I figured I’d make a post here since this seems relevant and might helps someone before wasting their time.
It seems like PSA has not been authenticating any Pokémon card autographs since their head authenticator has been let go most likely due to the cut signature authentication debacle.
My whole submission was inconclusive and they were mainly just Harada signatures.
I have talked to numerous people and they all said the same thing that their submission also all came back inconclusive, even common autographs like recent Arita autos.
One person even showed me the letter he received that he would be refunded but not compensated for this large inconvenience.
Another user wasn’t so lucky since he submitted a couple cards through a middle man an did not receive a refund.
A few other user confirmed that the head authenticator was fired.
Hopefully they hire someone new soon, but many people seemed irritated and mad as there has been no public response about this.
TLDR: hold off on sending to PSA for auto authentication
tl;dr is: they took signatures from shipping labels etc., cut them from the original cardboard, made a ‘custom card’ which they glued the signature on, and then got the signature on the ‘custom card’ authenticated.
Oh what? That’s insane, so he was getting those ‘custom cards’ graded himself at PSA, while also being the person who has the final say on authentication? How does that even happen??
I don’t know if there is factual info about that, and I don’t wish to speculate on it. From what I’ve seen people just find ways around the system, which probably isn’t all that water-tight anyway.
FWIW ‘custom cards/proxies’ with signatures have been graded for a longer time, it generally says ‘CUT’ on the label.
That I have no idea on. I would have assumed there would have been more than 1 guy to sign off on them as well.
It’s disappointing this happened, but I only know what I’ve found out from other users who submitted and my personal experience (my order arrived Nov 14th).
I would have thought that common autos like Harada and Arita would be more easy to authenticate as well.
I don’t want to speculate but maybe their could be more to the story behind the scenes.
there’s a huge difference between a fan keeping that from a purchase, and the head grader from the largest authentication company, purchasing, manufacturing, authenticating, and then reselling their own custom cards - knowing that the artists have explicitly asked for their signatures not to be treated in this way
All this happened because the PSA employee cut and slabbed the “signature” from an envelope the artist had sent him. I don’t see how unlimited autographs to a PO box would have prevented this.
It’s also not a matter of Pokemon “letting” them do this. Most artists would not want to do this regardless of whether or not they had permission to.
RIP
