At this point, I don’t have anything else to add to my opinion of the Skarmory.
If you’re the owner of it or trying to buy it from the owner, do with that what you will.
I know nothing of authenticating autos, but I do wonder how many people are forging them, and trying to cash in on FOMO using the “What do I have here?” story.
Im not saying the OP of that post is, but if it happens even once Id wager people would jump to the opportunity. I bring this up because unless someone has really good evidence they attended an event with an artist I wouldnt go near them seeing as they usually are going to be expensive on top of it all.
The text messages are not even valid proof that its his mom, and Id wager there are hundreds of people that beleive it too. I would much rather get one in person, so you know its real, but thats my 0.2c
Karma farmer?
I am not an auto expert, but I agree with Jeremy, something just feels wrong about this. Generally if something feels wrong you should avoid it. @Dyl did a great job identifying stuff like the spacing between ‘Ken’ and ‘Sugimori’ and the M of Sugimori that stick out to me as giving a bad feeling.
The story is also too clean and designed for plausible deniability. The text exchange seems super contrived. “Yes, at time we definitely went to event name at exact location specified.” I would bet that if not an attempt to scam, it’s engagement/karma bait like all the user’s previous posts.
I agree with everyone here too that it looked right for a sec and by the time I got to the end something didn’t feel right… I think the spacing between the characters and words feels too far for Ken’s style and it looks too perfect to be an attempted autograph
Nothing to add but fascinating to see this being worked out post by post! Great stuff.
I have to ask those who might know, but shouldnt an autograph look more faded after almost 20 years?
Especially seeing as how sharpie products were limited.
I completely agree with this. What person remembers exactly what month and year their brother and mom went on a trip to Hawaii while they were six years old? I barely remember my own home at six years old. In addition the text messages prove nothing, you can go to anyone and say “hey reply back to this text with this exact wording and add in a ‘how are you dear’ to make it believable.”
As to the auto itself, I’m not an expert either, but just looking at my own and other real Sugi autos, I agree there should be some portions of the writing where the ink is not as uniform and tapers off; this auto looks relatively thick and consistent across the entire thing, which looks pretty but feels unrealistic.
Your mom is hot
She was hot
That is your wildest take on e4
To me it looks too perfect, the card and autograph, but I don’t really know Pokemon artist autos. I get baseball player autographs all the time in person and through the mail and like 80% of the time something happens that the auto doesn’t come out perfect. No ink smearing, had to have used the freshest marker ever for no streaking, no ink bubbling (I don’t think with Pokemon cards you need prepare the surface before getting it signed), no ink discoloring after like what 15+ years (black ink is more prone to discoloring than blue), etc… The no smearing in the ink is surprising to me cause I’m guessing the person’s brother was also a kid and somehow kept it that clean. It can happen of course, but yea.
For baseball cards, a lot of athletes allow fans to mail in cards to be signed. They likely do it as fast as possible and don’t put much attention to detail in it.
Artist signings are typically more intimate with the process
Yea I can see the artists caring a little more about their autograph like that and being more careful which makes sense. I’ve gone to several in person player signings where it’s a little more controlled than the guy signing coming off the field.
Felt shady when I skimmed OP’s responses on Reddit, and after reading this thread here, even moreso. There’s always the chance this is legit, but this reeks of all kinds of shady.