PCSA authenticates a signature only at live signing events where PCSA or an affiliate is contracted (sub) to be present. Typically these events could be a contracted signing event through a publicist or studio or a sporting organization (NFL, MLB, NHL, Etc). They may also be guest appearances at fan events, conventions, etc.
A live signing event is the only way to absolutely guarantee that a signature is truly authentic.
Many authentication services and businesses rely mainly on their own databases of prior signatures they have authenticated. They display this approach and methodologies on their websites.
Unless a celebrity has passed away for a period of time, and ink type, ink and item aging technologies can be employed as further evidence of authenticity, all of the major authentication service providers rely mainly on their own visual record matching.
The art of looking at a signature and spotting start / stop points, continuity, flow, styling, all can provide clues as well.
But for the most part, most service providers use a matching process to an existing database bank of prior signatures. And in many cases, this process is automated through programming.
Some services offer internet submission of images for “pre authentication” citing the savings vs their full submission service price.
Whether Internet or live submission, most large service providers have automated the process. The art of signature analysis is replaced with automated database matching which allows service providers leverage to authenticate larger volumes of signatures for a far cheaper price per item and shorten to entire time line from submission to return.
The problem with that approach is that today’s technologies. widespread data access and immersion, the entire public has voluminous signature image access as well.
As a result, any skilled and practiced person could conceivably not only replicate an actual real signature, but they can eventually do so to an exacting standard.
Moreover, most authenticators only need a signature to be “close” to one version of one image in their database to pass the signature as authentic. Most services are using technology to search their databases for a match among the hundreds or thousands they may have on file. Thereafter, any newly authenticated signature then becomes part of their database and thus expands the library of “possible authentic versions” of that celebrity’s autograph.
So while a celebrity’s own authentic signature changes and versions over time continuously expand a service providers database, that expansion is furthered by all the close fake signatures that ultimately get passed and approved through most service providers processes.
By the time a celeb has been in the public eye only a few years, most database driven service providers have already authenticated volumes of fakes and made their own signature database semi filled with them.
In years past, a signature was attained literally by getting close to a celeb and asking them to sign. While those occasions still occur today, they do so far less due to security separation, and the fact that a celebs signature has value and most of them seek to monetize that value where possible. That’s where the signing events mentioned at the top of this page become the new normal and the preferred methos for both celeb and the industry.
While PCSA may eventually begin to offer third party authentication services, our opinion will remain that the only way to absolutely guarantee a signature is authentic is to have it witnessed at the point of signing.