Comment by Steve Zarelli on May 16, 2011 at 5:54am

Looking at the image with 8 examples again, I am bothered by the signatures with the additional inscription. All of them (with additional inscription) except for the bottom center, appear too perfect and too similar.

 

While the shape and formation of these signatures appears almost perfect, there is no interaction between the letters. For example, there is a hard stop after the M in Mantle. I'm not seeing the quickness and flow, which is clearly seen in the middle and bottom middle exemplars. I suspect they were slowly drawn. If the suspect inscribed exemplars are fakes, they are frighteningly deceptive.

 

On closer exam, I'm pretty sure that the left column, middle row is authentic. So, to me, the left center, center center and bottom center are almost certainly good. The rest are suspect.

 

 

Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 16, 2011 at 9:36am

@Zippy:

I justs uploaded a comparison of this soldier's Mantles and John Block's from the same source:
http://live.autographmagazine.com/photo/mantles-from-aafes-exchange

[Click to enlarge]

 

Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 16, 2011 at 9:44am

Looking at them together, they look identical...but they're all slightly different. This is clearly some sophisticated signing machine...they're beyond the capabilities of human consistency.

Now I should qualify this statement by making it clear that I don't have scientific training.

Comment by Steve Zarelli on May 16, 2011 at 10:14am

Some of them appear as if they may be identical, but different thickness pens were used (for instance, the top three in the left column).  But, it's too smooth for an Autopen... not a trace of "jiggle" or the hard stop dots at the end of strokes.

 

I wonder if it is some sort of light table / tracing system. I'd say laser print is a possibility, except the Block example pretty clearly showed streaky lines on the high-res image.

 

I'd love to have one of these in hand to give it a look under high magnification.

 

Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 16, 2011 at 10:28am

Zippy...here's John Block's piece. Click for a huge version of the signature:

Comment by Steve Zarelli on May 16, 2011 at 10:38am

You can clearly see the slow down and wavering in the bottom part of the loops under the Ms. Especially in the second M... it's quite evident.

There is no doubt they are all fakes. The only mystery is who and how are they being done.

Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 16, 2011 at 11:21am

Here are some ones that Fudd calls genuine. He has more, but I just took the first dozen or so:

Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 16, 2011 at 11:27am

BTW, the 8 Mantles are all PSA/DNA:

Comment by Steve Zarelli on May 16, 2011 at 11:40am

I agree 100% with every Fudd example. See the flow? You can picture how his wrist was loose as he quickly signed all of these. 

 

Regarding the 8 PSAs. I don't now if they are right or wrong on some of them. As I mentioned, formation wise they all look good, but you definitely don't see the flow in some of them.  While they may be good, I always prefer exemplars that are "no-doubters."

Comment by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on May 16, 2011 at 12:01pm

Here's a rough extraction comparison of the a number of the AAFES Mantles:

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