Shoeless Joe Jackson Auto- Fake?

[ThomasL]

Originally Posted by Mark17

The exemplar you linked from the REA auction has a "k" unlike anything I've ever seen on a supposedly autographed Jackson item. However, his 1919 contract, which is shown in this thread, and supposedly wife - signed, is reasonably close to Joe's writing. I wonder if the REA wife signature is an outlier, because if that's how she always wrote it, then she didn't sign that 1919 contract, and Joe also must've used someone else's example as a template for drawing his name, because he sure wasn't attempting to match that "k."

Katie Jackson's signature changed from 1910s to the 40s-50s...most of her examples are from the 40s and 50s filling autograph requests. She was usually present at contract signings with baseball clubs (famously wasnt for Joe's 1920 contract as the story goes and I have not seen his 1920 contact surface...if someone has that picture as an aside to this I would love to see it) That 1919 contract and the 1912 album someone posted here is her signature...

I would have to re-read Gropman's bio of Jackson (he actually interviewed people who knew Joe and his sister was one of them he talked with) but I believe Jackson learned by tracing over what Katie wrote and then copying what Katie wrote until he could do it on his own...so stands to reason there would be some similarities between the two.

As another aside...I think (I could be misremembering this and totally wrong) in the early days of collecting Mrs Jackson's signature was actually thought of as Joe's signature...I dont know when the public and collecting community learned that Katie was who was actually signing items and not Joe...maybe someone on here knows that.