Thought we would be seeing a lot of these coming out of the Fukuda signing. He required all cards to be personalized in order to cut down on rampant flipping and make sure the people who get cards signed want them for themselves. Of course, flipper “ingenuity” knows no bounds, and some have sought to have cards personalized in a manner that would be non-specific and facilitate sales. Let this thread serve as a record of all the cards that have been forever defaced in this manner!
PSA 9 Charizard Gold Star personalized to “trainer” - and already for sale on eBay!! Quite the turnaround time.
These were personalized to “collector!” Beautiful flipper idea resulting in the sad destruction of a Japanese Charizard star.
Post any more flipper personalized signatures you see coming out of the event!
I mean the guy with the case can easily wash off part of the ink he doesn’t want, so I don’t get the need to even use something vague. I’d reckon anyone could wipe away a sig even directly from a card if they were quick enough to do it before it fully dried.
At the end of the day if someone wants to buy something there will always be someone trying to service that market.
A person can do whatever they want with the signature they receive. But it’s not only rude to try to circumvent the system put in place by the artist, it could also damage the possibility of future events if people end up pissing off the artist. Personally, I find the “collector” or “trainer” or “to ash” thing a bit cringy and therefore pretty funny.
95% ethanol that is pretty easily found in a wet lab will wipe away sharpie like nothing else. It should be inert to the plastic psa case but I haven’t testing this myself
The reason why Fukuda does personalized only autographs is because an individual had him sign a bunch of gold stars for free and listed them on ebay. So yes people can do whatever they want, and that action can also have an affect on the overall signing process.
It was a much simpler time when these autographs were worth next to nothing. Maybe flooding the market is the best approach? Or maybe these artists should just set up their own ebay accounts and take commissions.
The whole concept of signatures on pokemon cards and the ethics and market surrounding them is bizarre to me!
My opinion is that artists have no reason to care what happens to the card after they sign it, I’m assuming the artist is compensated for their time and effort, what’s it to them if some of the people getting their cards signed make money?
@acebren , it’s just that some people will wait in line for the sole purpose of resale. it takes away from the experience of genuine fans who just want to meet their favorite artists. it especially sucks when the artist has limited time but 1 guy will be there with 100 cards to sign and then mark them up 1000%.
“thanks for the autograph, it’s going straight to ebay” just a little indelicate, but i’m not too upset about it.
(i am upset about certain people flaming the artists, but that’s for a different conversation.)
An argument could be made that the flippers are making the signed cards available to people who are unable to attend the signing, a slight mark up would be morally acceptable to me, people are entitled to be compensated for their time and effort.
Edit; a limit of how many cards can be signed would solve the problem of individuals getting 100 cards signed.
@acebren , I wholeheartedly agree. Plus, time, shipping, PSA grading - everything costs money. However, the example in this thread was a card posted for $2200 on ebay.
I believe several others had middling services for around $100 - $200, so that markup seems a bit extreme. As for the personalization, I don’t really care.
edit: I believe this event had a signing limit, so the artists are learning. and again, i’m not super upset about the resale or personalization - but the behavior towards the artists and the resale markups can be a little tactless.
The artists are really in a bind here when it comes to their signatures. It is different for each of them but there are some similarities, my understanding is limited but here’s what I do know:
- They want signatures to be accessible. They don't want to charge market value for their signatures because if they did it would price out a lot of people. Charging $10-15 per signature for their time is where they want to be. However, because the world is a market, if they charged more it would simply drive up prices.
- They DO NOT like the idea of people making money off their signature. They are signing for true fans of their artwork and the cards (hence the prices being low), not so people can make money. Regardless of what we think, to the artists the people aiming to make money from their signatures are deceptive and disrespectful. They feel betrayed because many people who approach these artists will seem to be true fans and want a signature as a personal token (and many artists will do it for free), but will then go around and list the signature on eBay for a ton of money and get paid. It's a culture thing, and it has a serious effect on a lot of artists (see Midori Harada).
So while the ideal thing to do would be to set up a mail-in signature system with something like very high fees for non-personalized and low fees for personalized, that runs into issues with TPCi, logistics management for the artists, and more. Events look like the only way to get cards signed right now. The personalization system many artists have set up is great because it allows for accessible pricing, true fans to get their cards signed, and limits resale potential. However, when people blatantly break the spirit of the rules as we see here, as others have said it threatens the existence of signed cards to begin with. If too many people try to ignore the spirit of the rules the artists are instituting, they will simply stop signing. Thats why these flipper signatures bother me so much.
Not to be disrespectful to the artists, but it’s really none of their business what people do with the autographs. The signers agreed to take a $15 per autograph fee (too low IMO) in addition to the appearance and accommodation fees. That’s where it starts and ends with them.
If there is an opportunity for someone to make money in a legal way, then that opportunity will always be taken. If you don’t want people selling your autographs, then the only option is to not do autographs.
This isn’t something unique to Pokemon. If I Ebay search “SDCC Autograph Game of Thrones”, I can find 8 different posters signed by the cast. That must be immoral too…
I said it before and I’ll say it again. Nobody is at more fault in this whole thing than the artists themselves. The whole reason this event happened at Dallas instead of in D.C. was due to their fragility, stupidity, and greed.
R/unpopularopinion
Maybe stupidity is a bit harsh and it’s more a case of translational issues, but I’m not entirely sure.
The fact is there will always be a market for selling autos because for some reason people like their cards scribbled over with sharpies even when they weren’t in person for the experience themselves. Ideally that wouldn’t be a thing, but it is. Personally it isn’t to me and if I’m ever around an event for a signing I may get a card signed. But personalization wouldn’t bother me as I’d be getting it for me.
