PSA Board of Specialists Expertise
Jon Bahner started with Professional Coin Grading Service in 1986. He has had many responsibilities in his tenure at the company. For sportscards, Jon started collecting when he was 12 years old. In the early 1990s he was one of the principals of Total Sportscards, a firm that specialized in all areas of the sportscard market. Jon joined the PSA team in 1995 and is now considered one of the top grading experts in the market.
In 1957, Rich Consola saw Elvis perform in Buffalo, New York. Elvis was wearing his famous Gold Lame jacket that day and, since then, Rich has been a lifelong fan and collector. Rich has thoroughly studied Elvis' handwriting and signature for over 20 years. Today, Rich is considered one of the foremost authorities on Elvis autographs and is known worldwide for his exceptional knowledge.
With a family history of small business ownership dating back 130 years, Bill Corcoran grew up learning the importance of customer service and impeccable ethics. It is with these values as his foundation that Bill has managed to remain a reputable presence in the hobby, being a full-time autograph dealer for over 25 years now and a collector himself since 1970. He has traveled many countries and nearly all of the United States in search of missing athletes and elusive autographs. His personal collection and inventory are among the most comprehensive in the world. Along the way, this expert has been the feature of full-page stories in Baseball America, Sports Collectors Digest, The St. Petersburg Times, along with newspapers in Venezuela and Puerto Rico. Over the years, Bill has purchased some of the most prominent autograph collections ever assembled, providing him with a breadth of information that is both wide and deep. He looks forward to being a part of PSA/DNA and sharing this extensive knowledge with the hobby.
Al Glaser has been a collector all of his life. Starting with coins in the 1960s, he expanded to collecting rare US and foreign military currency during the 1970s. Then, while attending his first Super Bowl in the 1980s, Al finally found his true collecting passion in sporting event tickets.
Considered for years as one of the foremost authorities of sporting event tickets, Al continually assists with publishing numerous ticket collecting articles and books. Focusing on full tickets, Al has amassed one of the largest and finest collections of major sporting event tickets known. His research into various sports ticket designs led him to collect and publish the most comprehensive list of Super Bowl ticket color varieties available.
In addition to his authentication responsibilities with PSA, Al is President of ADGInsurance agency, specializing in alternative retirement strategies.
Since the age of 9, Steve Hart has been involved with sportscards in one way or another. His early passion as a collector led him to local card shows and, in 1985, he set up at a convention for the first time. Five years later, at the age of 20, he opened his retail sportscards store, Baseball Card Exchange. Steve's integrity and focus on service helped earn him the status as one of Chicago's premier sportscard dealers. Over the next 15 years, his expanding business moved to newer locations, each one bigger than the last. In July of this year, the Baseball Card Exchange moved to its current location, containing more than 8,000 square feet of office and warehouse. Steve's fascination with unopened material started early and he later became one of the foremost authorities on the subject after years of study. Over the last 20 years, Steve has examined thousands upon thousands of unopened items. This experience has given him the reputation as one of its top unopened specialists in the hobby.
Kevin Keating began collecting baseball autographs in 1969 at age ten. Except for his time at the United States Military Academy (a 1982 graduate) and then Army service (until 1988), he has been an avid collector ever since. He founded Quality Autographs in 1992, which became his full-time business from 1999-2016.
Keating's love for his lifetime hobby inspired him to write a baseball-themed screenplay (Catching Jo), which earned first place in the 2013 All-Sports Los Angeles Film Festival, as well as many published articles on autographs and related topics. He also co-authored a book entitled, The Negro Leagues Autograph Guide (Landmark Books, 1999).
Keating has appeared on television and radio shows as a guest expert on baseball autographs and forgeries. He has also been frequently interviewed and quoted in print and online media, including The Wall Street Journal, The San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, U.S.A. Today, Baseball Weekly, Forbes Collector, The Houston Chronicle, The Miami Herald, The Weekly Standard, The Federalist, and MLB.com (a feature blog).
Keating has served as the autograph agent for Whitey Ford and the late Warren Spahn and was featured in Washingtonian Magazine (May 2009); he was the autograph authenticator for the ABC television show Ballboys; and he also appeared with Paul Gleason in Gleason's last movie, The Book of Caleb (released in 2008).
He has been an autograph consultant for PSA/DNA Authentication Services since 2009, where he is now a full-time authenticator. He has also provided authentication and/or appraisal services for nationally recognized auction companies and other private and government organizations, including the Washington Nationals baseball team, the White House, and many private collections. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has consulted Keating on matters related to suspected forgers, and they asked him to testify as an expert witness during the well-publicized investigation known as Operation Bullpen.
Vince Malta is a recognized professional model bat expert and author of Louisville Slugger Professional Player Bats - A Complete Reference Guide, the primary reference for countless collectors, auction houses, and baseball museums, including the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. A great ambassador to the bat-collecting hobby, Malta is known as a person very willing to share his extensive expertise with others. He currently works with fellow bat expert, John Taube, on providing authentication services for PSA/DNA.
