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How similar do book-signing autographs have to be?

Following the recent and very long discussion about a McCartney book signing, I thought it might be interesting to show how much book-signing autographs can vary, even when done within a minute or two of one another.

Here are two Jean-Michel Basquiat signed books from 1985. The second is mine and the first is one I saw for sale recently. As you will see, one is 36/1000 and the other 38/1000 but there are countless variations between the two that cannot be accounted for by things such as tiredness, awkward signing surfaces - or increasing levels of intoxication(!)

I'm confident that both are authentic and it just goes to show that there is more to autograph authentication than making sure that an autograph looks the same as other authenticated examples. Personally, I find this one of the most satisfying things about autograph collecting.

Does anyone have similar examples of book-signings that were signed at almost exactly the same time but differ so considerably?

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on January 12, 2024 at 3:36am

I only have a few scans handy but the 1993 ISOLAR cards by Bowie were most all signed together and had wild variations.

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Permalink Reply by crazyrabbits23 on January 12, 2024 at 12:50pm

Wildly. I have about a dozen signed books from Margaret Atwood that have large variations (from practically illegible to page-width autographs) all signed within a minute of each other.

Depends on how generous the signer is, what's being signed, and the size of the autograph line.

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on January 12, 2024 at 10:27pm

Thanks Eric and cr23. Those Bowie autographs are indeed pretty wild and must present authenticators with a few challenges. I guess some signers are more consistent than others. Only that can really explain the level of analysis carried out in the McCartney thread I mentioned. Here is a link to it:

https://live.autographmagazine.com/forum/topics/is-this-autograph-o...

Here's another very different Basquiat. This one really does seem to need a lot of trust in your own judgement. I'd still say it feels real but I'd guess that Jean-Michel had no patience left to number the books by this time.