As the owner of Touched By The Stars my most asked question is “how do you know that the signature is real”?  A universal question for a buyer, collector and “me” as well.

We at Touched By The Stars employ “runners” that stand in line for autographs, going to all the concerts, book signings, celebrity events for charity. Check out our interview with Paul Gropper our runner for book signings in New York and our photo album of all the celebrity photos of signings, literally hundreds.  In person autographs are simply the best but for those deceased athletes and celebrities how do we know that they are real. 

There are companies established for the sole purpose of authenticating autographs such as PSA/DNA , JAMES SPENCE AUTHENTICATION, all of which we endorse and have faith in. They can be found linked to our home page, click on the icon for each authenticator and it takes you directly to their site, we encourage you to read about their credentials and use them for your authenticating needs. Why do we use different authenticators?  Each authenticator has a different niche as it were; PSA/DNA is a larger company and more well known therefore the most costly.  They use a method called exemplars or known examples of original autographs to form their judgment as does many other authenticators. James Spence authenticators are a smaller company but very much a full service company, I know James Spence and is a highly respected authority being used by many of today’s auction houses.

             Be cautious of the sellers that write their own Certificates of Authenticity and declares that their signatures are real…, honest…, I mean it!    

CROSS MY HEART AND HOPE TO DIE…STICK A PIN IN MY EYE… 

          I have been in this profession for nearly 30 years and have seen some real laughable certificates, ones without the name printed on it of the person they are authenticating; I guess you fill in the blank.  Certificates that omit the phone number, mailing address, e-mail address or any other way to contact the seller, as if they were glad to get your money but you won’t be able to find them if there is a problem. How about the one that gives you the 100% guarantee to be original, leaving it up to you to get it authenticated and fight with him after the sale. I bet some of you will be going back to your collection to see which certificates you have and that’s good.  If you are serious to have an authentic autograph and you are willing to pay for it why would you just trust the word of the seller solely and blindly.

       I have been called upon to determine the value of collections for families in the event of death to find that person’s collection was fake…ouch. They trusted sellers that they felt confident with and never checked out the authenticity with a 3rd party authenticator.

The other night my wife and I had 50 of our closed friends over for a house
party, most have been to our house before and some had not. I was amazed at how
they reacted to my collection.

To
understand that statement I must tell you about our house, my wife and I tell
people that “you can’t see the color of the walls for all the stuff we have
hanging”.

That is nearly true with 800 pieces hung.

Abraham Lincoln
next to George Carlin, Reagan next to Paul McCartney, Mother Teresa, Babe
Ruth sharing space with Houdini and Hubert Humphrey.
I know how much I love history, Americana, collecting, autographs to the point
of obsession but what emotion does it evoke in others? I was amazed. You would
think that I hung out with all collector buddies and that isn’t true, in fact
the majority didn’t collect at all, or that all my wife’s friends and mine knew
one
another and they didn’t.
Cathy and I talked about how we would acquaint all the guests so that they would
enjoy each other and concluded that simply impossible. A wonderful thing
occurred that night and not with one or two people but with everyone including
the caterers, bar tender and servers.
They congregated in front of the memorabilia on the wall and were sharing
stories. People who didn’t know one another coming from different parts of the
country with

different
ethnic backgrounds and schooling. No introductions were needed; the conversation
and stories were lively and animated in every part of the house. We had thought
that people would enjoy the poolroom but the table went un-played, we had
entertainment for dancing but no one danced and the bar was; well…, Crowded as
usual. Two out of three was impressive to me.
This phenomenon caused me to pause and reflect on the power of memorabilia whose
root word is “memories”, we have collective memories as a people. Take for
instance the feeling we shared as a people when we heard that President Kennedy
was killed or when we landed on the moon or beat the Russians at hockey during
the Olympics or when we heard and saw the tragedy of 9/11. Our memories as a
people bond us, mold us and influence us to be the people that we are and not we
alone but the world.

Our memories aren’t exclusive to us alone but shared by our planet, did I
neglect to mention the diversity of our friends to include other cultures as
well. We are truly linked to one another by our collective history and we love
to pass it down to upcoming generations.
I found myself sharing with the bartender Mike, a 22-year-old college student
who loved baseball, the story of Roberto Clemente and him listening intently
taking in every word.

