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Permalink Reply by Coachgd on June 4, 2015 at 7:07am

Some of the ball point pen looks great, but on some albums it just looks too light and its difficult to read.  I would rather have albums signed in sharpie so they stand out.  I would love to have the Journey and Scorpions albums!

Yes, I have heard artists say no to Blue sharpies.  When I got Slash last year, there was a guy with a guitar and he had a blue sharpie.  Slash said "I'll sign the guitar but not in blue, get a different color."  I don't know where celebrities/musicians equate blue with ebay.  There are several autographs on ebay signed in black.  If anyone can figure out the thought process of these people, please let me know!

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Permalink Reply by Terry G. on June 4, 2015 at 4:29pm

Jackson Browne is another artist who won't touch a blue sharpie. I've seen some go so far as to carry their own black sharpie and sign with that rather than a blue one. You cannot argue that a blue sharpie signature doesn't pop brightly on most items of solid background, much better than ink pen sigs do. When I started, ink pen was all we had so I have a bunch of stuff signed that way, and frankly, for 99% of it, I'd rather re-do them with sharpie than display them with the pen sigs- they would just look better, IMO.

As to the origin of the blue sharpie phobia, look no further than David Crosby, the original whiner about eBay sales of signed items. There has been a theory floated that Crosby equated blue sharpie sigs to ebay sales initially, and spread the word among his circle of artist friends (including Browne) and it disseminated slowly out into the world after that. 

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Permalink Reply by TW on June 6, 2015 at 2:55pm

This is interesting, I have never heard of this. I personally like the silver sharpie as they display great most of the time. I too do not mind personalized items if it adds to the story. Below is my AC/DC signed guitar that is personalized to Michael Klenfner who was an Atlantic Records music executive who was involved with bringing AC/DC to the USA. This guitar was a gift that the band had given him. When he passed away in 2009 his widow auctioned off much of his memorabilia including this guitar. At first I was going to remove the personalizations but now I'm glad I didnt.

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Permalink Reply by Terry G. on June 7, 2015 at 5:31pm

That looks like silver paint pen to me, not sharpie. The problem with silver sharpies, paint pens and the ilk has always been the same: they fail to give a clean sig a high percentage of the time, whether running loosely (paint pens), spreading too thin (silver sharpie) or failing to flow smoothly on non-hard surfaces. 

Never remove that personalization, as it is better than a COA with that story.

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Permalink Reply by TW on June 7, 2015 at 7:45pm

You could be right, I guess I'm not too familiar with the diffence between silver sharpie and silver paint pen. It does look a bit different than my Cinderella guitar which is probably sharpie. I'll post picture of it below. On this guitar each band member added their favorite Cinderella song along with their signatures.

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Permalink Reply by Terry G. on June 9, 2015 at 1:48pm

The differences between the two can change day to day, lol. One day your silver sharpie will flow perfect and give you a great sig, the next, it skips, dries up, or spreads all over the place. You have nice sigs on both those items, consider yourself pretty lucky, IMO, lol! 

It's kind of a sore spot with me, because a proper silver or gold signature looks amazing on dark items- but getting one is sometimes difficult. That guitar is sharp, and I think it's silver sharpie due to the difference in width of the sigs, a common issue with silvers.

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