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Posted By: davidcycleback

Stamped signatures are easy to identify as they resemble stamps not real handwriting. As there is a space for the commisioner to sign, making it like a contract, the only real worry is if the sig is the commy's or secretarial. Ordinarilly, the secretarial will be distinctly different to the real signature, as the secretary is not attempting to styalisically duplicate the real signature but spell the name.

For an old document with a place for a specific famous person to sign, the two main questions are if it's real handwriting (pretty easy to tell for old docs) and if it's his or secretarial (again not too hard to tell if you have sig samples). With more modern political docs, the third question is if it is autopen. Most autopens are much smoother, cleaner than real handwriting.

As a general rule, old handwriting and ink looks old, in part because few use fountain pens anymore.