Media

Here are a few links to some of the articles and TV items that Garry has been involved in.

My very first TV program apperance, i had done a few pieces for news programs for the Autographica events that i had organised in Northampton and Coventry, but this was a real TV program in a studio. It was an edition of "The Real Hustle" which went out in 2006, so long ago! You can view the whole episode here.

Here is a warning to all those ebay sellers who think they can get away with selling fakes! This seller had been running the same scam on eBay for about 6 years, but eventually a buyer thought that what he had purchased was not authentic and so took them to his Local Trading Standards. They in turn contacted us, and the rest is now history. As you can see this seller did not get a fine or a suspended sentence, but served 21 months at Her Majesty's pleasure! It was also featured in another Fake Britain which i helped with as well.

A call from Neath Trading Standards resulted in us making a very early morning call to this woman in Wales. The Laurel and Hardy signed photo mentioned, was one of the worst examples of forgery we have ever seen, and we now use this as an example in our course.

Just one of the many newspaper articles that we have either helped with or appeared in, and here is another.

One of the very few occasions when eBay have been forced to remove a forger from their site!

A call from the BBC led me to being dubbed 'King of Autographs' on the Chris Evans show, after I managed to teach him to distinguish real from fake on his radio show. Not easy when I could not see what he was looking at, remember, this was radio!

The Sporting Icons trial was the largest autograph fraud trial ever held in the UK, and ran for 6 weeks. Garry appeared as a prosecution witness in the same court that saw the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley sent down for life in 1966. The case took a very considerable time for the Police and Trading Standards to put together, but justice was done in the end, as both Walker and Medani both received prison sentences. We understand that Faisal Medani was also later been charged and convicted of credit card fraud.  As you can see, Medani was not just a small cog in a fake autograph fraud racket, and indeed, this was not his only scam either! Medani was such a prolific and accomplished fraudster that a book has even been written about him!

In late 2010 I was contacted by a production company to help and advise on "Fake Britain" a program about autograph fakes with Dominic Littlewood for BBC1 which was eventually broadcast in 2011. We filmed at the Autographica event in London, and at 2 other locations around the UK, resulting in an excellent advert for AFTAL and its many dealers which has now been repeated several times at prime time. Since then I have helped with two more editions, both about autograph forgery, plus another for the BBC's "Rip Off Britain" which was about the well known autograph dealers "Frasers" of London.

Buying from the more well known auctions houses is not always as reliable as you might think, and you can  find out more about this here.

My interest in autographs started when I was still a school when the value of them was very low and dealers were few and far between, but today the internet has changed all of that and people now see them as not just a collectable but also an investment. Here is an article i recently had a hand in.

Here is a another case where I was the expert witness, this one was in Portsmouth and the seller managed to get away with a suspended sentence after selling many fakes via both his shop and ebay. You can read about him here. And you can now see the full programe here on your tube.

The most recent case involved a seller of signed football shirts who thought it was an easy way to make money. These were sold via his website and ebay and netted him a considerable amount which i understand was in excess of £1,000,000, but then Trading Standards caught up with him. Now he has no house, no car, no money in the bank (TS took the lot!) and received a sentence of five years and eight months inside! More details here. His fake signed shirts with and without his COA's still turn up on ebay and the smaller auction houses, and it is because of him and forgers like him flooding the market with fakes, that i avoid signed football shirts altogether. 

Here is another i did for X-Ray a program we filmed in Cardiff for Welsh TV, fortunatley for me it was in English!

And if you can find the time to watch, you can see me in high definition in the latest series of Bargain Hunt here.

Or you if you dont like the look of me then try listening on the Jeremy Vine show!

And finally, my page on IMDB, shame they managed to spell my name wrong though and i have to work out how to change it!