NFL tail tag fonts?

[kingjammy24]

mark,

perhaps i mis-read your comments. i completely agree that to "blindly accept team COAs as gospel" is ill advised. to me though, blindly accepting something as gospel is very different than believing that it's not naive to put a modicum amount of trust in certain teams provenance. i have trust/place value in jays provenance but i don't blindly accept it as gospel.

"Collectors should do their own homework. If a collector doesn't feel confident in an item after performing their own due dilligence, or are putting all of their faith in the team COA, LOA, etc., then perhaps they should not buy the item in the first place."

i whole-heartedly agree.

"If we didn't need COAs, authenticating services, etc. back then, why are they needed now?"

mark, you mentioned the dramatic increase in resources available to collectors today as compared to the 70s. those resources are also available to forgers. dave miedema recently wrote a good piece where he explained that the poor forgeries of the past were partially due to a lack of resources compared to today. you can't deny that this substantial increase in resources, technology, communication, etc necessarily means that it's easier to make better forgeries today than 30 yrs ago. if the forgeries are better, then the provenance becomes more important.

"I don't know about you, but if I am going to spend my hard earned money in this hobby, I'm certainly not going to be reliant on someone else to determine for me whether an item is the real deal. If I can't figure it out after performing my own extensive due dilligence, then I'm simply not going to buy it."

again, i whole-heartedly agree. i just didn't agree that the entire notion of team or player provenance shouldn't have any trust placed in it whatsoever simply because a few didn't do a good job. teams and players are no different than dealers in that respect. saying that anyone who trusts team provenance is naive simply because a few teams have screwed up is like saying anyone who places trust in jim yackel or patrick scoggin is naive because other dealers have screwed up. jim and patrick have earned people's trust the same way that certain teams and players have. the bad apples shouldn't ruin it for the good ones. some teams i trust, some i distrust. it's not the concept, it's the specific team/player.

rudy.

[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