Recent Controversy Exposes Problems With PSA Autograph Authentication

One of the main selling points of PSA as a grading company is the guarantee they provide on cards. The company website says that “The PSA Authenticity and Grade Guarantee (“Guarantee”) is fundamental to PSA’s reputation as the leading third-party authentication and grading service.

Subject to the exceptions noted below, the Guarantee ensures the accuracy of the grade assigned to each PSA-graded card.” And indeed, that is one of the reasons they often charge more than other grading companies.

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However, the exceptions that PSA notes here are usually very wide and very problematic. One of the most significant lapses in their guarantees is that autographs are not included. Recently, one collector, Frank Rodriguez, learned that there are severe consequences for this lapse in the PSA guarantee.

Read our overview of the problems with PSA autograph authentication.

What is the controversy surrounding the PSA Autograph Authentication?

A collector named Frank Rodriguez put together a 1969 Tall Boys autographed set. Those can be difficult to complete, as only a handful of these cards are available. Only three cards were missing from his collection of 1969 Topps. Among the cards that Farnk needed was an Art Harris card to help him complete the series. Art was a guard in Phoenix at that time.

After asking around for that card, he located an individual who had an autographed copy of the card authenticated by PSA in September 2023. But the card was not graded. Of course, understandably, he was desperate to get the card, so Rodriguez bought the item for $7,500. It was one of four autographed Harris cards authenticated by PSA.

Harris highly valued authentication that PSA provided. He said, “I wouldn’t have paid anything for a raw card. But this is authenticated. This is as good as gold.”

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Problems arise

Frank is a serious collector, putting his 1969 Topps Tall Boys collection in the Set Registry. Since the cards came in the old PSA holders, he needed to relabel them so they would be eligible to appear in the registry.

Indeed, that is why this card was so expensive. Cards that are required to complete sets and are very difficult to locate enjoy the “set registry effect,” which we have written about previously.

That required Frank to send the card to PSA for relabeling and grading. He would doing so would allow it entry into the registry and increase his numbers. He even paid to send it express, which cost another $195.

It is supposed to be a five-day turnover, but Rodriguez waited four months (from late October to late February) before PSA contacted him. Until then, they had assured Frank everything was fine when he reached out.

Unfortunately, they had terrible news for Rodriguez. He was told that PSA was rescinding his authentication “based on new information.” He was informed that the autograph was no longer considered authentic.

Rodriguez was infuriated as he had bought the card solely based on PSA’s authentication. Frank says he would have suspected a forgery if the card had been raw. However, the grading company was disputing its determination regarding the card just a few months after initially authenticated it.

“I thought they might change the grade of it, but it never occurred to me that they would rescind the authentication.”

However, when Rodriguez insured the card, he declared the value at $2,499.

PSA told Farnk that because of the delay in getting the card back to him (yeah, no kidding), they would waive the service fee and offer him some credit. The offer was for $100, which Rodriguez felt was utterly inappropriate.

However, PSA believed an Art Harris autograph was worth $10 based on a sale in 2018. There is a shortage of autographs from Art, who does not seem to have been particularly generous with his signatures.

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What happens now?

The entire story is very problematic for a couple of reasons. PSA is cherry-picking the lowest sale to pay the lowest amount possible. This does not consider the card’s rarity or the importance of set registration in raising values. This is ironic because PSA creates that added value, beginning with creating its registry.

Now Frank has little recourse. He can take the offer made by PSA and get $100 of credit and $10 for the card, or presumably get nothing. Hopefully, they will give him a better offer thanks to the publicity around this.

Unfortunately, the individual who sold the card to Frank is unwilling to refund him the money. Since the autograph was slabbed and considered authentic, he did not know that the autograph was counterfeit. But now, that has been known to him for some months. But he is still keeping the $7,500 in question.

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The PSA guarantee

PSA guarantees all of its graded items, which is one of the reasons it has earned its place as the most trusted name in the business. However, the warranty is extended and has a pervasive list of caveats.

Some of them are very simple. For example, PSA does not guarantee cards guarded by other companies, nor should it.

What does PSA guarantee?

Here is the meat of the PSA guarantee:

“Upon presentation to PSA by the current owner of a PSA authenticated and graded card (“Card”), if PSA concludes that the Card was erroneously awarded the PSA grade assigned or fails PSA’s authenticity standards, and provided that the Card had an active certification number on the cert lookup feature of the PSA website at the time it was purchased by the person submitting the Guarantee request, then PSA in its sole discretion will either:

1. Subject to the Maximum Amount, buy the card outright from the current owner at the current market value if the card can no longer receive a numerical grade under PSA’s standards or
2. Subject to the Maximum Amount, refund the difference in value between the original PSA grade and the current PSA grade if the grade is lowered or deemed authentic only. In this case, the card will also be returned to the customer and refunded for the difference in value.

