No Hit Kings Ball - Opinions please?

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by novakjr

My main concern would start with the Feller as the rest of you pointed out...While the Koufax and Ryan both look somewhat legit on their own(keep in mind, I don't know much about Koufax's signature), it's my opinion that the Feller and Ryan were signed by the same hand. I only say this because the "B" in Bob, and the "R" in Ryan are formed the exact same at the top. So unless, Nolan Ryan himself, forged the Feller signature, I'm gonna assume that the Ryan is questionable as well. Then you gotta figure that if 2 out of the 3 signatures on the ball are questionable, I'd imagine that the 3rd is as well.

Now as some have already stated, and i completely agree with, all three are probably written by the same person...The Ryan and Koufax are good enough to give a second though to, so I'll assume the forger put a lot of practice into those. Now it would make sense that with Feller being the most common, not as much time was taken trying to perfect his, thus explaining why his is a bit more obvious.

I just heard back from my Koufax collector friend. He stated that in his opionion the Koufax signature on your ball is absolutely not real FWIW.

Although my initial impression was that the Ryan signature looked legit, I am beginning to question the way the top of the "R" in Ryan appears to be labored and somewhat shaky on the right side. Ryan typically signs fairly fast, and the more that I look at the R, the more it looks as though the person that signed these labored through this pen stroke. David is correct that the "B" in Feller and the "R" in Ryan do look very much to be signed by the same signer. Typically, faked Ryan signatures that I see jump off the page at me. This one, not so much. I also tend to agree with David that the signer had spent alot of time working on getting the Ryan and Koufax right.

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like you might have a trifecta of bad sigs on your ball. Sorry!