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Authenticity is Everything
Harrison Ford signed Raiders of the Lost Ark photo. Opinions please? Thank you in advance!
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Findbooks on
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I am afraid that it looks like a bad forgery, Not really my field but I have investigated his signature a few times and that's not it i.m.o.,
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Permalink Reply by Robby93 on
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Thanks again for your input. This is from the same seller that I posted the pics of Hopkins and Sim, which I bought btw. This seller is an older gentleman and many of these sigs are many, many years old. He's a TTM guy, and undoubtedly some of his collection are secretarials at worse. There is no maliciousness here, just blind faith......thanks again!
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Ah yes, blind faith - absolutely responsible for most of the wrong-uns in a collection which is why you must always assess the autograph before the seller.
I am old enough to remember the days when ebay first came online and it is difficult to describe the impact it had on collecting communities - most people just went mad and bought without any thought to potential fraud. I see these purchases time and time again - especially in autograph collections obtained over many years. There is no intent to defraud, just unintentional ignorance.
The fact that this madness or fever still continues for some is another matter. You can lead a horse to water, I guess.
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Permalink Reply by Eddy on
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Findbooks - That is a very good observation about where some of this material is now coming from....passed on to the next generation. I have to admit that I was swept up in " early eBay madness" myself at the turn of the century and made plenty of mistakes!
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I was fortunate enough not to be swept up because I had no interest in those days in autographs per se.
I was, however, repeatedly returning books to their sellers because they were mis-described as "first editions" when in fact they were 65th printings or Book Club editions - lol. Usually no evil intent on the part of the sellers, just lack of knowledge.
I did get ripped off though. I bought a Stephen King "signed" book for £300 or so, Maybe 1997/98. There was a photo and no question the autograph was legit. The seller even supplied a photo of King signing the book, supposedly. I went for it hook, line and sinker.
Received a horrible forgery - nothing like the listing. The photograph was a polaroid of a photograph. Ebay were not interested, Paypal would not give me a refund, I was royally shafted by them all.
That book has remained on or very near my desk these 25 years or so as a reminder. It was a pretty sophisticated scam for the time, I feel.
I now consider myself fortunate to have received such an early (albeit expensive at-the-time) wake-up call.
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Around 1999, I had the misfortune of encountering an individual who had a website of supposed classic film autographs. He said he had been a kind of stunt man and occasional extra in films in the 40s-70s.
At the time (being younger and more foolish), I thought all of his stuff was a treasure trove collected through the decades that he was now sharing with an eager public for a price. The one that still makes me wince was an oversized inscribed and signed portrait of Spencer Tracy and Kate Hepburn from SEA OF GRASS. It was made out to him and I snapped it up.
I nearly cried when I found out from a reputable dealer it was a fake. By that time, the seller's website had an in memoriam on it that said that he had died.
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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on
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That is horrible! Thankfully, I avoided most of that by always doing the research first - buying an autograph is, to me, the very last step. How else would one know what is better than average with regard to inscriptions, placement, contrast for the signer or even the success/attractiveness of the signature? Things like the Gleason secretarial debacle hit most everyone thanks to PSA. I too had the small photo once thought to be authentic, but then I discovered Patricia Saddleman and then the rest of his secretaries.
Below is a link to a 40 page thread about autographs and "self authenticating" websites...
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I don't know if Ford supplied secretarials or preprints TTM, but this appears a malicious, if somewhat older, forgery. I would guess a secretarial would be more legible. As I am sure has been said - buy the autograph, not the papers, story or anything else. Education is the best defense.
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Anytime. One wonders if there is a digital date code on the back - it might not be that old.
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