Published On: Wed, May 8th, 2024

Why Beckett cares about your money more than you

It’s the 20th century where digital is a reality. A.I. is slowly entering aspects of corporations and human lives. This is something that was once feared but finally being adapted by majority of the world.

We all enjoy life through movies, cartoons, television shows, sports and other forms of entertainment. One of the ways people continue to enjoy memories of those favorite moments is through memorabilia.

With so many items of memorabilia out there, people want to make sure that the item(s) they purchase is genuine. Until the year 1991, people simply purchased an item that was autographed by their favorite star without question. Whether is was sports cards, posters, basketballs, footballs, or other items, people sought out various autographed items to purchase and enjoy.

The Professional Sports Authenticators (PSA) company changed that in June of 1991 by offering third party signature authentication. This changed the way autographs were bought and sold. Since then PSA has still been number one in the field of autograph authentication. Soon after a new competitor came into the picture known as Beckett. By 2001, Beckett begin to have grading services in order to be noticed as an competitor to PSA. Even though both companies make billions of dollars performing authentication of signatures for customers, their process in doing so differs which makes a difference for you….the customer.

Per explanation on www.getcardbase.com below explains how both companies perform their process which differs slightly but can mean alot for you.

PSA versus Beckett on authentication of signatures and grading:

Both companies take centering, corner wear, surface wear, print quality, and overall eye appeal into consideration when grading trading cards. The main difference between the grading processes is that PSA uses a point system to determine the grade of a card, while BGS uses a more subjective approach. PSA also uses a proprietary machine to measure the centering of a card, while BGS relies on human judgment. This can result in different grades for the same card.

Importantly, BGS includes category sub-scores. Centering, Edges, Corners, and Surface all get their own grade on the metallic-colored label. This can delight collectors who enjoy even more stats associated with their favorite ball players.

PSA vs BGS: Pricing

You want your cards properly graded, but you also want to make sure that you maximize value. In this regard, PSA looks to have an edge based on the data we’ve seen so far. Below are some direct comparisons between PSA and BGS cards that have sold in recent days.

Comparison PSA 8 – NM-MT PSA 8 vs. BGS 8.5 NM-MT+

For this amazing Michael Jordan rookie card, a PSA 8 copy of the card sold for $71,888 through Goldin Auctions in September 2022. The same card, with a slightly higher BGS 8.5 grade sold for $22,601 in January 2023. Time is a factor, but that’s a steep difference in pricing for the same basketball card.

Photo provided by getcardbase.com

Understanding this situation, you can see that the Michael Jordan rookie card sold for more when it was authenticated by PSA versus Beckett. Also many customers frown upon Beckett’s darker version protective case as it may protect the card better but doesn’t look visually appealing. Now PSA has been in the business much longer than Beckett and also uses a 10 point technique to test autographs which involves digital authentication and computer analysis while Beckett uses a simpler technique and more of a human visual approach.

I decided to test both with a poster that I actually did get signed in person with the celebrities there. I happen to have a Spiderman 2 poster signed at the grand premiere at Mann Theater in Los Angeles, California. I contacted PSA to see their process to authenticate my signatures. The representative stated that it would take about 45-90 days to do the process and offered the price of $200 dollars or they could do an express one for about $400 -$600 dollars. Beckett offered me the price of $100 dollars for 30 day process or $300 dollars for a 3-5 day process.

These are just the prices for this specific signature authentication as PSA have charges ranging from $25 to $10,000 dollars and Beckett has charges ranging from $16 to $500 dollars.

This is strictly based on the process of how each company authenticates signatures. I did the process with PSA located in Los Angeles, California and though it was lengthy, they stated that the signatures were authenticated as real. I did the express checkout process with Beckett located at 2700 Summit Avenue, Suite 100. which cost me $300 dollars. After five days, I was informed that the process was done. Unfortunately, I was informed that the six autograph signatures were not real. I was shocked and inquired what were the reasons for this conclusion? They informed me that according to their authentication specialists that the signatures appeared to be written in a slow manner with the letters of the names appearing thicker than normal. Granted the celebrities signed the poster with a grey marker rather than a pen, but still this was their reasoning for this conclusion.

Remember that I was actually at the premiere event and saw with my own eyes the six celebrities sign the poster as I was part of the media and invited to the grand premiere. There was a limit of only 100 posters allowed signatures per the celebrities management at that specific time on Double Sided Original Movie posters.