We do live in a small world, we are bound together, and our collective
memories are the glue that binds us. Memorabilia is a connection to a time and
place whether it is pleasant or sweet. It is the vehicle that calls us back to
remember and never forget and that urgent reminder to share it least we do
forget.

Memorabilia isn’t meant for the museums, closets and attics but should be
around us as dear friends. Memorabilia gives us a sense of belonging, a hope for
the future and a link to our past.

We realize that it is not a onetime event but dynamic with each day and
event, good or bad we share them, learn by them as they inspire and shape us.

My name is Paul Cola and I have been a collector for as long as I can remember, when I was a kid it was matchbox cars.

I don’t mean that I had a lot of them just to play with; I was the kid that bought them only if I could see that the price sticker would come off without hurting the box.

I saved the boxes and stored the cars in them when not in use. They sat on my bedroom shelf, neatly stacked as if on display.

Remember those great boxes made of paper with the photo on the front, they had character and collector appeal?

When I decided to play with them it was only in the rooms of the house that had carpeting, you guessed it, so they would not get scratched.

I was born in 1956 and by time I hit my 40’s I had a collection of Matchbox cars that span over 30 years and brought nearly $12,000 at auction.

That’s enough about my matchbox collection; let’s move on to Forbes Field , Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 1968 I went to a Pittsburgh Pirate’s _game with a neighbor’s family.

By the 4th inning the novelty wore off of being at a major league game and my friend and I went exploring.

We found ourselves in parts of the stadium that I’m sure we were not allowed to be in and found a couple of scuffed up balls. Prize enough for a day’s find we ran into other people who had balls and pens in their hands and waited our turn to catch an autograph.

Many players passed us by without even a glance except for Roberto Clemente. I can remember his smile the most, as he took the ball from my hand; he looked up at me puzzled, as if to see who would hand him such a scuffed up ball to sign. We made eye contact and I saw him chuckle then sign my ball returning it to me without a word.

He died December 31st. 1972, I was a sophomore in high school. I remembered his smile once again and I cried.

When you look at my web site you are not looking at a bunch of product for sale, you’re viewing my collection, memories of time and history.

I did not obtain all of them in person but I do still wait in line to get them.

Just a week ago at a Red Sox fund raising event for a local Hospital in which my memorabilia was on display for a silent auction you could find me in line for a Jim Rice autograph.

I don’t just get the autograph and move on or get just anyone’s signature because they are famous. I need to have a connection with them in some way. I mention to the person where I saw them play or how it made me feel about their accomplishment and I always get a warm smile or a conversation.

People love to be remembered for the good that they do and appreciate when it means something to you as well. As baby boomers we have lived through some awesome history and I like to think that we “collectors” are keeping the memories alive for others to enjoy.

Over the past 20 years I have had 2 major Galleries in Florida , St. Armonds Circle, Sarasota and Ft. Myers Florida.

I will be posting more comments on my blog in the near future about memorabilia, authenticity, and many more personal stories as an avid collector. I welcome you to stop by my web site and view my collection and post your comments as I would love to hear from fellow collectors on how you got started collecting.

Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) — Evel Knievel, the daredevil motorcycle stuntman who made sensational jumps over cars and double-decker buses in the 1970s and broke dozens of bones in even more sensational crashes, has died. He was 69.

Knievel had been in poor health for several years. He suffered from diabetes and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable lung condition, the Associated Press said. He also had a liver transplant in 1999 after he almost died from hepatitis C, a disease that he likely got through a blood transfusion, the news service reported.

Evel Knievel was extreme long before the popularity of the ESPN’s “X Games” competition. Starting in the 1960s, he went from jumping over pits of live rattlesnakes to leaping over buses and other obstacles. Dressed in a red, white and blue leather jumpsuit with a cape flowing in the air, his jumps attracted hundreds of spectators. As his popularity and fame grew and his stunts became more spectacular, the hundreds became thousands and millions watched on television.

