Thanks Paul. I think one of the issues may be that NO ONE ever thought or even heard a rumor of Marquard using a ghost or wife signer through the mail (I did ask a couple of long time dealers as well who had never heard of the possibility). Aside from signed cards, the value was so low on his autograph that it may not have been on anyone's radar. Add to it that we are talking such a small percentage of them with this variation, compared to the literally thousands of examples I have looked at over the last year that all are his typical style. The only ones I found were on signed cards, that's it. So we are talking maybe 1 out of 1000 autographs on the market have this style. I like to picture it, and this is just in my mind, as towards the end of his life, perhaps he pre signed a ton of index cards (I am pretty sure he did this, or maybe signed a bunch on his good days), and these were used for autograph requests. I believe he also sold signed photos for a small amount so those could have been presigned as well. For a small window of time, sometime in the later 1970's probably, if an item showed up for an autograph request that was specific and was included in the letter (like a tobacco card), someone else signed it. If not, he would use the presigned index cards or photos, and the ones he did sign are really pretty bad form wise like the authenticated index card above when his writing was obviously starting to severely decline. I can't ignore the fact that the signed T205 and the index card I originally posted came back at the same time in the same envelope, and I think whoever signed that T205 is also the same style on the four other cards.
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