Quote:
Originally Posted by ATP
What are your thoughts ... on the two TCMA cards I posted above, that certainly had to be signed pretty close from a time perspective. Do they look like they are in the same hand?
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A couple of things -- even though my CJ Marquard looks like the more traditional sig (image attached), and 2/3 of my T206 Marquards also look more traditional -- I do think the TCMA Marquards are both signed by him (however, I do not like the sig on the T205 you posted earlier).
I believe Rube often liked to sign his last name in pieces:
M - ar- qu -ard
And I believe the tail at the end of the "d" is a routine signal.
Both TCMAs have those features, albeit the "q" in the left pic looks like it may be a standalone.
The little flair to start the "M" doesn't bother me, and seems fairly common in a lot of his signatures.
The big question to me is the capital "R". I would like to see an example of a letter written by Rube where he used the capital "R" to start a sentence and see how he wrote it. The closest I came when I looked briefly was on the "P" I showed above.
Ultimately, I would obviously trust a traditional signature more than a non-traditional signature in any context. But, I would still be a strong buyer for the non-traditional signed CJ, as I'm guessing would a significant audience!
Finally, I just want to add that I have submitted dozens of signed T206 cards to JSA and SGC over the past 10 years. There are a few Harry Coveleski signed T206s floating around, some of which were part of the Great Pittsburgh Find of Signed T206s in 2007 -- very good provenance. These are always rejected by the authenticators as "secretarial." So, it's not like they aren't adept at ferreting out secretarial signatures. And it's also not like they aren't aware of the huge difference in the "Rs" that we've pointed out. For some reason, they have concluded authentic. It doesn't mean they're right, or that they didn't catch it for some reason. But, I also think it would be easy to take the safe route and reject these - and yet they don't.