Questions on gold HOF plaque postcards

[RichardSimon]

The only signed gold plaks of Weiss that I have ever seen have been ghost signed.

[dgo71]

Thanks Richard! As for Waner and McKechnie, safe to assume they don't exist? Would either of you, or anyone, know if the gold plaques were in fact made available to the public for the first time in late 1965?

[RichardSimon]

Waner and McKechnie do not exist as far as I know.
While I have seen a few ghost signed Weiss plaks I have never seen a Waner or McKechnie plak with any signature on it.
I have always believed that the gold plaks became available in 1966, making it impossible for Waner or McKechnie to have signed them.

[dgo71]

That makes even more sense. McKechnie passed in October of '65, so surely if the plaques had been issued prior to that, you would think a forgery at the very least would have entered the market. Thanks again Richard!

[RichardSimon]

Originally Posted by dgo71

That makes even more sense. McKechnie passed in October of '65, so surely if the plaques had been issued prior to that, you would think a forgery at the very least would have entered the market. Thanks again Richard!

No opportunity would pass the forgers by. After this thread, I would not be surprised to see a discovery of these two plaks coming out of a Southern state .

[dgo71]

Originally Posted by RichardSimon

No opportunity would pass the forgers by. After this thread, I would not be surprised to see a discovery of these two plaks coming out of a Southern state .

Doh! I certainly hope not!

[sicollector1954]

I would be curious to confirm the fact that Weiss did not attend his own induction as I sold a HOF autographed baseball through Heritage about 6 months ago. It had a PSA letter with it and also a George Weiss sig on it. Only the Campanella was determined to be secretarial or signed by his wife if I remember.

[dgo71]

Originally Posted by sicollector1954

I would be curious to confirm the fact that Weiss did not attend his own induction

The HOF website has a "Roll Call" section that pops open this PDF detailing every HOFer to attend each of the the ceremonies. Weiss was inducted in 1971 and passed in 1972. You can see his name is not listed here for either ceremony.

http://baseballhall.org/sites/defaul...ceremonies.pdf

That's not to say that someone didn't have Weiss sign the ball prior to his induction I suppose.

[WizardofOz1982]

Originally Posted by RichardSimon

No opportunity would pass the forgers by. After this thread, I would not be surprised to see a discovery of these two plaks coming out of a Southern state .

This one didn't come out of a Southern state, at least by the provenance I have for it. Given the tight signing window I had my doubts about it but it was in a lot of 70 or so other plaques that I'm without doubt on the great majority of due to familiarity. I'm in no way trying to say this is legit because I don't know his signature at all but I would think if someone forged one they would have forged more than one. Perhaps it was just some kid filling in signatures on cards for a set. I don't know.

[dgo71]

Very interesting. I know he most often signed "W B McKechnie", although he did on occasion sign "Bill". I'm not overly familiar with that version of his signature. I'm not loving some of the letter formations on this one, particularly the "B" and "M", but I don't feel I'm knowledgeable enough to say if it is real or not. If authentic it is definitely quite rare! Thanks for posting the image!