Shoeless Joe Jackson Auto- Fake?

[Mark17]

The photo could've been handed to Joe and he might've said "I'll sign it later," and then had his wife sign it for him.

I've seen a couple glaring examples of "provenance" being given so much weight it was ridiculous. Two examples in the GU arena:

1. Years ago, a major AH had a GU Hank Aaron bat with great provenance. It had come directly from a guy who only played one season in the majors - 1970. He faced Aaron in a game that year, struck him out or something, and after the game, he claims he went to the Braves locker room and Hank gave him the bat. The AH pulled down that "provenance" story when I pointed out the Aaron GU bat was from the 1973-75 labeling period.

2. A former player, having been released towards the end of the season, took with him his jersey and pants, and gifted them to a well known broadcaster. They ended up in an auction earlier this year, which I won. The jersey and pants were graded MEARS 10 attributed to that player, because of that impeccable provenance, and the jersey really is nice. So are the pants, but they are quite clearly tagged as belonging to a different player - a guy who wore the same uniform number for many consecutive years with that same team, who played in almost all of the games that year, The pants have that player's number stitched into them, and the use on the pants is heavy, as would be expected for that guy, who stole bases and was a star player. The fellow they supposedly belonged to, on the other hand, was a relief pitcher who never stole a base in his decade long career. And he also had the same uniform number his entire career with several different teams, and it is not what's in those pants.

What obviously happened is that the player grabbed his shirt, easily identifiable with his big uniform number on the back, and then just grabbed a pair of pants that were the correct size out of a hamper, not caring, or not paying attention to the tagging, to make sure they were actually his. In fact, I'll bet most players never pay attention to uniform tagging to begin with.

So much for provenance. A well told story should never outweigh what an item actually is.