A huge collection of bogus autographs for sale

[William Farrell]

Originally Posted by frankbmd

Where would the forgery business be without exemplars?

The Clemente is a scream. I think it was copied from a Topps card, possibly the 1971 (I don't have them in front of me currently).

One thing to remember about exemplars, never bank on comparing signatures to just one, reliably authenticated or not.

There are plenty of autograph guide books published with faux exemplars, either unknowingly or done intentionally as a spike (to protect against plagiarism), and the professional services make enough errors to assure comparison to any one exemplar daunting, to say the least.

Exemplars should be used as an overview, and the more professionally graded ones you look at for comparison, the better the chance of referencing good ones and throwing out the bad, if you just pick one to study.

Also, examining scans of signed pieces, no matter how detailed, are sometimes an inadequate endeavor, authenticating in person, the first step being examining the piece for anachronism (wrong manufacturing date for the lifetime of the signer) sometimes ruling out even moving on to consider the signature itself.