This article originally appeared in my blog, Steve Zarelli presents: The Collecting Obsession.

James Stewart was a willing through-the-mail signer for many years. However, after suffering medical problems in the 1990s, his office fulfilled mail requests with secretarial signatures and an Autopen machine.

The proxy signatures -- typically signed "James…

Over the past few months I have noted an explosion of this James Stewart signature style on eBay. It seems as if some sellers have an endless supply of these signatures and they all have the same unusual characteristics.

• A sharp, "jerky" appearance
• Letters smashed together with poor letter definition
• Odd spacing between letters
• Never personalized
• Many of them do not appear to be on glossy photos... they are on cardstock prints

I…