Latest forgery scandal a ‘black mark’ on hobby as dealers, collectors, hobby companies try to root out fraud
ROSEMONT, Ill.—When news broke in mid-July of an alleged forgery ring led by longtime sports memorabilia dealer Brett Lemieux of Westfield, Ind., it hit the industry hard.
It prompted a swift change with how sports memorabilia and trading card giant Dave & Adam’s conduct business.
CEO Adam Martin told SCD during the National Sports Collectors Convention that 99% of the inventory his company purchases are through athlete signings that they’ve participated in or is picked up directly from Upper Deck, Fanatics, Panini, and licensed distributors for those companies.
“Before this, if a person walked into [our] store with an autograph from one of these players from one of these companies with all the appropriate holograms and everything else, we would buy it from them. And we’ve stopped doing that,” Martin told SCD.
“It’s a small amount of total spend that we had in a year, but it’s fairly significant.”
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Dave & Adam’s is one of the biggest buyers of autograph memorabilia in the world, using most of those pieces for repacking boxes. Repacking is when a business or individual creates a pack containing a number of cards, a single card or piece of memorabilia and sells it at a set price. A buyer is gambling to either pull a chase card or piece of memorabilia that will be worth more than the price they paid, or a lesser value item.
Lemieux posted a confession and manifesto on Facebook on July 16, proudly boasting that his company, Mister Mancave, had allegedly sold over four million forged items and racked up $350 million in sales. When Westfield, Ind., police raided his home, they found Lemieux dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
After news of the raid spread, Martin immediately contacted his employees who deal with the company’s merchandise.
“We think we had 18 or 19 pieces that they weren’t sure about that they might be able to attribute to [Lemieux],” Martin said. “Honestly, we just trashed them.
“So, out of the thousands and thousands of things that we had, there were only a few that we questioned. We’re not even 100 percent sure they were fake. OK, we’re not going to use these just to be smart.”
Martin said Dave & Adam’s will also be implementing another step in its authentication of products it already has in its warehouse.
“Now, if we have a Mantle ball and maybe it’s JSA or PSA [authenticated], maybe we’ll send it to another company and [duplicate certify] it, just to check it,” Martin said. “I think that’s kind of the position that we’re in. We don’t see it impacting us very much.”
APPREHENSIVE
When Pristine Auction COO Jeromy Murray initially heard about Lemieux’s elaborate forgery ring, it made him nervous.
“At first you’re a little bit apprehensive about it, because you think, did some of the stuff sneak through here?” Murray told SCD. “It’s not going to surprise me—all auction houses along the way have probably encountered stuff that has been counterfeit, it’s just inevitable. Being in this industry as long as I have, I don’t panic. I want to get the details. I didn’t recognize [Lemieux’s] name. I didn’t know him. So, I just want to find out a little bit more about it before I panic.”
Prior to the forgery case being exposed, Pristine Auction—which sells 91,000 items on average per month—had security measures in place that if a customer buys an authenticated piece, it is 100% backed by the company. Rest assured, customers don’t have to worry if a hologram or certificate of authenticity is legitimate, noted Murray.
“We make sure that anything that we sell has been authenticated by a reputable company—Beckett, PSA, JSA. Beckett and JSA are in our office on a regular basis,” Murray said.
“There are going to be crooks out there that try to finagle their way around that. But what’s great about Pristine is if you go and get it looked at and there’s an issue with it, we’re open for refunds. That’s one of the amazing things about the company is that they do protect their customers.”
STRONG SALES
Nick Kucharski has been setting up as a dealer at The National for 15 years. This year’s show felt slightly different for the hobby veteran.
As the president/owner of Fat Apple Custom Framing, Kucharski sells autographed sports memorabilia, primarily jerseys and helmets. He didn’t really alter what kind of pieces he brought to The National to sell because of the recent, ongoing forgery case. Kucharski was concerned with the timing of the bust happening just two weeks before the industry’s largest card show.
“With sales, it really hasn’t affected too much, I don’t think, at this show. I thought it would,” Kucharski told SCD. “We get everything for us, mostly buying uncertified and then we get it like JSA or third-party authentication, so we feel confident in that alone. Then, usually, our bigger items are direct.
“It’s definitely frightening, but in any businesses where you make money there’s going to be fakes—purses, cigars, watches. It won’t be the last. It just goes up and down like a roller coaster. Sales have been strong this week for sure.”
On the first day of The National, a big dealer stopped by the Fat Apple Custom Framing booth. The person inquired about the authenticity of some of the items for sale.
“He bought a few things like he does every year,” Kucharski said. “He had concerns, but he made a good purchase and I saw him carrying some other stuff from another dealer. So, business is business.”
Later in the week, Kucharski was approached by two guys who were wondering if he was interested in buying a couple of signed cards.
“I’m a little leery [of] people trying to sell Jordan and Kobe Bryant autographs,” Kucharski said. “I did look them up in the Upper Deck database and I did not find them, so I passed.”
AUTHENTICITY GUARANTEE
Hobby giants eBay and Upper Deck take authenticity of their items very seriously. The two companies have been doing everything in their power to be leaders on that front in the space.