The current market value is determined by PSA at its sole and absolute discretion, based partly on the PSA Price Guide values and the verifiable recent prices realized. A proof-of-purchase must be provided as part of the valuation process. In each case of a Guarantee claim, there is a per-card cap of $250,000 and a lifetime cap of $500,000 per person (together, the “Maximum Amount”). PSA will not pay Guarantee claims over the Maximum Amount.

The many caveats of the PSA guarantee

As we have seen, PSA sometimes tries to assign a meager value to cards based on the lowest sale numbers. However, they also do not guarantee that you might submit many of the most valuable and desirable cards to them.

In some cases, the exceptions to the guarantee make perfect sense. For example, if your cards are damaged from inadequate storage or broken out of the slab. However, some of these are jaw-dropping:

• The Guarantee does not differentiate between the “Authentic” and “Authentic Altered.” Cards labeled “Authentic” must be viewed as potentially interchangeable with “Authentic Altered,” therefore equal in value and not subject to compensation through the guarantee policy.
• The guarantee does not apply to any card to which a clerical error has been made concerning the assigned grade or description.
• The Guarantee does not apply to any item as to which a clerical or mechanical error (i.e., a typo or “mislabel”) has been made concerning the card’s specification, set, variation, or parallel;
• The guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to any autograph, whether certified by a manufacturer or applied after its release;
• The Guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to cards with memorabilia pieces including, but not limited to, jersey swatches, logo patches, game-used bat relics, etc.;
• The Guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to sketch cards;
• The Guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to any unopened material, such as packs and boxes, nor is PSA responsible for any damage caused to a pack’s wrapper due to gum movement;
• The Guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to any ticket, nor is PSA responsible for any fading that may occur once a ticket is encapsulated in a PSA holder;
• The Guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to any game-used memorabilia, such as bats and gloves;
• The Guarantee does not apply to the authenticity or grade assigned to original photographs.

As you can see, many of the best cards that can be sent into PSA are not guaranteed. Autographs aren’t memorabilia patches, tickets, or sketch cards—anything that isn’t a regular card. It makes you wonder how many people are sending in RPAs without knowing that.

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Why this is a problem

The idea behind PSA authentication is that they stand behind their verdict on the card. They have experts who determine whether an autograph (or piece of memorabilia, etc) is authentic. That is what they are being paid for. The guarantee means that they are credibly standing behind their expertise.

That is understandable if the staff does not have the expertise to be certain that an autograph is real. But in that case, they should not be authenticating those items.

Should you send your autos to be authenticated By PSA?

Because autographs are not guaranteed by PSA, there is a good argument against getting autographed cards or other items authenticated by PSA. Of course, no one will listen because getting your autographed cards graded by PSA remains the best way to get value on the cards.

PSA may also have deteriorated the handling of autographed cards. According to Nick Andrews (@Bostoncardhunter), the problem that Rodrguez faced was because of changes at the company.

“I’ve talked to other autograph experts, and they think that whatever happened a few months ago at PSA, they changed the guard, and whoever is there does not fully understand vintage autographs, and they are failing things. They are just failing and charging. People are getting half of their orders kicked. If you have a vintage autograph, do not send it to PSA for a year.”

Instead, he recommended JSA, which is going to start slabbing soon.

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Precautions you can take with autographed cards

There are a few things you can do to limit your risk with authenticating cards:

• Make sure to insure the cards to their total amount. One of the mistakes Frank made was to insure the card for about a third of what it was worth.
• Never buy autographs raw. Make sure they are authenticated. As we have seen, that won’t always protect you. But it is better than nothing.
• Always compare the autographs on expensive cards you are considering buying with other autographed cards by that athlete. In the case of Art Harris, that is not particularly easy. But in many cases, there are a lot of examples.

Final word on the programs with PSA Autograph Authentication

The way PSA is currently handling autographs is inexcusable. They cannot claim to be the authority on authenticating autographs and not guarantee their work in that field.

However, the case of Frank Rodriguez is much worse than that. Here, their incompetence caused significant financial damage to a collector. Instead of compensating him for that and taking responsibility, they used their exceptions to the guarantee to screw him over twice.

First, they should not guarantee their authentication. Then, they tried to find the lowest comparable sale they could and provided him with an insulting amount of money on the card. The affair is infuriating and speaks to something genuinely wrong with the system. They should at least compensate him for the amount he paid, the $2,499 he declared on the form.

Another problem, albeit smaller, is that Rodriguez sent the card in Express. He spent extra money to have it done quickly, and they gave him the runaround for months, instead of being honest about what was happening. There are serious concerns with how PSA treats autographed cards, especially vintage ones. Think carefully before sending them in.

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