Cheap Ali autographs spur authenticity questions

6:06 PM ET

In the six weeks after Muhammad Ali’s death, thousands of autographed items flooded the market, with sellers hoping to capitalize on the demand.

But the quantity of items, and, in some cases, the cheap prices associated with them, has ignited one of the more hotly contested battles over what’s real and what’s fake. The debate also includes who is supplying the autographs, who is authenticating them and who is selling them.

For years, Ali’s signature has not only been among the most expensive, but also among the most forged. (Autographs thought to be legitimate on 8-by-10s even before his death were hard to find under $150, with his autograph on a boxing glove in the $2,000 range.)

“There are thousands and thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of fake Ali signatures out there, some are fresh and some are from the [FBI bust] Operation Bullpen days in the late ’90s,” said Harlan Werner, who managed Ali’s marketing exclusively for 19 years, ending in 2006. “You couldn’t buy a real Ali signed glove for less than $1,000 over the past decade, and you certainly can’t buy one for that now. Yet real fans are buying them every day for these insanely low prices.”

On June 11, a GFA-certified Muhammad Ali autograph, left, of him knocking out Sonny Liston sold on eBay for $184.50. Three days later, the same photo signed and certified by PSA/DNA, right, sold for $1,650. eBay

Werner, who had a huge stash of legitimate Ali signatures, said he began liquidating years ago when he realized the fake Ali market was compromising those who had real signatures.

Scott Mahlum of Mill Creek Sports, who has an exclusive deal with Russell Wilson, among others, has been investing in pre-1990 signed Ali autographs for years.

“So many of these autographs we are seeing now are all great, in the perfect spot, and they’re on photos that no one had access to when Ali had a signature that even looked close to this,” Mahlum said.

Ali’s might be the most complex signature of all time. Each year, it seemed to decline in clarity, beginning in the mid-’90s, when the effects of Parkinson’s disease began to take hold. Because Ali signed many of his photos with a date, it’s possible to piece together what Ali’s autograph looked like over time.

That’s exactly what Shawn Anderson did when he found out he was duped with a fake Ali signed photograph more than 10 years ago. He started buying up dated Ali signed items and strung them together on a website to show Ali’s autograph from the 1960 through 2003. Over time, he became an expert in Ali signatures.

“In the last 10 years of his life, Ali’s autograph was not good because of what he was going through,” Anderson said. “People today are looking for a good clean autograph. You can get one, but if it’s cheap, it’s more likely than not that it’s a fake.”

Anderson, Mahlum and Werner all say that, in their opinion, one of the companies that has been authenticating Ali signatures sold after his death has been authenticating fakes.

That company is GFA. Stephen Rocchi, who founded and runs the company, says he stands by every signature that GFA authenticates, and if someone claims what they bought was fake, he’ll buy it back from them. He’s only had to do that once since 2011, he says, with a Mickey Mantle autograph that he still believes was authentic.

Rocchi says his company gets bashed because, unlike the leaders in the industry, he said he doesn’t let politics get in the way of authenticating pieces.

“We don’t pay attention to how many autographs someone brings to us or who they are,” Rocchi said. “We make it only about the autograph. We have exemplars, we match the autograph in front of us to the exemplars and have 15 points of authentication and if it …

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