There are currently 5 Chris Farley Star Pics autographs listed on eBay. I personally find that curious / unlikely. There is an ongoing thread on Blowout where they discuss Star Pics SNL forgeries -- I applaud the main poster in that thread he is looking to identify questionable SNL autograph cards. His theory is that long time collectors are selling now that this is a several thousand dollar card. He has identified several cards that he believes are forgeries.

To be fair -- If you handed me an 8 x 10 'signed' by Farley I couldn't authenticate it. I wouldn't know if it was real or not. . . I do know that the SNL Star Pics autographs are among the easiest cards to forge if you were so inclined. The autographs are on standard base cards with a simple foil sticker that was abundantly used in sports products.

Additionally I have some experience with Star Pics autographs -- sadly a lot of which was documented on Card Talk, but seems to have been purged.

Indulge me on a quick trip down memory lane. The 1990s were a great time to be a card collector. There were a ton of shows in the Chicago area and I was able to go to a lot of them. I remember amazing booths including booths run my Mark Macaluso. He was one of the biggest entertainment card dealers (I think he also was the manufacturer FTCC) and he often had cards at his booth that were unbelievable. The last time I saw Mark set up at a show he pulled out some SNL autograph cards -- including a Chris Farley. It was beyond my budget at that time, but I didn't forget.

Some time later Farley passed. Immediately upon hearing the news I called Mark and asked if he had the card and what the price was seconds later I was reading the digits off my credit card and a while later my SNL autograph collection started.

At that point I decided to collect a complete set of SNL autographs. I had no idea how difficult that would be. Over the next year I asked dealers, collectors, looked at shows and on eBay and had virtually no success. The timeline of the pick ups is fuzzy, but one year became several until ultimately it took a decade to find and buy a complete set of SNL autographs. During that decade there were several cards I only saw once -- including the Farley I bought from Mark. That's not to say I didn't miss something somewhere along the line, but I was diligent and consistent and SNL autographs almost never came up for sale.

In was an interesting period in collecting -- this was the late 1990s -- probably 1997 through sometime probably in 2007. SNL autographs weren't particularly sought after, they weren't particularly expensive (I think NSU had them listed at $15-$80 each, which I argued with as I couldn't find them anywhere for any price) and also forgeries at the time weren't as common -- in the late 1990s I don't know that forgeries were even in the conversation yet. This in some ways may also have been about the height of collecting -- there were tons of dealers, tons of shows plus the internet was really starting to take off.

Today I see 6 Star Pics SNL autographs for sale on eBay and 5 are Farley.

This just seems. . . off.

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