I wanted some opinions on this Mantle photo. I spent hours and hours reading up on this signature in other forums and here. I see several issues that raise questions for me, but they are mostly all irregularities that I have seen in other signatures that the consensus here said were authentic. The no. 7 seemed to be a little more questionable to me.

The back of the photo has a stamp with a 1995 Photo File copyright. This means it would have had to been signed in the last few months of his life. I have not seen a lot of examples of his signature shortly before his death. The photo itself is a copy of another photo ( I understand that is not unusual). From my research the photo paper appears to be the right vintage. You can see the MLB logo in the lower left corner is cropped (I do not know if that is an issue).

As far as the signature goes:

The signature appears to flow well when I look at an angle to see how the Sharpie laid down. There is a pick up at the end of the first M. Both M's are a little more "h"ish than many I have seen. The start of the i picks up to where it almost looks continuous. The dot on the i is a little bit of a slash. Is that an issue? The height position of the transition from Mickey to Mantle appeared to be about right. The a in Mantle looks maybe slightly small to me but not out of the range of possibility. I have not seen the break in the N on the No. 7 in other samples and the o seems a little off as well. the 7 is a little less pointed than most I have seen. Overall, the No. 7 to me seems to be the most questionable part, but I know only about what 15-20 hours of research has taught me.

I got this and some other memorabilia out of a rental home I owned in AZ when I had to evicted a tenant. I have an older friend who is a big Mantle fan that I would love to give it to if it is authentic. What do you think?