Steve was dead on — this was the only Grace Auto out of about a dozen I looked at where the ‘Inkworks Authentic’ logo touched into the LOST logo in the background of the card.

I grabbed a bunch of the better scans of the Grace autographs and started to examine them pretty closely. The first thing I noticed was that Maggie’s hair at the top of the sharpmarbles card didn’t have the dark highlight that it has on all the other cards I saw. If you look above her left eye all the way at the top of the card you’ll see what I mean — there is a wave of hair that swoops from right to left and around the side of the card — above the peak of the wave, at the top of the card, there is a dark highlight on all the non-sharpmarbles cards. Finally I noticed that all of the other cards have a little swatch of hair that shows up directly above the ‘SH’ in Shannon, that doesn’t appear in the sharpmarbles card either. At that point I was convinced there was something going on . . . Is it counterfeit? Well Inkworks is out of business so I highly doubt they will ever confirm this is a counterfeit, and no one I know has seen this card in person so everything I’m going on right now is based on scans. . . but based on what I’ve seen I wouldn’t buy it.

Here are scans of the Sharpmarbles card (first) and one from Razor (plucked from eBay):

If you have a pack pulled Maggie I’d love to hear your comments.

Ohh — and just for the record Sharpmarbles never responded to my email about the Franco.

Jon