Mantle

[thetruthisoutthere]

Originally Posted by bravos4evr

I have done so on Braves stuff. Lots of time. BUT, I feel like I have looked closely at maybe 100+ Mantle autos and still can't tell a good one from a bad one (and that's the loopy one, I know nothing about the old sig he used in his early days)

It's like his auto is SO distinctive that it flummoxes me. I look at the loops on the M's but that doesn't seem to be consistent either.

Look at his autograph as a whole and not in bits and pieces.

That's where the "eye" comes in.

[Ryan1125]

As Christopher said, it is all about training your eye. Start compiling exemplars for Mantle, and look at them every day. Study the fakes, study the inscriptions, pay attention to where he signed, what items were commonly signed when he was doing shows, how big or small he would sign certain items, etc. This is the fun part of the hobby to me!

There isn't one major tell tale sign, but most forgers can't even get the first "M" right. Some fail miserably in the "ic" shape, some fail miserably on the "an" connection, some on the "tle" shape, some on the baseline, signature placement,etc. But it has to be looked at as a whole.

Here's a bit of a "Starters Guide" I whipped up for you. Authentics/Atypical Authentics/Common Forgeries, and what I consider halfway decent forgery attempts that are slightly better than the normal crap you'll see.

[sicollector1954]

Wow...is all I can say.

[Mr. Zipper]

Nice graphic, Ryan.

[Lordstan]

excellent graphic Ryan.
Also, all 3 baseballs in the common forgery examples are what are commonly referred to a "banana" Mantles. I point it out as people often ask what that means. You can clearly see how the exaggerated loops of the "M"s look banana shaped. The Ball where he signed under Williams is especially obvious.

[thetruthisoutthere]

Well done, Ryan.

By the way, Ryan was responsible for exposing the below dirtbags first.


https://live.autographmagazine.com/f...age=1#comments

[shelly]

You can sit there all day and look at those signatures. It still takes that certain person to pick them out. It just seems to work that way.

[Fuddjcal]

Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper

Nice graphic, Ryan.

agreed, very nicely done Ryan.

We take for granted that we can see a forgery from a mile a way. As Mad Dog Truth says, you gotta put in the time and at some point, it comes to you in a flash. When I started, I looked for 1 to 2 things. Now I'm looking at 1 through 10 (if necessary )

[Stampsfan]

Thank you Ryan, for taking the time to put that together. Much appreciated.

[clydepepper]

As someone who is not very savvy about autographs, I have allowed the TOPPS CERTIFIED AUTOGRAPH ISSUE cards into my collection. Either that or PSA/DNA - what's your opinion of these two (lazy man's) options?


.