One Of The More Interesting Fakes
I've Encountered...
First off, you should know that this - believe it or not - is a genuine autograph. I know, I know. The Star Company has long since been discredited among serious collectors after being caught faking their own products in the mid-1990s. But, in this instance, they really did have Big Frank sign some of their 1991 issue. (to the best of my knowledge, no one knows how many of these cards were auto'd by The Big Hurt. But this was during the period when he was regularly doing several THOUSAND autos for companies like Front Row and Leaf)
What makes this so interesting is that someone has taken a genuine auto (which, in my opinion, also happens to be surprisingly rare) and hand-scrawled a bogus number onto the card front, virtually destroying what collectible value there was to begin with - so sad.
Despite the authenticity of the signature, there's always a dark cloud of suspicion that hovers when collectors look at Star products. Ask basketball collectors how they feel about 'raw' or ungraded Star Michael Jordan cards. And even when they're slabbed by a reputable service, they hesitate. This shows how one single wrongdoing can return to bite you in the backside for years to come, maybe forever.
I want to be clear - it's entirely possible that the seller was "taken" himself and honestly didn't know that the hand-numbering was faked. After 17 years - who know how many times this has been traded, sold, and re-sold. In fact, the seller was from England, quite a bit of traveling done by this card - the faked numbering could have been added by any number of unknown person(s).