“With America in the midst of the Vietnam War quagmire, the country was looking for a hero, and Knievel‘s heroic, death- defying feats and his popular messages to the world’s youth, promoting abstention from drugs and a healthy lifestyle with positive mental attitude quickly transformed him into a national icon,” the Motorcycle Hall of Fame Museum said in its tribute to the daredevil.

Famous Stunts

Knievel’s most famous stunts included an attempted jump on a jet-powered “Skycycle” over the Snake River Canyon in Idaho on Sept. 8, 1974; the New Year’s Day 1968 jump across fountains in front of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which left him in a coma for a month; and a jump over 13 double-decker buses at London’s Wembley Stadium in 1975, when he broke his pelvis.

“I think about God a lot more than ever, though I used to ask him, `Help me make a good jump,”’ he told USA Today earlier this year, as he breathed through oxygen tubes and a pump installed in his abdomen pushed morphine and synthetic heroin into his system.

“I’m awfully tough to get along with, but I’ll tell you what: I am a good person,” he said. “I wish there was such a thing as reincarnation.”

Robert Craig Knievel Jr. was born on Oct. 17, 1938, in Butte, Montana, and raised by his grandparents from the age of 6. When he was 8, Knievel saw Joey Chitwood’s Auto Daredevil Show, and he later credited it as the impetus for his career, according to the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.

First Crash

Knievel got his first motorcycle at the age of 13, and crashed it into a neighbor’s garage. He began his professional daredevil career in 1965, forming a troupe called “Evel Kievel‘s Motorcycle Daredevils,” with him riding through walls of fire.

One of his early sponsors wanted him to use the name “Evil.” He decided on “Evel” because he didn’t want an image of a bad person.

Knievel went from international popularity to obscurity, and then in the 1990s he returned to the limelight with TV commercials and TV specials retelling his life.

Knievel reached a settlement this week with Grammy Award- winning hip-hop singer Kanye West over a parody music video that Knievel claimed damaged his reputation and trademarks.

Details of the settlement weren’t disclosed in a notice dismissing the case filed in federal court in Tampa, Florida. Both parties agreed in July to mediate an end to the dispute, triggered by West’s February 2006 video for “Touch the Sky.” West’s character in the video, “Evel Kanyevel,” crashes while trying to jump a canyon in a rocket.

Knievel’s youngest son, Robbie, followed in his dad’s daredevil stunts. The two were estranged for years until last summer.

“I’m the only one in the family who stood up to him,” Robbie, 44, told USA Today.

Knievel’s survivors include another son, Kelly, daughters Alicia and Tracey, 11 grandchildren and ex-wives Linda Knievel and Krystal Kennedy, the former Florida State golfer who was his caregiver and companion, according to USA Today.

Nov. 19 (Bloomberg) — Alex Rodriguez added a third American League Most Valuable Player award to his resume as he closes in on another record contract.

Rodriguez, who led Major League Baseball with 54 home runs and 156 runs batted in, received 26 of the 28 first-place votes in a nationwide panel of baseball writers. Magglio Ordonez of the Detroit Tigers was the runner up with two votes.

The 32-year-old third baseman and the New York Yankees have agreed to the outline of a 10-year, $275 million contract, the Associated Press said last week. A return to the Bronx by the player known as A-Rod would come after he opted out of the final three years on his contract with the Yankees to become a free agent and sign with any team.

The Boston Red Sox, New York Mets and Los Angeles Angels met with Rodriguez’s agent, Scott Boras, and the Yankees said they wouldn’t negotiate with the 11-time All-Star after he voided his deal.

Last week, Rodriguez and the Yankees said the player had personally approached team officials and told them he wanted to return. Rodriguez received advice to make the move himself from billionaire investor and sports fan Warren Buffett, a person familiar with the situation said.

Rodriguez is the ninth player to win at least three MVP awards, with all the others except still-active seven-time winner Barry Bonds in the Hall of Fame. Rodriguez was named the MVP in 2003 with the Texas Rangers and in 2005 with New York.

Last season, Rodriguez also led baseball with 143 runs and a .645 slugging percentage, while batting .314. His 14 home runs in April tied a record, and in August he became the youngest player to reach 500 career homers.

