THE FOUNDER Q&A 12 Questions with Mark Kirkup
THE FOUNDER Q&A 12 Questions with Mark Kirkup
THE FOUNDER Q&A
12 Questions with Mark Kirkup
CEO & Founder of ACGcert™
Autograph collecting. Forgeries. Authentication. And why the UK needed something different.
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Mark Kirkup has been involved in autograph collecting since 1999. In this candid Founder Q&A, Mark explains why ACGcert™ was created, the problems he sees within the modern autograph market, the challenges authenticators face and what he ultimately wants ACGcert™ to achieve for collectors.
Q1. Mark, why does ACGcert™ actually exist? What did you see happening within the autograph industry that made you think there was a need for a new authentication company?
From a UK standpoint, I didn't really feel we had anything specifically looking after the collecting community here.
Third-party authentication was being asked for more and more, but as UK collectors and dealers we didn't really have a service right here in the UK that we could consistently use.
For a long time, collectors were often relying on one of the American authentication companies appearing at a UK convention to get their items certified.
We've also seen attempts to operate authentication from overseas, where somebody in the UK sends scans or photographs of an autograph to an authenticator elsewhere.
That's not what I'd call safe full authentication.
For me, if you're going to fully authenticate an autograph, the physical item needs to be in front of you and properly examined.
We've had established American authentication companies such as Beckett, JSA, Star Wars Autograph Universe (SWAU) and AutographCOA (ACOA) providing services to UK collectors in different ways over the years.
And I want to be clear — that's not a criticism or slight on any of those services. Anyone genuinely trying to reduce the number of forged autographs being sold to collectors deserves credit.
Justin Steffman, the founder of ACOA, has done some groundbreaking work for the in-person and street-collecting community, particularly in bringing greater attention to modern signature variations, questionable material and the problems surrounding forgeries. I absolutely respect that.
What I felt we were lacking in this country was something different: a service built around long-term, UK-based collecting experience.
That's particularly important when it comes to football.
The Premier League and wider UK football autograph market is incredibly specialised. Training-ground signatures, rushed player variations, squad-signed shirts and the way players' signatures change over time all require very specific knowledge of how autographs are actually being obtained here.
I don't believe you can simply take expertise from one collecting market and assume it automatically transfers to another.
If you put a Premier League training-ground-obtained squad-signed shirt in front of somebody whose experience is primarily within the American market, you're asking them to make judgements about dozens of signatures from a collecting environment they may have very little first-hand experience of.
I'd look at it the other way around.
Put a baseball shirt covered in signatures in front of us and expect us to know exactly what we're looking at. We wouldn't pretend to have specialist knowledge that we don't have.
That's not a weakness. That's responsible authentication.
Authentication should be about recognising where your expertise is strongest and, just as importantly, recognising where it isn't.
That's the gap I believed ACGcert™ could fill — a genuinely UK-based authentication service, operated here, with people who have spent years actually collecting, studying and handling the types of autographs that UK collectors are buying.
That's really where ACGcert™ came from.
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Q2. What made you finally decide to build ACGcert™?
I'd sat back for years and watched various autograph clubs and associations try to govern parts of the UK market, and I never felt the model really worked.
Collectors' clubs could certainly be useful, but the problem was consistency.
Someone might be approved as a dealer or member following an initial check, but after that it was extremely difficult for anybody to continuously monitor every piece of stock they were selling.
I wanted to build something that wasn't an exclusive club.
I wanted a service that literally anybody could use — from the occasional collector with one or two items to a full-time autograph dealer with thousands.
No exclusions.
Even today, we sometimes receive items where members of our team may know that the submission has come from somebody with a questionable reputation.
That should not determine our decision.
We judge the autograph, not the seller.
The signature must always come first.
If a company is buying stock from third parties, there's always a possibility that questionable material can find its way into its inventory. We're here to advise and help people, not immediately call somebody out because they've made a bad purchase.
If somebody repeatedly continues doing it after being made aware of the problem, that's obviously a different situation.
