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Mantle, Williams and DiMaggio: Authenticating Baseball Forger Favorites

It is unquestionable that Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, and Joe DiMaggio have been American sports icons since the mid-20th century. It comes as no surprise that these three have been favorites of autograph collectors since the advent of autograph and card shows in the 1980’s. Unfortunately it is equally unsurprising, as attested to in the FBI’s famous 1990s Operation Bullpen, that they are also the three most forged sports autographs. Although most experts believe the forgery problem in sports memorabilia has lessoned tremendously since Operation Bullpen (estimated at that time to be “between $500,000,000 and $900,000,000” by the FBI), sadly large numbers of forged material still exist.

While it would require far more than a single article to educate the autograph collector to detect Mantle, Williams and DiMaggio forgeries, there are some general as well as specific warning keys to these three autographs that may aid in detecting possible forgeries.

Genuine Mantle, Williams & DiMaggio signed photo provided by EAC Gallery.
Click to enlarge:

As a general rule, one of the first things I examine in an autograph is its feel – how it was written. When an individual signs his name there should be an easy, smooth flow to the signature. We’ve all signed our names countless times, and we don’t need to think about it. An item we offered in one of our past auctions was a sheet of paper signed several times by Joe Jackson. Jackson, who was almost completely illiterate, actually had to practice, in essence work at, writing his name prior to signing documents. Likewise, when a forger writes a signature, he or she is working at it and therefore upon close examination it’s often possible to detect such warning keys as a slowness of motion, stops and starts at inappropriate spots, and possibly even a shakiness in the writing. An invaluable aid to help detect these keys, taught to me by John Reznikoff of University Archives many years ago, is to turn the autograph upside down. When you view an autograph in an unnatural position these warning keys are often easier to detect.

In addition to such general warning keys there are specific warning keys, unique to an individual’s autograph, to keep an eye out for.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s Mickey Mantle stated on numerous occasions that he was blessed to be able to earn more money signing his name at one single weekend show than his father had earned in an entire year working as a coal miner. Because of this Mantle always felt his fans were deserving of a clear, elegant signature. In authentic Mickey Mantle autographs Mickey would always end the “y” in “Mickey” on an upswing, and because he would be quickly flowing through his signature, he therefore started the “M” in “Mantle” on a higher level or plane than he had started the “M” in “Mickey”. Most forgers, because they were “working” on writing Mantle’s signature, would pause after completing “Mickey” and begin anew in writing “Mantle”, therefore placing “Mantle” on more of a straight line with “Mickey”. If one places a ruler or sheet of paper straight across the item Mantle signed (not straight across the signature) all that appears below the ruler or paper of an authentic Mantle is the bottom portion of the “M” in “Mickey”. In the case of most forgeries the ruler or paper completely covers the entire signature. Another difficulty forgers have with Mantle’s signature was his unique way of looping the bottom portion of his “M”. Such curved lines were executed in one easy movement by Mantle, but are most often elongated by forgers who again are “working” the signature. Such slow, elongated forgeries are especially easy to recognize on baseballs as their curved surfaces only add to the forger’s difficulty.

In the case of Ted Williams autographs, with the exception of the capital “W” in Williams, Ted would consistently make the size of all the letters in his last time nearly the same exact size. Most telling is the “illia”, with the “l”s just ever so slightly taller than the “i”s, and the “a” as tall as the “l”s. Try as they may, most forgers simply can’t undo years of training and habit causing their “l”s to be significantly taller than their “i”s, and their “a” significantly shorter than their “l”s. Williams also connected the “W” in “Williams” to the “ed” in “Ted” with a swirl that gave forgers difficulty in replicating in the same, easy, flowing movement as appears in authentic examples. Also of interest, in addition to the many Williams intentional forgeries in existence, Williams revealed late in his life that during his playing days his signature on team signed balls was often a “clubhouse” example, not penned by him.

