I agree with @gengarbrigade. This is not only a logistic nightmare but completely unfeasible for any artist signing event.
The reason why artists draw the same sketch (or similar sketches) is because it makes it much easier to go through 500+ autographed cards over a weekend session. If you spend time thinking up a new sketch for each card, thinking of how to fit it on the card, thinking of how to fit the signature(s) and personalization and date and not obscure the original art too much…it just gets overwhelming.
I’ve seen this firsthand at things like the Saitou signing in Baltimore. Saitou would sketch anything, and my god the line was SLOW. The signed cards were amazing, and he had pages of reference material that he had prepped beforehand. However, anytime someone asked him to sketch something he hadn’t done a direct reference for, he’d have to spend a minute or so thinking about how best to do the sketch. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it adds up fast when each person is getting 3 cards signed and you have a line of hundreds of people.
Arita is good at sketching anything and doing it fast, but that’s because (a) he’s probably the most prolific and experienced Pokemon signer and (b) he just copies the style of Pokemon on the card–that’s why all Arita Base Set Zards look the same.
Either way, I don’t see how doing a separate pose every time is feasible or beneficial for addressing forgeries. Artists aren’t going to remember everything they’ve sketched on every card they’ve signed, and will likely repeat sketches even if they try to differentiate them. In many of the forgeries posted above, there are several other factors that give it away as a fake. It’s not like forgeries are impossible to distinguish and we need radical new artist practices to counter them. We just need grading companies to employ autograph graders with more than two brain cells to rub together, but they refuse to do so.
Yeah that’s a good point I didn’t really think of that the artists may not be familiar with the designs or have much time to draw freestyle each time. I sometimes draw little pokemon doodles for my customers and never ran into this problem but I also have every detail of most pokemon burned into my brain since childhood lol. But I’m also not doing it for hours and hours in a row I can see how you’d want a “template” to just crank em out.
Anyway, like I said, this is where PSA needs to require some sort of video proof but I don’t see that happening.
In this case, the artist doing the same sketch many times is actually helpful because it provides a good set of references to compare to. Like the sketches that were just posted, I can see that are all a bit off right away because I know what real ones look like.
I wouldn’t want to weigh in either way on this one because Arita can be so variable. But I will say that I think often times people focus too much on “does it look real?” and not enough on “does it look good?”
This one imo is just ugly and there are way better options available out there for Arita.
Hello everyone, I’m still fairly new to collecting signed cards. In the future I will definitely look at the cards very carefully and contact the sellers. I have already bought a few and would like to know whether they are original. Thank you for your help
Sent 14 auto’d cards in at the same time, split over 3 orders differing by variations of dual grading.
All orders have a supposed due date of 16th May (in 2 days at time of writing). They all seemingly went from research to the supposed holdering process quite promptly within the past few days. However, the ones that are auth only have come back with all either N0 questionable or N0 Inconclusive. Starting to think that in order to make their deadline they’re not even bothering to auth them and just giving them some sort of N0 in a lazy way. They’ve still charged me for this first order. Wondering what to do with the rest. As usual every card in this batch was signed in person by their respective artists so I am 100% sure of their authenticity.
Oh no, this is what I’m afraid of for my upcoming auth-only submission. They still charged you even though none of the cards were deemed authentic? Were the cards in that submission all signed by the same artist, or all different ones?
Not necessarily. It depends on the outcome of their assessment of the autograph.
N4 is essentially the grader saying they don’t think the autograph is legitimate. You get no refund for this.
N9 means the grader doesn’t know if it’s authentic or not, and can’t render an opinion. You should normally get a refund.
In my opinion, N9 is healthy and should be used as frequently as possible. Rather than always giving a definitive answer. PSA hasn’t done a good job of making this known to the hobby and encouraging the protection it should be giving them, if used they used it properly.
You’re right - I forgot about N9. I’ve never received an N9 on an autograph submission. Only on cards that they chose not to grade.
In this submission, I had submitted four hand-painted cards by the MTG alter artist CardKitty for authentication only. For whatever reason, they chose not to authenticate them. Such a bummer.
There’s 9 different artists across these three orders.
I believe they’re charging for the one they think is Questionable but not charging for the ones they’ve said are Inconclusive.
I’ve only had results for the first of these three orders so will see how the rest goes.
A few months ago I had a similar instance with autographs ( not all pokemon but some pokemon and some music autos.
Psa was late on the deadline passed the few that were super common con signers and one rarer pokemon auto then failed everything else despite being authentic. (Also the ones failed were all great clean fuller signatures from the signers that typically gave scribbles)
A few of them i could understand inconclusive being given but no just straight fail them all and take the cash.