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Q3. You've been involved in autograph collecting since 1999. What's the biggest change you've seen in the autograph industry during that time?
Probably the sheer amount of money collectors invest in autographs today compared with 20 or 25 years ago.
I can remember going to a convention in Milton Keynes many years ago and paying around £20–£25 for Carrie Fisher's signature.
When you compare that with what collectors can pay for individual signatures today, it seems like peanuts.
Some autographs now cost hundreds of pounds and, in certain cases, considerably more.
That means there's far more at stake for collectors.
When people are spending serious money building collections, authentication, provenance and confidence in what they're buying become increasingly important.
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Q4. Are autograph forgeries really as common as people think? From what you actually see coming through ACGcert™, how serious is the problem today?
It's a very, very serious problem.
From the material we see submitted to us, questionable and forged signatures are a significant part of what comes through.
Football is particularly concerning.
Training-ground football signatures are one of the biggest problem areas we encounter.
With the way many modern footballers sign today — often using extremely short, rushed or abbreviated signatures — there is an obvious opportunity for people to attempt to replicate them.
We see stacks of questionable football items every month.
That's one of the reasons current knowledge is so important. You need to understand what these players are actually signing like now, including the rushed variations, rather than relying solely on a small number of perfect examples.
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Q5. Where are collectors most at risk of encountering questionable autographs? Are there particular platforms, types of sellers or supposed sources that collectors should be especially cautious about?
Online marketplaces are probably our biggest concern.
Anyone can potentially open an account and list an autograph for sale. There may be identity and address checks, but that doesn't mean an autograph expert has examined the signature before the listing goes live.
That's the problem.
Simply being allowed to list an autograph on a marketplace doesn't mean anybody has checked whether that autograph is genuine.
There are obviously plenty of genuine sellers operating through online marketplaces, but collectors have to understand that the platform itself isn't necessarily authenticating the autograph.
I'd like to see considerably more being done to protect collectors.
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Q6. Does everyone selling a forged autograph know it's a forgery? Or are a lot of questionable autographs being sold by people who genuinely believe what they have is authentic?
I'd probably say it's somewhere around 50/50 from what we encounter.
There are professional forgers out there who know exactly what they're doing. Some are very active on online marketplaces, and some can be quite good at what they do.
Then you've got a completely different type of problem.
There are sellers who buy significant amounts of their stock from third parties. If you're buying from questionable sources, that can become a minefield.
A seller can buy something believing it's genuine, sell it to somebody else, and years later that item can change hands again.
A forgery can change hands several times before it eventually reaches the collector.
That's another reason we always try to judge the signature rather than automatically judge the person who submitted it.
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Q7. What's the hardest part of running an autograph authentication service?
Keeping up with the constantly changing variations of signatures.
We deal with a lot of street-signed material and football signatures, and most players or celebrities can have an array of different signatures depending on the situation.
A controlled private signing can produce one type of signature.
A rushed encounter outside a hotel, training ground, premiere or stadium can produce something completely different.
The same person can sign very differently depending on how much time they have, what they're signing, the pen they're using, the surface and the environment around them.
That's why we maintain an online signature exemplar database that is continually updated, alongside a network of active in-person collectors who help keep us informed about changing signing styles.
I don't think you can properly understand modern autograph variation without that kind of current, hands-on knowledge.
In-person collectors are the lifeblood of this hobby.
They're also where a huge proportion of the genuinely obtained autographs entering the secondary market originate.
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Q8. What's harder to authenticate: a convincing forgery or a badly executed genuine signature?
The rushed, quick versions of genuine signatures can be incredibly challenging.
That's one of the reasons we introduced the ACGcert™ Signature Grading system.
A genuine street signature shouldn't necessarily be judged in the same way as a beautifully executed autograph obtained during a controlled private signing.
The first question must always be: Is it authentic?
Only after we've established that should we look at the quality of its execution.
That's what Signature Grading is designed to recognise.
A messy, rushed or abbreviated autograph can still be completely genuine.
