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Permalink Reply by Fuddjcal on January 11, 2019 at 12:48pm

Hi Ben,

a good rule of thumb is there are a few "buzz words" I see quite a lot that do not end well 99% of the time. 2 of those buzz words are "Estate Sale" & "Cut".

You may hit a HR 1% of the time but these buzz words can help save yourself!

That being said, not knowing Christy Mathewson's signature from a hole in the ground, I would say the signature is horribly laughable on that cut, IMHO. Maybe someone who knows what they are talking about will chime in? Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Ben K on January 11, 2019 at 12:52pm

Thanks for the reply Fuddjcal! Yes, estate sale and cut are definitely concerning terms. Mathewson's signature is tough cause based on examples on PSA's website it changed quite a bit over time. This one is reminiscent of some later in his life from ones I saw on there, but I'm not confident enough to say that it's 100% real. Hopefully someone else chimes in as well.

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on January 11, 2019 at 5:52pm

Not good, IMO. Copied (drawn). And at a snail's pace.

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Permalink Reply by Ben K on January 11, 2019 at 8:29pm

Thank you for your analysis. Is the reason you think it was done at a snail's pace due to the rigidity of the signature? Because I can certainly see that. Also do you think the reason it bled is because they left the pen in one place for too long?

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on January 11, 2019 at 10:26pm

Yes to both. Also, look at that M!! The first part of that M (like a 7), looks like it was drawn over more than once (Just like the "C").  And that 'a'!! Good Lord. A square top? Really? When did Christy every draw a square 'a'? I've never seen that before. The whole signature looks like it was drawn once, and then the forger went back to work on parts of it, tweaking this and that. But it's soooooo obvious. The forger used a well traveled exemplar, but realizing that he fouled up here and there, he backtracked to correct, only making it worse. It looks like 3 or 4 separate strokes make up that 'M'. lol  First, it's 3 tracks thick, and then it narrows down to 1, and then up to 2, back to 1 and then back to 3 strokes wide! And it's not so much bleed and feathering as it is multiple strokes to correct and tweak.

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Permalink Reply by Fuddjcal on January 12, 2019 at 11:01am

thanks Woody,that's what I was trying to say by horribly laughable...a real coffee spitter.

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Permalink Reply by Woody2Shoes on January 12, 2019 at 11:17am

#1 forgery tell that supersedes any and all other tells.

When someone signs their name, they don't:

A) Misspell

or, as in the case of Matty here:

B) Go back to correct and tweak penmanship

Not unless they're learning to write.

Just taking note of that alone is sometimes enough to typically identify a forgery, before even getting into the details of the signature itself.

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