Ruth, Williams and Mantle

He also joined Hall of Fame members Babe Ruth, Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle as the only players since 1920 to lead the majors in homers, RBI and runs scored in one season. Today marked the 20th time a Yankee has won the MVP award, the most for one team. The St. Louis Cardinals are second with 15 MVP awards.

Texas signed Rodriguez to a record 10-year, $252 million contract in 2000 and traded him to New York in 2004 after finishing in last place three straight seasons.

The Yankees never got a chance to submit a financial proposal to keep Rodriguez before Boras announced his decision to opt out during Game 4 of the World Series on Oct. 28. He was scheduled to make $27 million in each of the next three seasons.

The Baseball Writers Association of America polled its members before the end of the regular season.

Ordonez led baseball with a .363 batting average and was second to Rodriguez with 139 RBI.

The Yankees made the playoffs as the AL wild-card team, with the best record among second-place finishers, while the Tigers missed the postseason.

HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Jeff Burton won the Busch Series owners’ championship for Richard Childress Racing when he took the green flag for Saturday’s Ford 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway.

Two hundred laps later, he won the race, notching his fifth win of the year and the 27th of his career in the final event in the series under Anheuser-Busch sponsorship.

Burton denied former Roush Racing teammate Mark Martin a chance to win the final Busch race. Martin, the all-time series leader with 47 victories, finished 1.718 seconds behind Burton but held off current Roush Fenway drivers Matt Kenseth and Carl Edwards, who came home third and fourth, respectively.

Though Edwards had clinched the Busch Series title two weeks ago at Texas Motor Speedway, Saturday brought the official trophy presentation for the final championship before the series takes on sponsorship from Nationwide Insurance next year.

Stephen Leicht ran fifth, followed by Greg Biffle, Tony Raines, Bobby Hamilton Jr., Clint Bowyer and Marcos Ambrose.

“It really means a lot to me to win the last race in the Busch Series,” Burton said. “I grew up wanting to be a Busch driver — that’s what I wanted to be. So it really means a lot to me to win the final race with Busch as a sponsor.”

David Ragan’s spin off Turn 4 on Lap 169, which interrupted a green-flag cycle of pits stops, left the leaders mired mid-pack for final restart on Lap 177. Burton restarted in first position, but 19th in the running order, followed by Edwards and Kenseth, who had survived a blown tire and a spin on Lap 86 that left him temporarily one lap down.

Over the next few laps, Martin was able to pull up beside Burton but couldn’t clear the No. 29 Chevrolet, which Burton shared with driver Scott Wimmer in winning the owners’ title for Childress by 255 points over the No. 20 Chevrolet driven by Denny Hamlin for Joe Gibbs Racing.

Subsequently, Edwards and Martin swapped second position, with Martin securing it on Lap 197. On the final lap at the 1.5-mile speedway, Kenseth overtook Edwards for third.

“We were pretty close tonight, but we couldn’t pull it off, with Jeff Burton running the way he did,” said Martin, who finished second for the second time in three races in the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet. “But we gave it our best shot. We got ‘em two second-place finishes, but we couldn’t get the job done.”

Despite failing to finish the race, Ragan left with the consolation of having won the Raybestos rookie-of-the-year title in the Busch Series.

Alex Rodriguez spoke by phone last week to billionaire Warren Buffett about a new approach to restart contract talks with the New York Yankees, the Wall Street Journal reported. Buffett told Rodriguez to approach the Major League Baseball team on his own, without agent Scott Boras, the newspaper said, citing unidentified people familiar with the conversation. Buffett declined to comment to the Journal on his talks with Rodriguez.

Rodriguez and the Yankees have agreed to the outline of a 10-year, $275 million contract, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the situation. Rodriguez met Buffett in Omaha a few years ago and the two have become friends since then, the Journal said.

The third baseman had also spoken to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. about restarting contract talks after his relationship with the Yankees soured once the team learned of his decision to terminate his contract and become a free agent, the Journal said.

A Good Day for Baseball, and a Better One Looms

By DAVE ANDERSON

The prevalent reaction to Barry Bonds’s indictment was that it was a bad day for baseball, even a sad day. But to me, it was a good day for baseball. Or at least the dawn of a good day, a dawn without a cloud in the sky.

