"Long Tom" Hughes and "Salida Tom" Hughes Autograph Scan Request

[David Atkatz]

Originally Posted by prewarsports

My personal opinion is that the letter and the signature were not signed by the same person. My guess without having ever owned one myslef or having these in person (going PURELY off the scans) and given the similar dates of the letter/card is that the letter was dictated to a third party (wife or something) and secretarially written. Once again, just my impression from looking at three total examples, but the ball and the signature look very similar in letter formation and slant despite the 30 year gap and neither looks anything like the letter.

Just my opinion from a VERY small sample size.

Rhys

The ball was signed by Salida Tom, NOT Long Tom, Rhys.

[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by David Atkatz

The ball was signed by Salida Tom, NOT Long Tom, Rhys.

Hi David,
Just curious, is this the only example of Salida Tom's handwriting that you have ever seen, or have you seen others?
Thanks!

[David Atkatz]

It's a first for me, Scott.

[Scott Garner]

David,
Me too!

[bender07]

Why are both of these guys so rare when they were both on popular teams and lived in to the 1950's/1960's? Is it as simple as a disinterest from collectors from the '50s?

[prewarsports]

Gotcha David, thats why I posted all the caveats on I was ONLY posting on what I saw and not making any definative statements since I have never owned an autograph of EITHER in my time.

Ball aside......

The letter and the signature posted are both clearly supposed to be the same guy, but are both clearly NOT written by the same person and I do not believe a stroke is the reasoning due to the dates being so close together and a stroke that would take a person from the letter to the card in handwriting would be a fairly extreme stroke. My Father had a stroke in 2003 and it took him about 6 months to a year to be able to regain the motor skills to be able to write again and get to the point where his signature was even "shaky". In this case we are only talking about a month or so.

I believe that the first autographs "shakiness" is almost certainly due to old age and is consistant with what you see in older mens autographs. Usually stroke victims where it affects their motor skills are also shaky but the signature line itself is uneven and that is not present here, it is consistant and clean, but shaky.

I also believe that if I had to pick one as real and one as "secretarial" you would have to come to the conclusion that the clean and legible one is the secretarial because people do not choose someone with trouble writing to sign on their behalf.

Again, nothing definative as I have never owned any of the Hughes we are talking about, but I still stand behind the "hypothesis" that the first signature is authentic and the letter was written by a wife or daughter or someone else on behalf of Hughes, probably because he was getting older and could still "sign" like the note, but probably a long letter like that would have been very labor intensive and time consuming.

Just my thoughts on what I see in front of me and by no means am I privy to information that anyone else is lacking so take it for whatever that is worth.

Rhys

[David Atkatz]

I agree that the card is "more likely" genuine. But...
I can find no mention of Hughes ever having had a stroke. He lived seven more years, and in those days, a debilitating stroke was more likely to kill sooner than one is today.

All anyone seems to have is precisely two "exemplars" that don't match. Nothing definitive can be said.

[bender07]

Originally Posted by bender07

Why are both of these guys so rare when they were both on popular teams and lived in to the 1950's/1960's? Is it as simple as a disinterest from collectors from the '50s?

Sorry for bumping an old thread (especially one not related to TPGs or "is this good?") but I'm still wondering why the these sigs are so scarce. Thoughts?

[JimStinson]

Originally Posted by bender07

Sorry for bumping an old thread (especially one not related to TPGs or "is this good?") but I'm still wondering why the these sigs are so scarce. Thoughts?

To answer your question , the date of death is not always the primary indication of rarity , some old time players just "vanished" after their playing careers. A prime example would be Roy Castleton who died in 1967 and was an accountant most of his life yet to my knowledge there are no autographs of his that have ever been offered for sale.

Another example would be Charles Perkins who played for the 1930 A's and 1934 Brooklyn Dodgers. But died in 1988. He was "found" by an astute collector who had him sign several items , he then informed Mr Smalling (baseball address list) that Perkins had been "found" but before the info could be made public Perkins died.

Almost the same thing happened with Karl Spooner and others. Not counting guys like Clancy Smyres who just simply refused to sign anything even though his name, address and phone number were listed in the telephone directory.
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