During a recent discussion, fellow member Etienne mentioned that he had been told by Tom Kramer (respected dealer, recently retired) that most publicity portraits dedicated to Latin American magazines were well-executed secretarials.

Having a stack of such "dedicated portraits" myself, this really "put the wind up me". I always knew that a publicity photograph dedicated to a magazine is not a lot less likely to be secretarial than a dedicated portrait sent to a fan through the post - you only need to look at some of the portraits dedicated to the British "Picture Post" magazine to see that - and I always did at least a minimal amount of due diligence research before buying. Sometimes I bought signed portraits even if I had my doubts, just because the image was so strong.  

Over the last few days I've gone back to quite a few of my signed portraits dedicated to Latin American magazines and done some more Google research on the better-known names, where possible looking at "PSA card" examples. In some cases I could find very little relevant reference material, for example where my portrait was "signed" at an early stage of the star's career. I will post some individual items in the "Is This Autograph Real?" section for additional feedback. These are not necessarily ones that give me cause for concern.

Based on what I've done so far, I don't think that all that many of my portaits are secretarial. The ones that may be secretarial feature stars who typically used secretaries for signing anyway. I will re-visit this conclusion once I hear back from members on the individual items but for now:

1. Does anyone know why portraits dedicated to South American magazines are particularly likely to be secretarial?

2. Is it possible that the magazines themselves would have forged the signatures? Highly unlikely I know.

3. Just how common are portraits dedicated to South American magazines? In all my Googling I came across only one other example by a star that I have in my collection (a Rita Hayworth that the seller seems very confident is real and has priced accordingly) and a handful of others.

4. How did the secretaries get so good and why did they go to great lengths to make the autographs "so real"? Most magazine readers and fan recipients would probably not have known what the star's autograph looked like anyway.

Once I've had some feedback on my dedicated portraits  I'll re-visit this thread with some final thoughts.