Horrible Forgeries: Not just baseball

[Michael B]

It is not just baseball and football that sees weak attempts to foist off cards with horrible forgeries. I always check the Olympic autograph listings on ebay looking to see if something has been listed that interests me. I was looking today during lunch and saw these Olympic Hall of Fame cards that had signatures that were not even close and appear to be signed by the same person with the same sharpie. There are a few collectors who work on these sets so I can see someone falling for this crap. Hopefully one of the ebay overseers will read this and end these. I will comment on them, drop in the ebay listing links and images from the listings and genuine signatures of two of them.

Harrison Dillard – has a nice large signature, even in his eighties. I have never seen him use ‘'With God’, almost always ‘Best Wishes’, if there is a salutation. On these cards he usually signs catty corner from lower left to upper right.

Henry Iba - Since I first got his signature 30 years ago up to the year he died I never saw his sign anything other than H. P. Iba. Not on anything. Almost without fail it was in black and occasionally blue ballpoint and on these cards that were signed on the front most I saw he put his signature on the white sweater.

Donna de Varona - Has a nice flowing signature. I only have 1960’s examples handy. This one shows a lot of hesitation on the ‘D’.
F. Don Miller – Not extremely familiar with his signature, but this does not look right.

Olympic signatures are what I am most familiar with and have an exemplar database of over 3500 signatures going back to 1896 so forgeries tend to jump out.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUTOGRAPHED-...item3cdd2e23b0

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUTOGRAPHED-...item4862144ad2

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUTOGRAPHED-...item4862144aa3

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AUTOGRAPHED-...item486214508a

[Mr. Zipper]

These are what we call "kitchen table forgers."

No attempt at a skilled fake... Just signing cheap items to sell for a few bucks. Hoping to get someone who will just assume its real because "who would ever fake this autograph?"

I suspect no type of celebrity is immune from these bottom feeders.

[RichardSimon]

Yeah Steve, but sometimes these kitchen table guys start making money and they graduate into actual "felony forgers."