Looking for opinions on this Chick Hafey signature

[steve B]

Interesting thread, I think I'm about to learn some stuff.

So as someone that doesn't do much with autographs, I'm seeing lots of differences between the two that would make me think it wasn't Hafey, but was someone that learned the same writing system.

No quotes around "chick"
placement of the dot over the I or over the C
both the K and y end on a down stroke on the card but upstroke on the photo
on the photo the h conects to the a but not on the card
on the card most of the loops are tighter, nearly closed but are more looped on the photo
The right stroke of the H is curved on one, but very straight on another.
And a few more too.

I know signatures can change with time, but some of these differences seem like something that would be a bit more constant. The general formation of the letters is the same, but most anyone that learned the same penmanship system would be fairly close.


So do signatures change that much, or is it just assumed it's real because it's not an expensive one? The differences are bigger than some of the things that make people think some Ruth sigs are fake (I don't usualy see anything obvious on many of those)

Steve B

[prewarsports]

I would speculate that it was not his signature, but just my opinion. It might be real, but I saw it on ebay and passed on it.

[packs]

I don't know if it's real or not but will know when it comes. I had questions too but since the seller didn't even mention the possibility of it being signed, I figured the photo came from a collection that he either bought or was given. It would be hard to track down an original snapshot of Hafey, especially one like this which to me looked like Spring Training. So I'm assuming the photo was taken by someone who worked on field, like maybe a reporter. If it was a reporter and he was able to get this close to Hafey, I don't know he would then label the subject in the photo in a manner that looks very close to his signature. Why not just write it in your own handwriting? The O'Doul signature looked very different from this one so I ruled out the possibility that a forger had obtained both photos and forged both signatures. But again, I have no idea if it's authentic or not.

[packs]

Here is the O'Doul which I did not win. To me the signatures don't look like they were made by the same person, but they are in the same pen and look as though both photos were taken by the same person. Are they both fake?

[mr2686]

here's some assumptions. Based on the two photographs and the teams they were playing on...and assuming they were taken by the same person at or around the same time, that would put these photos at around 1932 or 33. I have seen a ton of Lefty O'Doul autographs but I do not believe I have seen one pre 1933, at least that I remember. Everyone of them has the top of the D curl around and create a straight line over the oul in O'doul. With that said, maybe this is prior to him starting that. This auto has enough similarities that , to me, if it was someone copying his signature, they would obviously know about the D...that would be the easiest to copy. If it were me, and for the price, I would have picked them both up and sent them off to Richard Simon or Jim Stinson to verify. At the very least, you would have a nice piece of baseball photography history of a hall of famer and a should be hall of famer (again, my opinion)

[rhettyeakley]

They look to be done in the same hand to me. The use of quotes on both along with the almost exact "f" and "y" in Lefty and Hafey makes me lean towards not autographed.
-Rhett

[ullmandds]

I'm certainly no expert...but the y's look very different to me?