Regarding Joe DiMaggio’s autograph, problems for forgers begin with the first letter in Joe. Like the “M”s in Mantle’s autograph, the “J” in “Joe”, which appears as two loops, a larger loop on top and a smaller one below, were created by curved lines which are the hardest to duplicate without leaving telltale signs of slowness or inappropriate stops and starts. In addition, DiMaggio would pen his “J”s so that the lower loop would be written on top of (literally written over) the upper loop in two places. For some inexplicable reason, a significant percentage of DiMaggio forgeries flow in the opposite direction, with the upper loop covering the lower one. An inexpensive magnifier or jeweler’s loop will aid in viewing this detail. Finally, the general feel of an authentic DiMaggio autograph is often somewhat sloppy, in the sense that the spacing between letters is uneven, obviously much more so in his second name. Again due to the fact that forgers are working rather than simply signing, the spacing they place between each letter is far more uniform.

Finally, the age-old adage “experience is the best teacher” is indeed appropriate here. The building of as extensive a library of exemplars as possible, of both authentic and fake examples, would be of help to visualize these and additional warning keys, and tremendously assist in the detection of forgeries.

Tags: authenticate, baseball, dimaggio, fame, forgeries, forgers, genuine, hall, hof, joe, More…mantle, mickey, of, ted, williams

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 23, 2012 at 4:26am

and if you hurry to;

Auction House: Bellingham Auction House LLC

- 7344 Guide Meridian Rd
- Lynden, WA, US, 98264
- Phone: 360-354-3090
- Email: bellinghamauctionhouse@gmail.com

You can still buy this authentic Mickey Mantle that has a FDE by Christopher Morales at a very reasonable price. So reasonable it already has a bid on it!\

now that CLM is banned from EBAY I suspect there will be lots more showing up all over the place. I actually took the time to send Capt'n Ahab a note on one of theirs and the response from Joy - "thanks". Still up for sale though when last checked. Why bother? Let people throw their money away as they wish. If they don't care why should we?

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Permalink Reply by CJCollector on March 23, 2012 at 7:21pm

Here's another set of forgeries with a COA from CSC Collectibles (on Ebay's Banned COA list). These are horrific Mantle and DiMaggio forgeries listed by Ebay seller ubid20u10.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/MICKEY-MANTLE-JOE-DiMAGGIO-DUAL-SIGNATURE-A...

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Permalink Reply by Travis Christenberry on March 24, 2012 at 1:46am

Taken down. Nice job Mr. Williams. Now they need to take the other one down, again here is the link.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/JOE-DIMAGGIO-AND-MICKEY-MANTLE-AND-BILL-MAI...

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Permalink Reply by Travis Christenberry on March 23, 2012 at 11:04pm

Here is another one.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 24, 2012 at 2:31am

120883310773 cullerbrian12 ( Feedback Score Of 1 ) probably has no idea... There are "lots" of CullerBrians all over the place.

the other day, a good friend of mine wanted me to look at a baseball that had a number of redsox on it and a babe ruth signature that his friend found in a wall doing reconstruction years ago. Several of the sox signatures circa '78 - '82 were fine but almost hurt myself laughing on the babe ruth. I put it in a ball cube in case they want to put it back in the wall.

maybe we can add this one and make it a time capsule.

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Permalink Reply by Travis Christenberry on March 24, 2012 at 2:37am

He's starting the auction at $25, I think he knows what he has. Oh well, doesn't matter now. Ebay took it down.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 24, 2012 at 2:45am

and only 200 more similar ones... of course so long as these types of offerings continue the forgery market will be alive and well; Ten sold and 12 more on hand!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/JOE-DIMAGGIO-AND-MICKEY-MANTLE-YANKEES-phot...

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Permalink Reply by Travis Christenberry on March 24, 2012 at 2:56am

So, should we just give up and let the scum ruin our hobby? I'll give up if you will.

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Permalink Reply by DB on March 24, 2012 at 3:42am

never say die as with the millions of forgeries already in existence it's similar to going uphill backwards on a cold day in molasses.

One would think with Mantle on EBAY and all of the "extended" consultants there wouldn't be one forgery on EBAY that has more than a 24 hour life. But it does, as it's like killing cockroaches. Then you have the plethora of owners who really believe they have "real ones" and it's a fight to the "Death" to convince them otherwise. But it has a CSC, ACE, TTA, STAT, CLM, PSA, JSA & IDGARA coa so it must be real or I got it at this store and they don't sell fake ones.

The hobby was (and still is when TPAs simply sell out) ruined long ago. All we can do here in our own little portion of the internet is provide some information to make people dangerous (as was the original focus of the thread). It would be helpful to keep the educational part in addition to the postings in concert with the original focus