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I know I'm coming from left field on this topic but because there's an active market on ebay that affects a lot of unsuspecting buyers, I want to announce a discovery I made that makes some Autopen signatures easy to spot. Autopen signatures by mostly politicians, especially White House Oval Office occupants, are being sold to buyers who don't verify that the items they're buying contain real, live signatures. They do not do prooper research and buy willy-nilly. I have discovered through my simple method that they are being sold a bill of goods by unscrupulous, and not unscrupulous, sellers who are too lazy to verify what they sell.

I wrote recently to The Autopen Company, a Division of DAMILIC, about my discovery and I received a curt reply. I sent them a couple of photos of what I discovered and they said: "You have discovered interesting facts!" I show you in the 2 attachments what I found by simply using a high magnification loupe. One is Hillary Clinton's Autopen signature and how the ink flaked off on the page's fold. The other is of the unusual signature letters spikes.

It's bad enough that some of the White House stationery letters contain identical signatures, natch, but that the sellers seem oblivious to this fact even though some of the letters are years apart! Some of the honest sellers I have contacted, with samples, have changed their listings and included Autopen and have also lowered their prices to more realistic levels for such items.

I also have letters from Andrew Cuomo and James McGreevey signed by Autopen displaying the spikes.

Tags: Autopen, Bill, Clinton, Damilic, Hillary, House, Stationery, White

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Good work, any idea what this is?

Hey All,

View 100% in a Photoshop program. This was sold me mew as live ink - it was identified as a print in under 3 seconds before I opened the sleeve. These matrix/printer dots are huge and dead flat.

Deceptive in some ways (perhaps a scan), not in others. In hand - unbeiveable. I know what it is not. But, what is this and how is it made? It is a paper pc/laser sort of print with moire pattern, card stock but thin, the "signature" is in a slightly different "black" than the image, and at seems at times to sit on and not in, but both share the same dot matrix on the same bias. Both signature and image have uniform sheen. In some areas, as in the "G" in the enlargement attached, the outer edges of the stroke are made of many smaller scratchy strokes that are not always even in alignment. It creates a "whiskery" or painterly look. For now I am calling it a "matrix facsimile/preprint". It is likely a very cheap process (Nowadays) that looks remotely decent from...a distance, or this would be on a glossy real photo.
It has been suggested that the above is a simple copy made from a genuine hand-signed signed photo. I believe, after looking at the enlargement above, that is impossible. Those scratchy painterly/feathery/wispy little lines visible at the top and bottom of each individual stroke appear "enhanced" - by someone or something. I believe, if this were a simple copy, that it would have to be a copy of an existing preprint. Has anyone seen this signature before? Or this type of preprint?

No, I don't know what it is because I'm sort of a newbie to the inner world of real vs. non-real autographs. I'm not new to autographs per se because I've done my share of selling autographed items. But the items I've sold are in the lower echelon of value and the most I've sold for was $500 for a rare book from a collection of approx. 30 signed books by author Robert Nathan, and other collectibles. Never a doubt of any of them being fakes. I even wrote to Astronaut Frank Borman about his signature on Eastern Airlines stationery when he was its president and asked him if his signature was done with an Autopen and he nicely wrote back in longhand that as far as he knew he had never used an Autopen. See my ebay sold listing at: http://tinyurl.com/mxcdlgb

Since I got into examining my wife's autographed items, 3 on White House stationery by the Clintons, plus NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and NJ ex-Gov. James E. McGreevey, with a high magnification eye loupe and discovered the idiosyncrasies of some Autopen signatures, I've learned a lot in a short time.

Your closeup photo, besides the give-away dots, also show edges that are not smooth as I show in the closeup of Joan Rivers' autograph. It's real.

A magnifying loupe has become my latest friend. But, of course, I can only talk about autographs in my possession not about in photos as no one shows true closeups in their ebay listings to see the Autopen's spikes.

Live signatures/autographs have smooth edges.

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