For the first time, Bonds — in being indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice — was legally, formally and publicly accused of lying about his use of illegal steroids after so many seasons of suspicion and denials.

At last, the baseball world knows what federal prosecutors believe: they have enough evidence to convict the slugger who hit 762 home runs over his career, including 73 in 2001.

If Bonds is convicted, it will be an even better day for baseball. If he is convicted, the truth will have prevailed, the truth that he not only used steroids but the truth that, in his arrogance, he lied about it. Lied not only to a grand jury nearly four years ago, but lied to that grand jury after having been warned not to lie. Before being sworn in that day, Bonds was reminded of his immunity agreement: that whatever he told the grand jury could not be used to prosecute him for a crime, as long he told the truth.

Yes, he was immune from prosecution as long as he told the truth.

But according to the 10-page indictment: “Barry Lamar Bonds unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly, did corruptly endeavor to influence, obstruct and impede the due administration of justice, by knowingly giving Grand Jury testimony that was intentionally evasive, false, and misleading, that is: (a) the false statements made by the defendant as charged in counts 1-4 in this indictment and (b) evasive and misleading testimony.�

Those hard “counts 1-4� were spelled out. One, lying when he denied having ever taken steroids. Two, lying in denying that anyone but physicians had given him injections or drawn blood. Three, lying when he denied that his personal trainer, Greg Anderson, had ever given him human growth hormone. Four, lying about the timing of when he received a steroid cream from Anderson, saying it was before the 2003 season.

If convicted in a trial likely to begin sometime next year, Bonds will have lived a lie in hitting who knows how many home runs while on steroids. But finally knowing the truth of that lie would, in the long run, be good for baseball, just as knowing the truth of the Black Sox scandal at the 1919 World Series was, in the long run, good for baseball.

Steroid suspicion has clouded Bonds’s home run totals, just as suspicions of gambling fixes had hung over the major leagues in the years before eight members of the White Sox, notably the slugger Joe Jackson, were indicted late in the 1920 season for having conspired to throw the 1919 Series to the Cincinnati Reds, the betting underdogs. The Reds won the best-of-nine Series, five games to three.

When the truth of that fix emerged, the owners hired a no-nonsense judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, as baseball’s first commissioner.

Even though the eight Black Sox were acquitted at their trial for a lack of hard evidence — the grand jury confessions of Jackson and the ace pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Lefty Williams had mysteriously disappeared — Landis had ruled four months earlier that the eight players were on the ineligible list for life regardless of the trial verdicts.

But the indictments of the eight Black Sox were enough for the honest members of that team, notably the Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins and the Hall of Fame catcher Ray Schalk, to celebrate that evening at Manager Kid Gleason’s home with cold chicken, cheese, pickles and beer. Truth had prevailed, as it usually does.

•

Even if Bonds were to beat the rap, the indictment is enough for Bonds’s opponents to wonder what might have been. Did steroids help him hit a pitcher’s best pitch for a home run that might have been a warning-track fly ball without steroids? Did some of the games that Bonds won affect the first-place finish in a division?

The truth hurts, but it also helps. In the long run, the truth of the Bonds indictment will help. So will the truth of Major League Baseball’s internal investigation of steroid use, due to be released in the coming weeks. For all the shame of whatever steroid use emerges, the game is bigger than the steroids, bigger than Bonds and all the other steroid users.

The indictments of the Black Sox, in the long run, were good for baseball. The indictment (and the possible conviction) of Bonds, in the long run, will be good for baseball.

Sports memorabilia dealer testifies against O.J. Simpson
November 14, 2007 14:16 EST

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A sports memorabilia dealer has been providing testimony on what’s expected to be the last day of O.J. Simpson’s preliminary hearing in Las Vegas.

Alfred Beardsley says Simpson and a group of men with guns barged into his hotel room and ordered him to stand up while they searched him for weapons.

He says he tried to calm Simpson down, testifying that he “could see it in his face” that the former NFL star wanted answers for why the dealers were there with what Simpson says was his property.

Beardsley tells the court that he didn’t steal any of the items. He says he told Simpson the memorabilia came from a former partner of the other dealer in the room.

A judge must determine whether Simpson and two other men will go to trial on 12 charges, including kidnapping and armed robbery.