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I've noticed a lot of game used Sammy Sosa items come from "Authentic Sports Investments" and usually have a hologram and LOA from the company. Is this legit and trustworthy? What do you know about this, and has anyone dealt with any GU memorabilia from them?
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Re: Authentic Sports Investments
Wells pled guilty to mail fraud charges for his role with fraudulent game used memorabilia. This interview, from prior to his arrest, goes into great detail about the alleged fraud.
Some of the highlights (or lowlights) from the interview summary are that Wells allegedly confirmed that, through his company Authentic Sports Investments (ASI), he sold game-used jerseys to Donruss, Upper Deck and Topps. According to the interview summary, he allegedly sold the most to Donruss, and the least to Topps.
In the interview, Wells went into some of the details about his "dirtying up" of game used jerseys and gloves. Specifically, he said "on occasion, he did put jerseys he received in the dryer to take fold marks out of them" and taking bats "out to a local baseball field and playing home run derby to make the bats look game used."Comment
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Re: Authentic Sports Investments
Yeah that doesn't sound good. Did they have some sort of contract with Sammy Sosa? The hologram that they use on his items say Sosa 21 and the LOA is always signed by Sammy as well. To me that all sounds as legit as possible, unless there were cases of fraudulent activity regarding that as well.Comment
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Re: Authentic Sports Investments
Authentic Sports Inc (ASI) / Elite Sports Marketing (ESM) / Celebz Direct (CD) all followed the same general formula:
1) Contract players as semi-exclusive marketing manager to sell GU items. (These players signed LOAs.)
2) Acquire secondary source (teammates) items. (These sources signed LOAs.)
3) Sell randomly purchased items from the secondary market. (These come with generic company LOAs.)
The problem is that CD (on at least one occasion) had blank LOAs signed, which they would then input the item description onto later. The existence of this practice somewhat calls into similar player LOAs for ASI/ESM. That coupled with the Wells connection for ASI, would lead me to avoid ASI like the plague. I will still buy some Elite items with good provenance (player signing the item being sold), but even then, I'm leery.
In any event, I believe Wells should be out of prison by now, since his sentence should have been completed last July. It would be nice if someone could contact him to clarify the extent to which ASI defrauded customers.Comment
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Re: Authentic Sports Investments
Email me directly and I can tell you if your asi stuff is fake- I was named in FBI report and allerted guf to historic and asi's fraud & am in no way trying to hide-
Scot and Brad had guys sign blank pieces of paper and then typed in whatever they wanted. I see Andrew jones loa's being used to try and sell other players memorabilia.
Makes me sick that Scot got off of all charges-
Back at his same tricks-
Bryanoberle@gmailComment
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Re: Authentic Sports Investments
I have purchased items from ASI and Scot Monet for years. Everything I have purchased from them has been legit. Like anything you buy, you need to have your own knowledge of what you are buying. It is possible that the players provided them with wrong information about items. Players often do not have the best memories. For example, years ago I took a jersey to a show to have him sign it. He told me it was a fake, because he did not wear that size. Mine was Set 2. Set 1 from the same year as mine is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. The sizes matched up! I also took a bat to have a player sign. He said he never used the bat. However, it came with a team gift shop certificate stating the day the bat was cracked and the player's name and had his number on the knob. The bat had old tape on it with a date matching the certificate. Plus, the bat was worth about $100.00. No one in their right mind is going to fake a $100.00 bat.Comment
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