Buffy The Vampire Slayer

So you couldn’t get tickets to the Justified and Stripped concert? Pining for the Warrior Princess in between reruns of "Xena" on Oxygen? What’s a fan to do? You could always console yourself by searching eBay for Justin Timberlake or Christina Aguilera or Lucy Lawless autographs. But there’s a catch - how do you know if that autograph is for real?

If you want a 100 percent guarantee that your autograph is authentic, try going to New York or Los Angeles and catch a celebrity at lunch or dinner. Extra points for being polite. Getting an autograph in person is the only way to be sure of your autograph’s authenticity.

But if you don’t have the time or money to seek your star (and you don’t want to fuel any latent stalker tendencies), shop carefully. It’s too tempting for the unscrupulous to turn an otherwise minimal value photograph into an object of desire.

eBay (www.ebay.com) was founded in 1995 and has tens of millions of registered members making it the most popular shopping site on the Internet. If you go to the Entertainment Autographs section of eBay, there are over 25,000 autographs for sale on any given day from movie stars, rock stars and teen idols of various accomplishments. In the Sports section, there’s another 60,000 autographs for sale. eBay reports that "some of the hot sports autographs include Michael Jordan, Mickey Mantle, Dale Earnhardt, Sr. & Jr. and Babe Ruth." Signed memorabilia is obviously big business.

The smart autograph collector buys carefully. eBay is not an online store itself - it is an online marketplace, which means that eBay is not liable for what individual vendors sell - it’s like the world’s largest flea market. However, there are eBay rules. Notes eBay’s Kevin Pursglove, "Each eBay seller has the responsibility of being the legal and rightful owner of the merchandise they are selling and they must accurately describe the item in question."

eBay has also developed programs for celebrities to protect individual copyright and to remove any fake autographs for sale. eBay created the Verified Rights Owner (VeRO) Program to protect Intellectual Property. VeRO is a tool used by a growing number of celebrities and their representatives to provide authentication and to remove fraudulent autographs, bootleg items (illegal recordings) and anything else that might devalue the worth of a celebrity’s name.

For sports memorabilia, books, coins, stamps, trading cards, comics and jewelry, eBay has developed relationships with a number of companies to provide authentication services. Check out: http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/auth-overview.html .

Later this year eBay and its online payment service, PayPal, are expanding the PayPal buyer protection plan to cover eBay transactions up to $500 with no processing fee. It’s a welcome insurance policy to cover deals gone bad.

The smart autograph collector has plenty of resources to buy wisely. First of all, compare the autograph for sale to a verified original. Sites like www.Stararchive.com were originally created to provide celebrity addresses for people looking to write fan letters. The offshoot is that the site publishes scans of verified autographs. They’ve inadvertently become a great reference site to compare signatures against items offered for sale.

Second, look at the Seller’s reputation. eBay sellers build a reputation indicated by their feedback number which is based on customer satisfaction. If the seller has a lot of happy customers, they must be doing something right.

Most importantly, look for the official sellers on eBay. These are sellers who are authorized by a celebrity or studio to sell autographs and merchandise. Columbia Pictures is auctioning off wardrobe and props from "Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle." Creation Entertainment ( www.creationent.com), the country’s biggest marketing company behind "Star Trek," "Xena," "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and Fangoria, organizes fan conventions where fans can meet their favorite stars and get autographs in person. Creation also sells autographs on eBay. Lucy Lawless and William Shatner autographs are a couple of their best sellers - and they are also the top targets for fakes.

,P> Earlier this year, Fox/Searchlight sold props from "The Good Girl," which included a number of hand-written letters by its star, Jake Gyllenhaal. With a studio seller, you know that someone at the studio had to beg and plead with the celebrity’s publicist or assistant for Brad or Jen or Ashton or Demi to sign 50 or 100 posters or stills for their movie’s release.

Since practically every movie has an official web site, that’s a good starting point to find links to memorabilia on eBay. How do you find an actor’s eBay VeRO representative? If the celebrity has an official site, contact the webmaster. Some celebrities sell autographs on eBay to raise money for their charities and concerns. Other celebrities have their VeRO reps playing cybercop on eBay, making sure that any item that uses their name is legit.

Many autograph dealers offer a "Certificate of Authenticity" or "Letter of Authenticity" - unfortunately, COAs and LOAs aren’t worth much - always do your homework and compare the signature to a legitimate source. Creation Entertainment CEO, Gary Berman explains, "COAs are meaningless unless backed by a legitimate company." When baseball great, Mark McGwire jumped in to clean up fakes, he bluntly dissed LOAs, "If they haven’t witnessed me signing it - and they haven’t, because I don’t do signings - how can these people say this stuff is my signature?"

There will always be a thrill in collecting autographs. Why does that hurried ink scribble make a photo worth so much? To a fan, it’s a captured moment in time - a small, tangible piece of that celebrity’s personal attention. For many fans, an autograph is worth the pursuit - and it should also be worth buying carefully.