Last year, cllct detailed one of the newest arbitrage games in the collecting business: Printing over autograph cuts to make it look like celebrities signed something cooler than a plain sheet of paper or notecard.
A $3,000 John F. Kennedy signature signed on a piece of paper sold for $15,000 when it was overlayed with his famous “We choose to go to the moon speech.” A Martin Luther King Jr. signature tripled in value after a picture of him giving his “I Have A Dream” was placed over the signature.
The newest act is doing the same with business cards.
Business cards fit in a difficult niche. Business cards of icons can sell for thousands of dollars, but there’s an issue. With the ability to make a great copy, many collectors insist they are signed.
In each of the last two years, RR Auction has sold Steve Jobs-signed business cards for $181,183 and $103,750. RR has sold several unsigned Jobs business cards, the last one fetching $5,470 in March. That delta was apparent to at least one collecting entrepreneur.
The solution: Take cut autographs and overlay the printing of a business card.
Distinctions are made by PSA in grading for a cut signature, though it’s not clear the entire buying public is aware.
When PSA deems an autograph is signed on a card or photo, it will say that. However, if the grading company determines it’s just overlayed, the slab will say “cut.”
PSA does the same for business cards. If it’s on a business card, the slab will say business card. If it’s printed over, it says cut.
In March of this year, a Jobs cut that overlayed his Apple business card sold at RR for $56,783 — perhaps 200% over what a blank Jobs card would have sold for.
That was with RR, to its credit, calling it a “facsimile business card.”
An auctioneer callout definitely reduces the upside, but is certainly more ethical.
Goldin recently put up 10 business cards in an upcoming auction. The auction description originally called them business cards, but the descriptions were later changed to "signed cuts."
A discerning eye can tell they are all print overlays. The Jobs card is signed with strange positioning. The Walt Disney card features an incomplete auto, and the Charlie Munger has a foreign image on the back.
Does an auction house have to call out the practice, or is it on the buyer to understand why the slab says cut?
Darren Rovell is the founder of cllct and one of the country's leading reporters on the collectibles market. He previously worked for ESPN, CNBC and The Action Network.