John Reznikoff is the founder of University Archives, a leading document and manuscript firm specializing in the appraisal and authentication of historical texts. The company has bought and sold rare documents since its inception in 1979. While Reznikoff may have started his career as a mere stamp collector at the age of 8, he now offers decades of professional experience in the autograph industry and is considered one of the leading historical document experts in the world. His encyclopedic knowledge of rare and historic manuscripts, documents, and relics draws the attention of curators, investors, collectors, foundations, and the press.
Over the years, Reznikoff has appeared as an autograph, handwriting, and historical document/manuscript expert on several major news/educational television programs or networks, such as ABC's Good Morning America, CBS's Inside Edition, PBS's History Detectives, the History Channel's Pawn Stars, ESPN, Fox, NBC, the Smithsonian Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and the American Heroes Channel to name a few. He has also been the subject of thousands of newspaper articles, including cover stories in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He has also authored and published many articles for Manuscripts, Pen and Quill, Linn's, and American Philatelist.
In addition, Reznikoff is a recognized expert in questioned documents (i.e., documents that are not necessarily autographs and/or the handwriting of famous subjects). He has worked with the United States Justice Department, the FBI, and numerous local law enforcement professionals to combat fraud in the industry. In fact, he is court certified at both the State and Federal level, and his lab and library are renowned in the industry. In 2006, he trained with forensic experts on the most advanced document examination equipment available at the time (the Video Spectral Comparator (VSC) machine) and is currently the only individual dealer in the trade to own and employ such a device.
Reznikoff is also affiliated with, and has served as an officer in, multiple professional organizations dedicated to the autograph industry. He has served as vice president and, subsequently, president of the International Autograph Dealers Association; he founded the Professional Autograph Dealers Association; he became the first approved authenticator/appraiser for the prestigious Board of Universal Autograph Collectors Club (UACC) in 2006, was deemed their "Autograph Dealer of the Year" in 2009, and was voted to the board in 2012. He has also worked as an authenticator and consultant for various prestigious auction houses, dealers, government institutions, private parties, and authentication companies, such as PSA/DNA Authentication Services.
Reza Tabatabai has been a collector for over 15 years. Reza is a senior member of the PSA Grading team with vast knowledge in all areas of collectible sports cards. He has been grading professionally for PSA since 1998. Reza earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Finance from Fresno State University in 1990.
As a die-hard Yankee fan, John Taube started his collecting days with baseball cards. In fact, during his annual excursion to spring training, a deal with a bat boy initiated his bat interest. Taube traded cards for a few professional model bats. He was hooked. John Taube, in conjunction with Vince Malta, is leading the way to standardizing bat authentication in the sports collectibles industry.
Steve Van Maanen started his career with Professional Coin Grading Service in 1987 at only age 19. He has been collecting sportscards since his childhood. He joined the PSA division in 1993 and has never looked back. He brings with him years of experience and has helped solidify a top notch grading department. On his off time Steve enjoys spending time with his two beautiful daughters.
Henry Yee's interest in photography as a form of artistic expression and historical preservation started at the age of 15 at Brooklyn Technical High School where he studied photography and photojournalism. Yee then earned his business degree from the University at Buffalo's Business School of Management. He has spent the last ten years on Wall Street consulting with Fortune 500 companies and is the owner of HY Ventures, LLC, which specializes in organizational development and IT/business systems management solutions.
As a collector and dealer of sports memorabilia and sports photography for over two decades, Yee has handled millions of news photographs from public and private archives around the country, including some of the hobby's finest examples. With his vast experience, Yee has been able to amass one of the largest exemplar archives of news photo and wire photo stamping specimens in the world. He is the co-author of A Portrait of Baseball Photography (2005). The landmark volume was the first exhaustive account of baseball photographs.
For in-depth articles on Henry Yee, read more here and here.
Tom Poon is an avid, lifelong hobbyist with more than 35 years in the hobby who was, in his own words, "born with the collecting gene"
Poon is a graduate of Southern Illinois University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. He joined Collectors Universe as a card grader in 2007, where he developed and honed his knowledge of and keen eye for not just cards, but autographs as well. His knowledge from those 10-plus years as one of the company’s top card graders adds depth and unique card-related expertise to the authentication team. Prior to transferring positions to become an autograph authenticator, Poon also ran his own successful online autograph business.
To quote Tom: "There’s a saying in journalism – ‘If your mother says she loves you, check it out.’ That’s the approach I take when authenticating autographs – take nothing for granted and examine everything meticulously and with vigilance. We have the privilege of examining some of the most incredible collectibles in existence and being both thorough and judicious remains the bedrock to our success."
When he’s not looking at collectibles, Poon roots for his hometown New York Yankees and Giants – and boasts two PSA fantasy football league championships to his credit!