NFL tail tag fonts?

[G1X]

Rudy,

I am mainly a football collector and dealer. My feelings about team COAs are drawn exclusively from my experiences with football items. Since this thread was dealing with football tagging, my comments were intended to be geared toward football and not other sports.

I can only speak from my own experiences, but of the eight football teams from which I have received some type of official COA over the past few years with regards to a jersey purchase, five misidentified a team-issued jersey as being game-used, and one team's COA was so vague that it was difficult to determine what the COA was actually claiming.

On one occasion, I saw a legitimate team COA that claimed that the particular player's jersey was game-worn on Thanksgiving Day (throwback jersey worn only once by the particular team). When I researched the matter, I discovered that the player was not even with the team by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. Needless to say, I did not pursue the jersey.

For me, team COAs instill about as much confidence as letters from authenticating services with regards to football jerseys. In other words, not very much. I am never one to believe that anyone is intending to be dishonest or mislead, it's simply a matter of either not knowing all of the facts or not understanding the issue at hand.

As for forgeries, I agree with the point that it is easier to make forgeries due to the increase in resources in 2007 compared to 1974, but on the same token, collectors also have increased resources for discovering the forgeries. It's all relative, especially without any hard facts at hand for either of us to prove our respective point.

It could be argued that an excellent forgery made back in the early 1970s is more difficult to discover than one made in 2007 of a current-era jersey because there is a lot less reference material readily avialable for researching the forgery made 30 years ago. There seems to be some truth to this based on seeing a few football forgeries from that era still circulating in the hobby.

My apologies to all for hijacking Eric's post. Back to the original subject, below are photos of the tail tagging font from from several different teams over the past few years that I randomly pulled. Hope this is useful.
1. 2005 Eagles (green) #53-Simoneau obtained in my bulk buy from team
2. 2003 'Skins (burgundy throwback) #29-Franz obtained from the team
3. 2005 Falcons (red) #84-R. White obtained from the team
4. 2004 Giants (red alternate) #57-Maxwell obtained from private collector who obtained from Giants website
5. 2005 Giants (red alternate) #51 Emmons obtained from private collector who obtianed from Giants website
6. 2002 Browns (brown) #10-Holcomb obtained from Jim Yackel
7. 2005 Eagles (green) #34-Mahe obtained in my bulk buy from team
8. 2004 Eagles (black alternate) #93-Kearse obtained in my bulk buy from team

Mark Hayne
Gridiron Exchange