“Trust is the number one most important thing for us in this hobby,” Ron Javien, US GM of Collectibles at eBay, told SCD. “Obviously, we’ve invested in [our] authenticity guarantee, we have eBay money-back guarantee that spans across our category, and everything else across eBay. We are doing everything we can to make this hobby safe and enjoyable and it is always at the forefront of everything that we do.”
eBay is constantly trying to minimize the threat of forgeries on their platform. Javien said eBay has teams of people who are dedicated to looking into possible fake items being sold. The company also relies on its users.
“We have our community that actually helps us find a lot of this stuff,” Javien said. “So, for sure we leverage our community [and] we have our internal teams trying to identify anything that is not authentic and problematic. Then, of course, we have our authentication centers that are receiving a lot of inventory, particularly in trading cards and going through each individual item.”
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With the latest alleged forgery ring, Javien said eBay took quick actions on specific things related to the case.
“I think there are investigations going on,” Javien said. “Like any other investigation, we’ll cooperate because we want this industry to be as safe as possible.”
Trading card company Upper Deck has tried to eliminate forgers from Day 1 when it entered the hobby in 1989. With its baseball product that year, Upper Deck used holograms on its cards. The company has continued to evolve its authentication process throughout the years.
Upper Deck has exclusive contract deals for autographs with some of the top names in sports, including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and hockey stars Wayne Gretzky, Connor McDavid, and Connor Bedard.
“The people that do these counterfeits are oftentimes pretty savvy and as much as we try to do and as much as we’ve been at the forefront of authentication, nothing’s foolproof,” Mark Phillips, EVP of marketing and sales at Upper Deck, told SCD. “We do our exclusive deals so that we can create a long-term relationship with the athlete, people associate us with the athlete and we witness every single piece that is signed by our athletes.
“Our authentication process was the originator. Now it’s been copied in several different iterations and things, but our hologram, people know to look for our hologram. And that hologram has to match that same certificate of authenticity, and that’s a step that most others don’t do. That’s our patented five-step process. But with all that being said, that doesn’t mean that people still can’t try to rip our stuff off and we always have to be on our toes to try to continually enhance our authentication process.”
Even though Upper Deck wasn’t directly impacted by the most recent large forgery bust, Phillips feels like the case is hitting the entire hobby.
“This latest one was very unfortunate, obviously, but one thing that we talked about is this is going to have an overall effect on the memorabilia market in general,” Phillips said. “It’s going to affect everybody, whether your product was part of it or not. We have to be prepared for it, and we are. We are very proud and protective of our authentication process.”
At the Pristine Auction booth and when he had a chance to walk the show floor, Murray didn’t see the forgery news slowing down sales.
“Based on what I’m seeing at The National, it has affected nothing,” Murray said. “People are still here, they are buying, they are selling, the autograph lines are big. That’s what’s great, if you’re scared about buying, get your stuff signed in person. Go to a show, find an athlete, get it authenticated there.
“Overall, I’ve had customers reach out and ask, how are we going to handle that and what are our thoughts and things like that. But it hasn’t affected us nearly the way you sort of thought it would.”
COLLECTORS SAD, CONCERNED
While the hobby’s largest sellers of cards and memorabilia are on high alert, trying to weed out forged items that they encounter, smaller dealers and collectors at The National were also concerned and being extra careful.
“It's certainly a black mark on the hobby,” said Jim DiCandilo, a collector and dealer from Main Line Autographs in southeastern Pennsylvania, which sells autographs on a variety of products, including photos and jerseys. “We're fortunate that we've never sold those framed pieces and full-size helmets that he primarily was forging.
“Technology keeps getting better and better and the industry needs to keep up, because the bad guys seem to get to it before the good guys come back and offset it.”
Andy Meister of Appleton, Wisc. has been a collector for 40-plus years and attended his first NSCC show in 1998. He collects a little of everything across all sports, including vintage autographs.
“It's extremely disappointing,” he said of the latest fraud and forgery scandal. “Because of the amount of money in the business right now, people are tempted to do things that are not kosher and shouldn't happen. ... It's unfortunate, and as a collector that wants to buy that merchandise, you must really do your due diligence, do your research and study the autograph itself, study everything you can about it. ... As some of them get more and more expensive, the more research you should do.”
That applies to cards as well, Meister cautions.
“Even with cards, people trim cards to make them look nicer, they doctor them up and do all kinds of stuff,” he said. “You've got to be careful and do your research. ... It's sad that people have to create a bad environment for everybody else.”
Jim Doyle of AJF Sports Cards has seen such scams before.
“Sometimes people get caught up in the chase for money and those that were otherwise good people, start printing money,” Doyle said. “It was so easy ... they start doing things that aren't right ... . It's too bad, because there's so many legitimate dealers and collectors in the hobby. ... I feel for those [victimized] ... . I saw someone post on Facebook that they'd bought thousands of dollars [worth of merchandise] from that [person] and they're devastated. ... Hard-earned money went to a complete fake.
“It's a tough situation. I feel for some of these collectors.”
Marcel Bilak, the owner of Awesome Card Shop in Las Vegas, has been to 18 NSCC shows and been in the business since 2002. He also calls the latest scandal “a black eye on the hobby.” But he adds: “There's always ugly people in every business. We have to remember that one rotten apple doesn't ruin the batch.”
- Jeff Owens and Don Muret contributed to this story.