Over the weekend, news started to break that there were possible cards from Panini floating around of Dak Prescott autographs that may not be legit. One person has 4 of the #/5 Panini Prizm autos, all of which are clearly auto-penned. I’ve also seen comment that most, if not all of these Panini Prizm autos are sticker autographs, but the Dak appears to be one of the only on-card autographs.
I created a quick overlay comparison GIF to show how these DIFFERENT autographs are 99.99% identical. The very slight differences in stroke and ink quality are well within what to expect from an autopen machine. These are clearly NOT hand-signed.
As shocked as I am that Panini would allow this to happen, I probably shouldn’t be that shocked. Autopen technology has been around for a long time. It is well-known that Presidential autographs are commonly auto-penned. It shouldn’t be to anyone’s surprise that sports athletes and memorabilia companies would jump on and use this technology. Heck, there may even be a market for them, AS LONG AS the company tells the consumer exactly what they are. I could see owning auto-penned cards for my PC if they were just as cheap as, say, a non-game worn relic card. I can see this being a nice alternative to high-end autograph collecting. Still real ink, looks great and will display well. But on the back, come right out and say “Congratulations! This is an authentic AUTO-PEN signature of Dak Prescott”. Heck, they could even number them low and create variations so as to still drive collectibility.
But under no circumstances is it ok to market a clearly auto-penned signature as the real deal. Given the sketchiness of the rumors about this card and Panini’s handling of their Prizm autos, this is not good news for Panini. News appears to still be breaking, but l saw a Facebook thread with someone saying that Panini was recalling them. He’s claimed that people who had redemptions coming in mail have been re-routed back to Panini, which would likely indicate a recall. So, there’s that.
Update 07/03/17 @ 3:23pm MST
Multiple reports have surfaced saying that Beckett Grading Services (BGS) has refused to grade Dak Prizm autos from a couple different member submissions. And more reports that Panini has pulled/recalled/cancelled some redemptions.