Professional Football Researchers Association Forum

Hilarious... and the beat goes on...
Now, teams are even scamming one of their own.
With "The First Lady of Football" gone, even the squeaky-clean Giants are looking dirty-shirt blue.

Memorabilia lawsuit claims Giants gave Strahan a fake Super Bowl jersey

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... wl-jersey/

A few years ago, here in Mexico occurred a similar situation: In the 1986 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament, Mexico faced Bulgaria in the Round of 16 at Azteca Stadium. Mexico won the game 2-0, with one goal by Manuel Negrete who was dubbed "the most beautiful goal scored in the tournament". As you may know, after those type of games the players of both teams usually trade their jerseys. In 2007, a Televisa reporter "found" Negrete's #22 jersey in Bulgaria, but if you look closely, Mexico in that game wore a white jersey with red numbers, while the jersey that he found had green numbers. It appeared that the Mexican players back then had the other shirts as backup uniforms, so while it was an authentic jersey, it wasn't never used on the field.

This is a video (in Spanish) of the original report:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGv_soLTP0I

You'd never expect something like this from stand up folks like the Giants and Strahan but this one sort of has the smell of truth to it, doesn't it?

The growth of the memorabilia industry is one of the worst things to happen to sports in the last couple decades. Very exploitive; the chumps that buy this stuff don't seem to realize that something has to be rare to have value.

Reminds me of the joke booksellers tell: there's nothing more common than a rare book.

A childhood friend of mine worked as an assistant equipment manager during the Lombardi era. One of his daily tasks was to get 24 footballs autographed. He was (and is) an artist--in fact, he designed the original Packer logo--and he learned to do reasonably good forgeries of most of the necessary signatures. He has told me that Hornung was the only player who consistently signed his own name. John forged all or most of the others. Bart Starr rarely, if ever signed. Just about any football from that era that has Starr's autograph was actually signed by John. He also told me that Lombardi never, ever signed a football; his signature was forged by Dad Braisher, who was the equipment manager and therefore John's boss.

There was a lawsuit about this some years back, but I don't know how it ever turned out.

That's interesting. A few years back myself and a group of co-workers bid on a basketball signed by Kevin Garnett that was put up for auction as part of a United Way fundraiser (the item was listed by another employee, not the United Way). Our boss was a Timberwolves season ticket holder and big Garnett fan, and we planned to present the ball to him at a reception honoring his years of service at the company. After we won the auction, I learned that the person who listed it was not actually in possession of the ball---I had to pick it up myself. When I called the Wolves office they didn't know much about it. After explaining, I was directed to come to the Target Center and pick up the ball. To my horror, a representative came out with a basketball that had a big "KG" printed in black sharpie. I'm certain Garnett didn't sign that ball.

Although I have a few autographed items in my collection I would never pay a premium
based on the fact that it is autographed.
The only autographs that have meaning for me are ones I acquired in person as I watched
the individual sign the item.
I also would not pay a person to sign an item.

To me an autograph is a personal remembrance of meeting an individual
and should not carry any monetary value.

There are very few, if any, authentic Packer-autographed footballs from the Lombardi era. He felt it was a waste of time to have his players signing autographs, so he gave the job to an assistant equipment manager (who was an artist who also happened to design the Packer logo).