Invisible Ink Protects Super Bowl Footballs
Filed under: Sports
On Super Bowl Sunday over 100 footballs will be used in the game. Some of those footballs will go to players, others to charity auctions and some will likely eventually end up on the collectibles market. The National Football League takes some interesting steps to protect against possible counterfeiting. Each ball used in the game will be be "tagged" with a specially-prepared synthetic DNA ink that leaves an invisible-to-the-naked-eye security mark. The sideline pylons and even the coin used for the coin toss will be marked, too. For the 12th consecutive year, the National Football League will use sports memorabilia authentication company PSA/DNA Authentication Services of Santa Ana, California to certify all footballs used in the Super Bowl. A PSA/DNA representative will be on the scene in Miaimi to photograph and then mark each ball with a synthetic DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) strand that can be seen only when illuminated by a specific laser frequency. Just how serious is this? Joe Orlando, President of PSA/DNA, a division of Collectors Universe, Inc. says that the DNA ink has a 1-in-33 trillion chance of being accurately reproduced by counterfeiters. A letter of authenticity accompanies each Super Bowl football certified by PSA/DNA and the certificates have tamper-evident labels with individual, serialized numbers that can be verified online.
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