Autopen? Need help with determining if this royal autograph is hand-signed.

Hi all,

I'm curious for some expert opinions on these autographs from the King and Queen of Belgium. I have two examples, both from royal greetings. My understanding is royals rarely sign autographs for the public so things like documents and cards are most common (?).

The birth announcement (royal_be_2) is from 2003.

The Christmas Greeting is (royal_be_1) is from 2004.

At the time both signers were NOT King and Queen yet (not until 2013). I include that cause i'm not sure if a prince would have an autopen :-)

I'm trying to find a guaranteed autograph from one of them online (ie some official document) but haven't as yet.

To me the signatures seem different enough to show that they are not reproductions of the same source signature. But then again there could be different sources I suppose.

So I'm hoping putting the sigs in front of y'all's eyes will help to identify any autopen (or hopefully not) characteristics!

Thanks in advance,

August

Tags: autopen, belgium, royal

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royal_be_1.jpg, 580 KB
royal_be_2.png, 3.1 MB

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Permalink Reply by August on March 23, 2016 at 4:59am

I've spent the evening (Sydney time) reviewing various websites showing how to pick autopens. Shaky lines. Blobs. Astronauts :-)

Based on my reading I think these were signed by a human. The differing ink shapes and what appears to be different shades due to pressure seem present.

I'm curious what others say ...

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on March 23, 2016 at 7:12am

As I recall at least one looked mechanical to me, one of the King's.

Eric

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Permalink Reply by August on March 23, 2016 at 1:54pm

Yeah, I was thinking that at first, but based on my reading of auto-pen's i don't see the characteristics that are listed for them. The signatures seem too smooth for a machine. They don't have the wobble, the dots or even the even pressure signs.

Hopefully others can weigh in.