Authenticators

From the Things You Never Think About Department, comes the tale of "authenticators," who record the autographed and game-used memorabilia that may makes its way into fan hands in the interests of thwarting counterfeiters later:

Around now I'd normally provide a neat little block quote giving you the meat of the story, but the jerkwads at the Dallas Morning News have disabled copy and pasting ability with this article!

And yes, preventing counterfeiters is a noble goal. Not necessarily a purely altruistic one, however. That's because MLB sells no shortage of its own game-used schwag these days, and to the extent its memorabilia cops can affix their little shiny stickers to things that are going to find their way on to the MLB.com Shop page, the better it will be for sales.

Sounds like a fun job, though.