Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott has been accused of using a machine to sign autographs.
According to ESPN's Darren Rovell, Steve Grad, principal authenticator at Beckett Grading Services, said his company looked at five autographed cards from collectors who received Prescott autograph redemptions from Panini's 2016 Prizm set.
Due to the lack of organic flow in the Prescott autographs, Grad concluded that they were done by autopen, which is a machine politicians have used to sign documents in bulk since the late 1950s.
Via ESPN,
"They had a very machine-like feel," Grad said. "You could see the starts and stops."
"I immediately knew they were autopen," Grad said. "I've never heard of a modern athlete doing this."
Vice President of grading and authentication at Beckett Media, Jeromy Murray told USA Today,
"For every one of the cards to look so uniform was strange."
"The cards didn't match up with what he had seen and, since we are based in Dallas, we have seen a lot of his Cowboys merchandise. That raised a red flag."
Rovell notes that it's possible the Cowboys QB never actually saw the cards, as sometimes blanks labels to be signed and even cards themselves are often sent to marketing agents first.