Three companies, one process, no guarantees

That case is the clearest thing I can point at to explain what a certificate actually is, because it forces the issue. If two credible experts can look at the same signature and reach opposite conclusions, then a certificate is not a finding of fact. It is a considered opinion, and the difference matters when you are about to spend real money.

None of this is a reason to buy uncertified. It is a reason to understand what you are buying.

All three do roughly the same thing

PSA/DNA, James Spence Authentication and Beckett Authentication Services publish their methods, and the methods are broadly similar. Ink analysis. Analysis of the structure of the signature itself, the letter forms, the pressure, the flow. Evaluation of the object it is on. Side-by-side comparison against known genuine examples. Where a case is difficult, a video spectral comparator to look at the ink under wavelengths the eye cannot see.

PSA/DNA has been doing this since 1998, built on the card grading business. JSA was founded in 2005 by James Spence. Beckett came last and arrived properly when it hired one of PSA/DNA's senior authenticators. Three companies, comparable process, and a marketplace that accepts all three.

What none of them says

Read the language carefully and you will notice something. Nobody guarantees anything.

An authenticator states an expert opinion, formed by comparison against exemplars, and expressed with the confidence that comparison supports. It cannot be more than that, because signatures change across a lifetime, because a rushed signature at a hotel door looks different from a careful one at a table, and because the reference material is itself a collection of examples somebody once judged to be genuine.

This is not a criticism of the companies. It is the nature of the problem. The alternative to an expert opinion is no opinion at all, which is worse.

Witnessed and examined are not the same claim

Here is the distinction I would most want a new buyer to understand, because the certificates do not always shout about it.

A witnessed item was signed in front of a representative of the authentication company. Somebody watched the pen touch the paper. The claim being made is direct: we saw this happen.

An examined item arrived later, sometimes decades later, and an expert formed a view about it. The claim is inferential: this is consistent with what we know of that person's signature.

Both are legitimate. They are not equivalent, and plenty of experienced collectors will pay a premium for witnessed material for exactly that reason. On a modern living signer, witnessed is available and worth seeking out. On anyone who died before the programmes existed, examined is all there can ever be.

The tiers nobody explains

Both PSA and JSA sell a quick, photograph-based opinion service intended to help a bidder decide before an auction closes. It is cheap, it is useful, and it is explicitly not full authentication.

The trouble is that some listings say "JSA Quick Opinion" as though it were the same thing as a JSA letter. It is not. It is a view formed from a picture. JSA also distinguishes a Basic Certification from a full Letter of Authenticity, and those are different products at different prices making different claims.

If a listing names a service rather than simply naming the company, it is worth finding out which service.

The certificate is now also forged

This is the part that has changed most in recent years, and it is the one actionable thing in this article.

Counterfeiters no longer stop at the signature. Holograms are replicated. QR codes are cloned. Slabs are manufactured. Letters of authenticity are forged. And in the cleverest version, a real certification number lifted from a genuine item is printed on a fake one, so the number verifies and the object does not match it.

Which gives you the single most useful habit in this hobby. Look the certification number up on the authenticator's own database before you buy, and check that what comes back describes the item in front of you. Not just that the number exists. That it describes the same thing. All three companies provide public lookup, it takes about fifteen seconds, and it defeats nearly every version of this.

An opinion sealed in plastic

One more thing worth sitting with. When an item is encapsulated, the opinion is sealed along with it, and it stops being revisited.

Knowledge moves. Forgery rings are exposed, exemplar databases improve, and a view formed fifteen years ago was formed without any of that. But the slab does not update, and cracking it to seek a fresh opinion destroys the certification you paid for. The permanence that makes a slab valuable is the same permanence that freezes a judgement in time.

That is not an argument against slabs. It is an argument for treating an old certification as an old opinion rather than a settled fact.

So which one should you use

Anyone who tells you one of the three is simply best is giving you a preference and calling it a finding.

What is true is that they have different centres of gravity. PSA/DNA has the deepest sports exemplar library and is the default expectation for modern sports material. JSA is the stronger name in entertainment, historical and music autographs, and dominates at the high end of signed instruments. Beckett is recognised at par with PSA on modern cards.

Our own numbers say the same thing from a different direction. Across this index PSA/DNA certifies the overwhelming majority of what is listed, but the exceptions are sharp and consistent: comics run heavily to CGC, soccer runs to Beckett, and Star Trek material runs to JSA. We wrote that up in more detail here.

The practical answer is to use whichever authenticator the buyers in your category already expect, because certification is worth what the next buyer thinks it is worth.

Every signer on this index shows what is listed and what has verifiably sold, broken out by who certified it, and you can read how we work the numbers out.