Sports memorabilia are among the most valuable collectibles in the market. Many of them are available from online sources, but it is nearly impossible to spot fakes online. It should be noted that not every website and seller are trustworthy. Fraudsters often use sophisticated techniques to fake collectibles using their cloning techniques. Fortunately, there are things we can do to improve our chance of detecting a forgery. Firstly, we should spend enough time to identify legitimate sellers. It isn’t enough to just trust a supposedly reliable website. We should also examine their contact details and check their legitimacy.
They should have contactable local address and not from a foreign location. Another thing we should check is whether they have proper payment options. Many dishonest online sellers are demanding buyers to pay only with cash. If we fall victim to untrustworthy seller, we should alert the auction service, so warning can be distributed to other buyers. We should also consider recommendations from family members and friends, especially if they have more than a few successful buying experiences through online sources. Many companies are relaying on word-of-mouth and in some cases, it is better than plain advertising messages.
Other things that are worth looking at are customer testimonials. However, we should treat this information wisely and with caution. They could be genuine, but could also be forged by fake sellers as well. We need to research our market and this is hugely important. In many cases, we don’t know how genuine sports memorabilia look like and if true, we have much less chance to spot a fake. We should be aware of the smallest details about products that we are looking for. Dishonest companies can be indicated by poor-quality logo and misspelled labels. These should be tell-tale signs that items are not genuine.
Finally, we should always ask, ask and ask. Legitimate companies should be more than happy to answer our questions. This won’t only benefit us, but could also help the company to maintain loyal relationships with customers and clients. Retaining existing customers is actually much easier than looking for new ones. If we follow these tips, there would be much less chance that we would get a fake. We should always ask questions about products, the policies and the company’s previous transaction records. Unlawful companies usually have little or no record of past transaction and they also have poor or non-existing after-sales services.
Reliable companies should welcome questions from their customers. They know exactly when and where all items were obtained and signed by famous, professional athletes. There are also proofs that these items are genuine. There can be no sports memorabilia marketplace without sports star and it is important for these sellers to get real confirmations from the athletes themselves or their descendants. It should be noted that values of memorabilia depend on the types of sports themselves. So, when purchasing a memorabilia, we should consider this important fact.
