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Earlier this week, I posted on the Autographs subreddit about a Jim Henson autograph that I'd recently purchased from an online estate sale. It was previously owned by a man with a collection of autographs nearing 2,000 or more. (see post in question, https://bit.ly/33pl3GR )
Unfortunately, this failed authentication with AutographCOA.com, failed to impress a fellow Redditor, and received "unlikely to pass full authentication" from Beckett.com (in that order).
However, I do have a second Jim Henson autograph that I purchased via an eBay auction some years ago. It came directly from a collector in New York state. For my piece of mind and to satisfy my (diagnosed) anxiety, I submitted it for the $10 pre-certification at Beckett.com. To my dismay, it also came back as "unlikely to pass full authentication."
So I went immediately back to eBay and got back in touch with the seller. He had earned my trust when I purchased the autograph and I wanted to be reassured. Last night, after a few emails exchanged back and forth with this person who had acquired the autograph, I wrote down the following:
The following things are true, as told to me by the seller. I have no reason to believe he's lying. He has proven himself to be a very trustworthy individual.
He attended a meet-and-greet event, promoting Muppet Babies merchandise, at a department store (possibly Macy's) in New York City. He acquired Jim Henson's signature on a Bert toy puppet, an Ernie toy puppet and on a poster for Muppets Take Manhattan. Later, he purchased a glass case to display the two toys in his home. The Muppets Take Manhattan poster later fell off a wall, damaging it. He later had the autographed portion of the poster professionally framed for redisplay in his home. Twenty or so years later, he sold the framed portion of a poster via an eBay auction (to me). As of October 2021, he had the two signed toys authenticated (in person) with AutographCOA.com.
During the course of our emails, he stated that if I wanted to return the autograph because of my lack of confidence (and Beckett being unable to authenticate it). I said that I did not want to return it. It can also be noted that the seller is a graphic designer who has collected other items that I would love to collect myself, including original comic art and other autographs.
In order to believe the autograph of JH is in any way fraudulent, I have to believe all of the following:
The seller is lying about having attended the event at the department store where Jim Henson appeared. He forged Jim Henson's signatures on two toys and a Muppets Take Manhattan poster. He also purchased a glass case to display the two toys with the fraudulent autographs. In order to make the autograph worth less, he damaged the poster and had the autographed portion professionally framed for display in his home. Then he decided to sell it 20+ years later. He later managed to get the two fraudulent autographs on the toys professionally authenticated at great cost to him, despite being fake.
I think you would agree that this strains credulity. Moreover, scammers do not generally return emails years after the transaction was completed or offer to buy back the item in question.
I would love to be able to authenticate the JH autograph, not only for my own piece of mind but because I've started on this journey and now I want to finish it. Also, it'd be nice to have it authenticated if my surviving relatives (I have no wife or kids but I have nieces and a nephew) want to sell it after I'm dead. It would be nice if it could go to another Muppets fan who could then have confidence in its authenticity. A copy of this post, along with my message history with the seller and his photos of the authentication letters for the two toys, are going to go into a file folder once I am done with this episode.
What makes this all the more frustrating is this: Jim Henson had two different ways of signing his name. Sometimes he wrote the J with a loop, (e.g., https://imgur.com/a/Lt3vB5F ) and sometimes he signed his J with a diagonal line instead of the loop ( https://imgur.com/a/mfd2AFM ). I obviously don't know why he would sign his name one way on one occasion and a different way for something else. On the day the original owner of my Jim Henson autograph got the two toys and the poster signed, Jim Henson signed his name two different ways ( https://imgur.com/a/fYM4DE9 ). Here's one that Beckett authenticated that does have the loop on the J: https://ebay.to/30f6KDh ... The other three Beckett-authenticated JH autographs currently on ebay have the diagonal line J.
I appreciate any and all advice or feedback that this forum can provide. Please be kind. I've had a terribly stressful week. (I hate the holidays).
Thank you for reading.
Replies are closed for this discussion.
You are being a bit harsh on yourself, Colin. Nobody here has called you names nor will. We are just offering our opinion in response to your inquiry.
Whatever you decide be happy. That is why we collect things in the first place.
When buying items online (especially through EBay), I presume that there's a good degree of certainty that what I buy will be fake -- it's usually the longest-running sellers/accounts in the signed works I search for who usually have the highest prevalence of faked or misrepresented items.
I've stopped counting how many times I've heard variations of the following:
- It was a family heirloom passed from my (father/mother) to me right before politician X became Prime Minister, and now it's the right time to sell. (For a photo that was clearly printed after said politician took office.)
- This was signed at book launch X with photo provenance. (Photo in listing shows book being signed in a different way to what the seller is offering.)
Usually, it's the sellers that are somewhat... green about the selling process that often to be the best to buy from, because it's clear that they either don't know what they have or they know and just want to clear space immediately. It's somewhat of a bad thing to state, but if someone is willing to sell you a signed letter from a Prime Minister at 1/10th the price with the original mailing envelope and it's part of a larger suite of items being sold that all come from the same person, I'll rank that more highly than the random seller in south Africa who's trying to convince me that the signed items they're trying to hawk under a fictitious charity (and using shill accounts to bid themselves up, to boot) are legitimate.
Hell, even on this site, there was that long discussion about the Saturday Night Live Star Autos card set (including how prevalent Chris Farley autos are), which was part of the research I did when I found a similar signed item by him earlier this year. PSA even authenticated an example that the OP in that topic even admitted had a high degree of probability of being fake, but there was nothing he could do about it since it would mean breaking an investment that cost a pretty penny.
I have had a couple of items with the utmost provenance, one of which I've spoken about here before.
A signed copy of Phil Esposito's memoir, Thunder and Lightning.
- I knew where it came from (a book designer from a major Canadian publishing house);
- I generally knew when the book was signed (it was part of a cache of signed books offered to friends of the publisher);
- I have other signed works inscribed for the book designer in question, several of which identify her by her full name;
- I was able to contact and confirm with the original owner that all of the books I'd found were hers, including the memoir in question;
And yet, when I gave this book to a buddy of mine (a collector of sports books), I was told that there was a high degree of probability that the signature was faked or autopen, even though it was signed on the title page and this was no reason to believe said athlete had gone to the trouble of using said autopen techniques to fake signatures.
Point is, you can have all the provenance in the world and still need a degree of skepticism when you're collecting. No one is infallible.
I also do not believe that the autograph you posted is authentic. Whilst I see some similarities, the size, flow, and overall autograph just look different to most others I've seen.
As you cannot authenticate it personally I'd get a refund as offered, cut my losses and try to find another with full provenance in the future.
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