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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 Rolf Ramseier on March 15, 2011 at 7:49am

Mike, the same seller has also the photo on the photo proof for sale :

http://cgi.ebay.com/Charlton-Heston-autograph-8x10-photo-ALASKA-/38...

I don't know if I have purchased the similar photos from this dealer some years ago or if it was another dealer, but what I know is this was and still is the real deal !

My post with the same photos (signed in gold and black marker) and the same photo proof can be found on page 6 of this blog.

Mike, when I read your comments within this Charlton Heston blog, I have to start to believe that you think only YOUR autographs are genuine and ALL other offered is a scam ! Sorry to say that, but this has become my feeling about you !

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 15, 2011 at 8:37am

I agree that these are authentic and I just bought one.

I think we need to maintain some perspective here. Up until less than a week ago, Heston signatures were in plentiful supply and inexpensive. You can safely bet that no master forger was pumping out brilliant Heston forgeries -- it simply wasn't worth the time or effort. If a Heston signature passes the secretarial test, and it's not an obvious forgery, chances are it's the real deal.

That may change over time, but for now it's the market reality.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 15, 2011 at 8:51am

In fact, I just bought one of each for substantially less than the asking price. ;-)

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Permalink Reply by Rolf Ramseier on March 15, 2011 at 9:01am

by looking at the sale History you are not the only one Steve :-) Good choice !

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 15, 2011 at 9:12am

Looks like the Alaska SPs are now gone. 7 sold this morning.

I only bought one, so no one can accuse me of hoarding! ;-)

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 15, 2011 at 1:14pm

He just listed 10 more.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380324583732

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on March 15, 2011 at 2:07pm

I predict those will be $50 by Christmas, easy.

Permalink Reply by Robert Zarrillo on March 16, 2011 at 1:36pm

I bought three myself thanks for the info

Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on March 15, 2011 at 9:11am

I'm not that conspiratorial. :-)

Given the choice between someone not paying attention/sloppy work versus conspiracy... it's usually the former.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 15, 2011 at 1:17pm

What is difficult to fathom is that they obviously have both genuine and non genuine exemplars in their arsenal. The latter we now know to not be genuine as has been documented here. However we can argue why weren't they ontop of this - well, one simply argues that it was universially accepted as a Good Exemplar.

We we would like them to react faster or betters double back on these when empirical evidence states otherwise.