1934 MLB Tour of Japan signed baseball - Halper
 

Here is the baseball in question. Thanks for any feedback.

Question
 

Im not sure if a Barry Halper letter makes it more or less likely to be real. The guy had a great collection but also had some famous fake stuff too ( probably unknowingly)….. a warning to all of us who get so excited about the stuff that sometimes logic goes out the window. All that said, those signatures look pretty solid …. curious how the ink is so similar in width, strength, size etc on almost all the names. Babe did go for the BIG autograph . I will be interested to see what truly knowledgeable autograph people on here think. Hope it’s real…..

Thanks for your observations, I understand the Halper letter isn't a COA and complicates the issue.

I'm not an expert on any of these guys, but two things give me pause:

1. The ball is signed in some kind of felt tip marker, like a skinny Sharpie. I don't think those pens were really around back then; fountain pens would be far more common.

2. Some of the signatures look very shaky and deliberate, I can see points where it looks like they stop and start where they shouldn't.

To me it looks like a bad C C special with a fake LOA as well.

Fake sigs / fake LOA. Avoid!

Oh, come on...Stevie Wonder could see this was bad.

Awful awful awful

I've got a few team signed balls; my oldest is 1940, another is 1943. I agree with above post that the style of pen seems wrong. But also, some of the signatures should be at different levels of fading. they should not all be signed like it was a year ago.

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I agree. Ball is no good. Many red flags here, it writing instrument, same pen pressure, all signed in similar hand, perfect spacing, etc etc. these should be red flags in general.

Ken Smith never owned that ball and Barry Halper never wrote that letter (I started to see these phony letters pop up about 10-12 years after he passed away)

Thanks for all your comments and observations, greatly appreciate this feedback.