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When did autograph collecting start and when did dealers start selling autographs

I was wondering when people started collecting autographs and when dealers started selling them.Lets say its 1967,were there dealers who obtained autographs from hendrix,beatles,stones etc and sell them through a catalog or magazine?This should be an interesting conversation

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Permalink Reply by mc on March 30, 2011 at 5:20pm

Greg,Steve do you have any knowledge of this topic,or does anybody....

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 31, 2011 at 8:58am

$20 was a lot back then.

"Creem"...I forgot all about that magazine.

Mike, autographs have been collected since ancient times. Here's a nice, brief history on The Raab Collection's site:

http://www.raabcollection.com/pliny.aspx

Collecting Hendrix, The Beatles and The Stones came a little later, tho.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Cornish on April 1, 2011 at 7:10am

Thanks for that link Steve! That may have been where I'd seen the Pliny reference. I highly recommend Raab's site to anyone interested in autographs. A lot of cool info and museum-quality autographs to see there.

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Permalink Reply by E.B.G. on May 24, 2011 at 11:29pm

Thank you thank you Steve for this link. Very interesting!

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Permalink Reply by Lou reves on March 30, 2011 at 5:28pm

I know I read that some people were collecting autographs in the 1800's? So its been awhile.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Cornish on March 30, 2011 at 5:46pm

I recall reading that Pliny the Younger (it may have been the Elder, but I believe it was the Younger) mentioned, in one of his letters, owning and cherishing a letter or document signed by the late Julius Caesar.

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Permalink Reply by Sidney Fields on April 1, 2011 at 6:50am

Who did the COA?

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Permalink Reply by Scott Cornish on May 22, 2011 at 2:27pm

Haha. Sorry - just saw this now. I'm guessing that since the autograph is now lost, its COA is lost also. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 31, 2011 at 8:37am

Like coins have been collected since they started minting them. Books have been collected since the printing press was invented. I presume autographs have been collected (or desired), since people started writing their name. Seriously... it's been many hundreds if not a few thousand years.

My guess is that dedicated autograph dealers are relatively new... maybe since the 60s. However, prior to that paper (or epherema) dealers probably dealt in autographs.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Zarrillo on March 31, 2011 at 10:37am

yes the ancients collected autographs - but don't expect to find a "Julius Caesar" around today - but there are still examples of signatures going back to those times. I saw an ad somewhere recently which said this dealer had autographs going back to 4000 BC????!!!! (or was that BS?)

As for dealers (I have some of Walter Benjamins price lists and journals talking about autographs in the 1880s. I remember him talking about the depression during the Grover Cleveland era and that soon prices would start to climb again (sound familiar?). So I would say he was the first modern "delaer" in autographs...

In 1887, a store was built on Broadway in NY by Walter R. Benjamin to offer autographs and manuscripts for sale. This was probably the first store of its kind in the United States. The next year, a store that was very much like Benjamin’s was established by Francis Madigan and these were the two most dominant figures of this sort of business until 1936.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 31, 2011 at 1:13pm

I heard once that Jesus went into the marketplace and overturned the table of a dealer selling forgeries and secretarials. Legend has it, it was Myron Ross.

;-)