Razor Rumours and Inkworks info.

I have been involved in several discussions about fake and forged autograph cards on other sites, including the recent one at the NSU. From that and other discussions stems this next article. It would have been out last week but for the catastrophic failure of my now dead Sony Vaio.

I have been given information by several reliable sources that raise questions about both Razor, there products and the owner Brian Grey. That’s not a comment I would want to make without a little back up, so read this article, read the articles linked to, and then make up your own mind. During the writing of this article I spoke directly with Brian Grey on the phone, and I will include his comments in relevant areas.

Razor is a company that at best can be said to court controversy and worst is nothing but a front for Upper Deck. Many dealers will agree that they almost single handily killed the secondary market value of most inkworks autographs, and often the press they receive in the non sports community is variable or negative. Brian himself says he is “mostly a sports card guy” and while he didn’t answer my questions via email (because he says sometimes tone and meaning is not always clearly understood in text form) he responded within moments asking me to call him and talk. That’s one thing I will give him credit for, he is very approachable. He is very charismatic when you listen to him talk, and I found myself wanting to buy something… there is no doubt that he is good at what he does, he’s a likable guy and he has a lot of enthusiasm for the his products, but that hasn’t stopped the criticisms, and they come from many sources.

I was looking for answers to some very specific questions, and in fairness he did respond candidly to some of them while glossing over others. I had questions related to inkworks deal and what he bought. I have a good idea anyway from other sources but I wondered if he would put a figure on it, which obviously he he wouldn’t, but I can give you a good under estimate. I am going to put the figure at about 70,000 cards. I feel this is a little on the low side but it is better to air on the side of caution. Now I will show you how I came to this figure:

Razor released 2 products with a combined total of approximately 50,000 inkworks autographs in less than 6 months, they also sold many many cards on eBay (only stopping when collectors put two and two together and called them on it). I have also been in contact with dealers who have openly stated they bought large quantities of inkworks cards from Razor, and of course the Target multi packs are full of inkworks autograph cards supplied by….. yes you got it Razor! Accounting for all of that 70,000 I think you will agree is a conservative number.

Brian has admitted that he supplemented his inkworks bulk purchases with cards bought in from the secondary market, you know places like eBay. While he said “numberous autographs not in the deal were bought on the secondary market for the product.” to Mario at Wax Heaven, he told me categorically that they only purchased “about 5 cards” and they were Tomb Raider Angelina Jolie’s, and Samuel L Jackson’s from the Spirit (The Spirit cards were still being redeemed when inkworks went under and as such were not included in the buyout deal).

He also said one of the Jolie cards he bought from eBay was a fake and he returned this for a refund. Apparently it was on different card stock and was not correctly embossed* so we can now absolutely confirm that there are fake Tomb Raider autographs out there. Razor bought one off ebay From my information many of the other high end cards included in both sets are from the secondary market.. But Brian is very specifically  saying thats not the case..  I am going to take his word for that failing other evidence to the contrary, but it makes his comments at Wax Heaven seem a little disingenuous to say the least, and it makes for some extremely long odds for these cards when you combine the two releases production runs.   Did they place the  “uncirculated” stickers on these secondary market cards? I still don’t know about that.

More worrying however, you see Brian has not got a great reputation when it comes to spotting fakes, in fact he has arguably put some big name forgery’s out there. Now to give him credit he has “fixed” these problems when they have been made public, and in one case he still argues the claims are questionable, which they may be. (Its still better than some companies YES we are looking at you Upper Deck) Brian says they use PSA and JSA to certify all there cut signatures. That actually  isn’t something that fills me with confidence as the PSA is very very dubious indeed.

Not only do they have a fairly tarnished reputation they also deal in signed memorabilia.. Can you say conflict of interest?

It would take even the least literate of you to google them and find problems but to get you started you can look here and here.  It makes me worry when I see things like this, and it should make you worry as well.

Below I highlight some of the less than authentic cards we know have hit the market in Razors products:

Most people have read about the extremely expensive ($2,500.00 a box one card per box) presidential cuts signatures Oval Office Series and the 2007 Presidential Cut.

