In 2018 Sports Card Info helped to shed some light on this issue. Even though not much has changed since the initial story broke, I believe its important to remind people that this continues to be a MAJOR problem in the hobby. Especially when a collector was recently screwed out of $400.
On February 28, 2020 a Tom Brady 2018 Panini Illusions Living Legends Autograph sold for $393. Too bad the autograph is a complete fake. Panini made the huge mistake of printing the message “THE AUTOGRAPH IS GUARANTEED BY PANINI AMERICA, INC.” on the back of a bunch of cards from 2018 Illusions that were never intended to be signed. But yet these unsigned cards with the autograph COA on the back somehow found their way into the product. We’ve seen this error popup on the Living Legends, Illusionists, and Mystique inserts.
Panini allowing cards to ship out with their autograph COA yet lacking the actual signature itself opens the door to all types of fraud. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing here. Loser scammers will sign the athlete’s signature themselves, and then attempt to pass it off as the real thing. Because that COA is printed on the back people will believe its authentic.
As you can clearly see the autograph here is on-card. MAJOR RED FLAG as the authentic cards use stickers. Another indicator is the absence of a serial number. It should be #’ed/10 or 1.
Panini simply stamped their autograph COA on too many cards here. Some were meant for legitimate pack-inserted autographs. Others received the autograph COA by mistake, and are just basic unsigned inserts.
Tom Brady 2018 Panini Illusions Living Legends insert with a fake autograph (front)
Tom Brady 2018 Panini Illusions Living Legends insert with a fake autograph (back)
This is what an authentic example should look like:
Filed under: Fake Card Info, News | Tagged: 2018, autograph, coa, collectors, continues, football, illusions, mistake, panini's, screw, to, unknowing |
Sports Card Info 
I bought a Brady & Rothlisberger card that has a official Panini sticker that is signed by them. I paid $1200.00 for them because I had not heard about the story. I didn’t know about the scam and didn’t find out till I send them into PSA to have them encased. I feel that Panini is partially responsibility and has taken no action to correct the problem. There are tons of those unsigned cards for sell on eBay. They should be buying these back and getting them off them market but they do not care. They make millions of dollars and it was their mistake but they do nothing about it.
[…] A similar situation happened with 2018 Panini Illusions Football. […]