We wanted a system that recognised that and helped protect genuine collectors and sellers who have authentic street-signed material in their collections or inventory.
Authenticity first. Execution second.
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Q9. What's the biggest misconception collectors have about autograph authentication?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that an autograph can be fully authenticated purely from a digital scan or photograph.
We've seen instances where services are issuing digital Letters of Authenticity based solely on a digital image.
To me, that's a dangerous route to go down.
An item should never be given that level of authority by an authentication specialist without the physical item eventually being examined.
There are too many things that can potentially be missed through an image alone — ink characteristics, surface interaction, printing, manipulation and increasingly sophisticated technology.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with digital assessment as an initial stage.
We offer that ourselves through ACGcert™ Pre-Cert.
But there's a very important distinction.
Pre-Cert is a digital assessment. Full Authentication requires physical examination.
If an item progresses to Full ACGcert™ Authentication, we want the actual item in front of us.
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Q10. Can experienced autograph authenticators genuinely disagree about the same signature? And what happens when the ACGcert™ team can't reach a unanimous decision?
Of course.
We're all human, and authentication is ultimately an expert opinion.
Sometimes members of the team will disagree.
Usually, a minimum of three ACGcert™ team members will assess an authentication, and the decision to authenticate must be unanimous.
If two people say yes and one says no — or even if that third person simply isn't comfortable enough to say yes — we won't authenticate it.
The verdict will be Inconclusive, and the customer is refunded in full.
An Inconclusive verdict doesn't automatically mean we believe the autograph is fake.
It means we don't have enough confidence to put the ACGcert™ name behind an Authentic verdict.
We'd rather say “we don't know” than authenticate something we're not comfortable with.
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Q11. What worries you most about the future of autograph authentication?
Without a doubt, one of my biggest concerns is the emergence of digital-only authentication — particularly LOAs, certificates and even grading being issued without the physical item ever being examined.
To me, that's a dangerous road to go down.
Technology can absolutely help authentication.
Digital reference libraries, high-resolution images, databases and digital preliminary assessments all have their place.
But technology should support physical authentication, not replace it.
That's exactly why we distinguish ACGcert™ Pre-Cert from Full Authentication.
PRE-CERT = DIGITAL ASSESSMENT
FULL AUTHENTICATION = PHYSICAL EXAMINATION
For a full authentication opinion, I believe you must eventually have the actual item in front of you so the signature, ink, surface and item itself can be properly examined.
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Q12. If you could change one thing about the autograph industry, what would it be — and what do you ultimately want ACGcert™ to achieve?
I'd personally like to see some form of stronger checks or requirements before somebody can sell autographs through a major online marketplace.
I don't think autograph forgery is always treated with the same seriousness as counterfeit watches, designer goods and other high-profile counterfeit products.
But to the collector spending their money, it's absolutely a serious issue.
I'd love ACGcert™ to be able to genuinely help marketplaces improve this — reducing obvious forgeries, identifying repeat offenders and making it more difficult for deliberately fraudulent material to reach collectors.
And ultimately, I think if we can make a forger think twice before trying to con a collector, that's a very good start.
I want somebody considering selling a forged autograph to look at it and think:
“THERE'S NO WAY THIS IS GETTING APPROVED BY ACGcert™.”
That's where I'd like the ACGcert™ name to get to.
WE WANT COLLECTORS
TO TRUST THE NAME.
AND FORGERS
TO FEAR IT.
ACGcert™
PROTECT THE COLLECTOR.
PROTECT THE HOBBY.
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ABOUT MARK KIRKUP
Mark Kirkup
CEO & Founder, ACGcert™
Mark has been involved in autograph collecting since 1999, with decades of hands-on experience obtaining and studying signatures from the worlds of sport, film, television, music and entertainment.
ACGcert™ was established to provide collectors and dealers with an independent, UK-based autograph authentication, certification and Signature Grading service.
AUTHENTICATE. CERTIFY. GRADE.
ACGcert.com