Razor included this  Richard Nixon cut in the 2007 set, but who ever authenticated this card needs a wake up call becuse it’s an auto pen signature, making it worth virtually nothing. That wasnt the only card questioned from Razors high profile ultra expensive and much talked about sets however. The Martin Van Buren from the Oval Office set was also declared a “fake”,

because it is now said that this was signed by his secretary. Brian still has doubts about this one and said to me on the phone that this signature was actually used in an authentication book many years ago.  Never the less historians are for the most part in agreement that this card was not signed by a president but was in fact a much more common secretarial signature. Again those are not the only questionable cards from Razor even if they are two of the most expensive, you have to look back at one of there entertainment sets to find that they had some issues with a Carrie Fisher cut signature that has been conclusively show to have been signed by her mother!

Again more information can be found about that particular debacle on the Non Sports Update forum.

If he has has been using PSA DNA JSA for these then it’s about time he swapped I think. They are letting him down badly and it’s his name not there’s that will suffer. That said at the time I don’t believe he was using them, and in fact several of his sets came out in Beckett card holders, which gave the illusion of authenticity in and of itself. When the questioning of some cards started Beckett very very quickly distanced themselves from the whole issue and stated that they simply supplied the card holders and offered NO guarantee on the cards..

Hell we were talking about this more than a year ago and even then I said

“Obviously Razor don’t want to talk about this in the open but it is a key issue right smack in the middle of our industry, if we cant trust the card manufacturers then this whole rickety house could come down. Havening an open and transparent conversation about these issues can only be a good thing, good for the manufacturers if they have nothing to hide and great for consumer confidence because we can all see what is happening and mistakes can be corrected

This is NOT an issue between the owner of an individual card and the company which produced it. That attitude is naive and short sighted and it means the company is relying on the consumer to argue and verify the authenticity of a product, I would say that the majority of collectors have NO IDEA what’s real and what’s not that is precisely WHY a premium is paid for trading cards. It’s not because they love the company its because of the implied level of security attached to the autographs produced by seemingly reputable manufactures who have done all the leg work. That’s why a topps autograph will always be worth more than an 8×10 with a homemade COA found on eBay, we assume the card company has  a verified REAL autograph. Confidence would suffer if Topps just went out and bought a bunch of 8×10’s and cut them up I have no doubt.

To argue that this issue is not anyone but the owners business is patently wrong, I’m sorry if you want to sell a pack of cards you made for $2000.00 a pop you better be damn sure you can back up the authenticity of your goods in a public and transparent way.”

That was in a year old Razor thread at the Non Sports Update forum so this is not a NEW issue. Now I have to say Brian Grey is happy to talk about this stuff so perhaps I was wrong on that count, but talking about it and changing it seem to be different things.  We still have no idea who authenticated the bad Fisher cut. Nor do we know who is selling fake inkworks cards (One of which he said he bought and subsequently returned) .  If you go hunting you will find some of my posts over there proved a fair bit unpopular at the time and no doubt I was not as clear as I perhaps should have been but thats in the past and its all  love, kittens and cake over there now (mostly… sometimes)

Now here is one of my problems with all of this: Forgers target high end cards because they maximizes there returns for minimal outlay, common sense..  Brian’s company already has a poor track record on spotting fakes. Lets be honest your spending a good amount of money on something, do you trust Razor to spot a fake?  I mean would they really know the card is real? Sure Brian can spot an obviose fake he is as he told me a “card guy” and he claims he found a forged Jolie, but some of these cards are really very good copies, as we have seen in This Thread. So he has these top end cards and he has placed them in Becket magnet holders or sealed toploaders with stickers on…. But you know what? The illusion of authenticity is not the same real authentication.

Now I am not saying that every high end card in these products is a fake, far from it, in fact they may all be fine, and if what Brian says is true perhaps only 5 of them could even be considered… BUT they may not be fine and this is something that no one seems to be discussing or paying any attention to.

These cards are not 100%  free from suspicion. Now some of you may be thinking wow that’s unfair we should give them the benefit of the doubt, but checking out what you spend you cash on is not unreasonable. I mean really how hard is it to stick a card in a toploader with an uncirculated sticker over the top, and now it’s 100% kosher?

This can be done in the after market, easily, without Razor having any involvement Hell I could print a bunch of high quality copy inkworks cards and do it, so do NOT take the Razor sticker as a sign that it is not a fake.  Look for the watermark kids and all the other signs… and read the threads I linked to.

