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Charlton Heston Secretarial Signature Study

Hi:

At Steve Cyrkin's invitation, I'd like to call your attention to a signature study I've posted on my blog, Charlton Heston signature study by Steve Zarelli.

I believe I have identified the "tell" in Charlton Heston secretarial signatures, and if I am correct, the news is not good for most collectors. It appears that most Heston signed photos are secretarially signed.

Here is a synopsis:

The Theory
Photographs and other memorabilia sent to Mr. Heston's office were signed by a secretary. However, Mr. Heston did authentically sign books through-the-mail.

Real vs. Secretary
In authentic signatures, the R in "Charlton" is distinctly a lowercase "r" and less than half the height of the L. The first four letters are clearly "Char."

In secretarial signatures, the R looks much more like a lowercase "l" and is about the same height as the L. So, the first four letters appear to be "Chall."

I have attached two images to give you a small sampling.

For more details and images, please visit my blog at the link below.

I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this. I fully anticipate some resistance to the theory, because denial is always the first step. In fact, I would love to be proved wrong, because that would mean I wasn't sitting on a bunch of secretary signed photos!

By way of introduction, I have been collecting since the early 90s and I am the UACC Ethics Director.

I look forward to the discussion.

The Collecting Obsession

Regards,

Steve Zarelli

Tags: Charlton, Forgery, Heston, Secretary, authenticating, autograph, secretarial

2 members like this

Attachments: No photo uploads here

Figure 1.jpg, 60 KB
Secretary 1.jpg, 37 KB

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michael Selby on June 15, 2020 at 2:28am

Unfortunately the slab companies offer so many services that it becomes confusing to collectors who do not normally deal with them.

Came across this one where I guess Beckett just slabs items without looking at them. I informed the seller they were pushing David Carradine and not Don Cheadle........they didn't care. Still up for sale as Cheadle.

This is pretty much my point however; has anyone seen any sort of aggressive actions from the authentication companies to correct items that are incorrectly labeled?

I get a headache just looking at their ridiculous tiered price lists. I guess it's a good thing though, it has kept me from ever submitting anything. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on June 15, 2020 at 4:38am

Good thing they didn't crop that too close....

I also never submitted anything. I like the work - why pay someone to do it?

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Permalink Reply by Jason Strecker on June 15, 2020 at 7:50am

That David/Don item reminds me of a slabbed item which I think was PSA (or JSA) where the authenticator cited a James Earl which was either Jones or Ray as the opposite person. It was on the "hauls of shame" website listing the 100 biggest mistakes of JSA and PSA.

I see now that Charlton slab was noted for the card only but if I were the authenticator there definitely should be a note in the system, if they have a system, that it was for the card only and the autograph is a known secretarial. The original card company should be in question too.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Selby on June 16, 2020 at 12:22am

Jason,

Yeah, it was pointed out to me that the Carradine/Cheadle card was never authenticated by Beckett but they most likely provided encapsulation services for Razor and they tossed on whatever name Razor gave them. Problem is it creates confusion for buyers and it makes Beckett look bad. Even basic slab services should at least include a quick look up to see if the signature is even close.

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Permalink Reply by Michael Selby on June 16, 2020 at 12:33am

Also, the original card company (sadly no longer with us) is probably free from blame as this was created back in 2007.

I don't believe it was widely known that Charlton's TTM sigs were fake at the time and many reputable dealers were still pushing them.

Overall the Breygent card company put out some of the nicest and most original titled autograph cards during their run. Sadly, all card collectors seem to want is more Star Wars, Star Trek and James Bond while originality in card manufacturing is largely ignored.