I informed the management when I arrived at Beckett that I had a letter from the event as well as actual photos showing the celebrities signing the poster. Recall in this time and age, who would have actual kodak photos of the celebrities today? I was informed verbally by the Manager: “Sir it doesn’t matter what you can supply us as our specialists made the decision and that is all that matters!” Then I overheard that the signature specialists who tested my autographs was around the age of 21 and 23. ARE YOU SERIOUS???!!! What would a 21 or 21 year old know about authenticating signatures based on human view with no years of experience in any auction house or certification process stating they are indeed certified to provide such service.? You think about that the next time you use Beckett to provide you this service. At least at PSA they have older employees and employees who understand digital analyzation and were from auction homes or entertainment backgrounds.

Think about that while considering “Customer Service” and providing proof of authentication. Of course, the $300 dollars I spent is still being charged whether the signature is real or not according to Beckett. I inquired if the Letter being provided was a guarantee by Beckett that these signatures were not real? I was informed by the Beckett Manager that they would not guarantee the signatures were fake. They simply stated that based on their signature specialists they didn’t believe it was real. As you recall PSA stated that they were real and I already had an certificate of Authentication from Starstruck Entertainment who was the company hired by Management to authenticate all 100 posters signed by the celebrities at the premiere of Spiderman 2 at Mann Theatre in Los Angeles, California.

Imagine having something for 20 years in perfect condition that you personally attended and due to losing the original certificate of authenticity, you had to pay to get another one and was told those signatures are not real. Not to mention you spend hundreds of dollars to get the answer you know isn’t correct.

I do agree that there are items out there with fake signatures and scammers unfortunately. I understand this but clearly there is not a true signature authentication in place to guarantee the results.

You can see that even though you may wait longer for PSA to do their signature authentication process, you are paying for a more reliable process as Beckett places their final results based on human analyzation rather than digital ones. We all know that as humans we are not perfect so therefore what are the odds that so many signature authentications might be deems not real when in fact they were? A question you have to ponder as you see from my article that it can in fact occur. Luckily for me I was at the event and had a letter and certificate of authentication already provided there.

Clearly from my experience with Beckett, I could see that they only cared about my money and nothing more. They simply looked at the situation that they got paid and nothing else mattered. I spoke with other customers I found through Google Guides to see how their experiences were with Beckett. Most had nothing but negative things to say about them. One in particular was extremely upset as he sent in cards worth $16,000 dollars to Beckett and due to their shipping error, not his, they lost the cards and only guaranteed him payment of $390 dollars per their policy.

I decided to go abit farther with the two companies by asking a question that had a very interesting answer. I inquired what would happen if the certificate of authentication was lost or damaged, what process would I have to go through with each of them. The answer I was given literally “BLEW MY MIND!”

Both companies basically informed me that in the case of losing the certificate of authenticity that I would simply have to pay for another one unless I remembered the 6 digit number associated with the certificate. Let me get this straight….you can only pull up my certificate of authenticity if I remember the number attached with it. You cannot pull up the certificate in your database if I have the receipt, know the specific date, location or provide my name?

The answer for both was “No Sir as we only categorize our database with the certificate of authenticity number..nothing else.”

Here I thought we were in the 21st century with facial recognition, digital fingerprints, and retina scanning. Yet both PSA and Beckett are using database systems from the “Stone Age” where my own company can pull up video reels based on date acquired, associated names, location and pricing. What does that say to you about how both companies really feel about their customers? Sounds like they purposely do this in hopes that you lose your certificate and have to pay them again to get another. Yet they state in their website how important “Customer Service” is to them. Hmmm..sounds to me like they may need to either take that statement from their websites or upgrade their database systems to find your certificate by name, location, date, receipt number, signature specialists, pricing and form of payment used. I don’t see that happening anytime soon since they know they don’t have to do it being most individuals have been programmed that if the certificate of authenticity isn’t Beckett or PSA then its not real.

I will say if you do have use one of these companies then I HIGHLY SUGGEST using PSA over Beckett. They might take longer but at least you know that they are not just using human view to make a judgement call on what could cost you hundreds to thousands of dollars if the wrong judgement is given.

Thank you for your time in reading this and feel free to read other articles provided by Get Up Radio Media Broadcasting. I hope this helps you to rethink on who you should use to provide you with a certificate of authenticity. Maybe if enough of us stop using PSA and BECKETT and write on how they should have a much better and organized database system…who knows..maybe they might actually make the change for the hopes of defining their care of TRUE CUSTOMER SERVICE. Doubtful, but we can always dream …right?

Alan Cousin

Editor and Founder of Get Up Radio / Get Up Radio Media (www.getupradiomedia.com / www.getupradio.com /www.news.getupradio.com / www.worldnews.getupradio.com)

Member of The National Press Club of Washington, D.C. (www.press.org)

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