Razor is no stranger to controversy, Brian Gray has upset a number of people, he must have because there are a lot of negative comment about him and his company all over the net, and much of it stems from his sports card business, and alleged conections with Upper Deck CEO Richard McWilliam. It has been roumerd and reported many times that these two are connected and in fact that Upper Deck OR Richard McWilliam are the real power behind Razor. This is something that Brian Grey has unequivocally denied to me on the phone, he said he has “gone on the record” to say this is not true. The rumour just will not go away though and it has a lot support. This is in a nut shell what ignited it last time. Mario over at Wax Heaven released this Memo with the names blacked out:

This memo was never authenticated officially but what I can reveal  is the writer of this memo was none other than Judy Heeter from the Major League Baseball Players Association. Judy has thus far been unavailable to comment but this letter is very standard and falls directly within her job scope. If this memo is legitimate which we absolutely believe it is then it is it could mean a few things. Brian in fact has not denied that this memo is real or that it is from the MLBPA in fact he seems to think it was from them, but had no basis in reality.  From what he said my understanding is this: The MLBPA used this memo as a bargaining tool against Upper Deck at a time in which negotiations were ongoing over licensing agreements..

If that is the case then someone owes Brian and Razor an apology… in fact if it was me I would have had my lawyer on speed dial.. but he is still doing business with these people so who can say what is for the best.

Thats one point of view, now try this one: Link This is reportedly from an ex Upper Deck employee, and essentaly says the whole idea behind the alleged Upper Deck Razor collusion was harming a rivals product, Upper Deck are alleged to have aided Razor with cash and manpower to create a set of cards or licensing agreements that had the specific intent of damaging the Topps Bowman brand. You really should read the link, because if it’s true its a real eye opener.  Again Brian Grey absolutely denies this is the case. It may also have a direct bearing on why Topps have been given the exclusive rights to produce official baseball cards by the MLB without the support of the MLBPA.

Its also my understanding that Brian’s company “EdgeMan” a sports and gaming card wholesale distributor was sold to Upper Deck, but no doubt someone will correct me if that’s not the case. Brian himself stated that he had a lot of dealings with Upper Deck in the past and use to buy all of there clearance stock.

It’s probably fair to say that Brian Grey, more than anyone, has profited by the demise of inkworks, he bought all the autographs via an intermediary, and then went back and bought all the sealed boxes (the inkworks deal was split into three parts, autographs, costumes, and boxes, the autographs went to Brian via a third party, the Boxes went to that same third party and all of the costumes went to Inkworks Archive/Factory Entertainment in the UK who I understand had a large overall role in clearing up the old stock and finding buyers for Allan Caplan.  With the costume cards came the promos and signed costumes.  This lot included the Sketch cards but there were only about 200 of them in total, and good number of those were sold some time ago.

Even without the signed costumes however he has essentially created grab bags of inkworks products, liquidating tens of thousands of inkworks autographs and boxes in very short space of time, this drastic impact on the market has shown just what a “manufactured rarity” many of these cards were, and has had added untold cost to dealers who held older stock. Collectors will benefit in the short term from lower prices, the long term effects however are likely to be less pleasant.

Brian said to me on the phone he thought inkworks had a flawed business model, which is fair comment in some regards as they are now out of business, and yet it also leaves a bitter taste, because inkworks had great customer services and great staff, they were not a huge and unwieldy company, but they had a run of very bad calls and worse luck with there product licenses (Who new The Spirit would flop so hard?).

They picked up some duds and it hit the balance sheet to hard. Then again Razor just made a lot of money from there product so it seems a little cynical for Brian Grey to dismiss them as flawed. More so when a little while later he says Razor will be making more entertainment sets “along the lines of inkworks”.

More than anything I get the impression that Brian wants to make good products, he has a lot of ideas and believes that both Razor and RittenHouse Archives are well placed within the market, unlike Topps, Panini, and apparently Upper Deck, all of which he thinks of as bloated and over staffed.

Its such a ironic then that the best sets he has produced in the non sports market were all created and sold on the work of a company he feels was flawed.  If Razor expects to fill the void inkworks left well they still have a long way to go and a lot to prove. I am not sure what I think in truth, I don’t dislike Brian Grey, but I am not sure I trust what he says 100%. I know I will always look twice at there products.  I think he will be successful despite all the questions, but then personally I think he could make a lot of money in the used car industry as well…

* Embossing produces a raised surface material, inkworks cards are not embossed they are foil impressed which lowers the seal into the card there is a difference folks!