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Autograph's Johnny Cash Signature Study — Be Part of It!

Has there ever been a nicer, more humble, more fan friendly superstar than Johnny Cash?

Johnny was the Babe Ruth of Country Music—the top-ranking Country artist of all time and the most loved. And Johnny loved his fans as much as they love him. So while like the Babe, Cash signed untold numbers of autographs, the supply could never meet demand...and probably never will.

Fans who couldn't meet Cash in person often requested autographs through the mail. The common belief is that he personally autographed those requests. But between his demanding touring schedule and later, his failing health and vision, it seems impossible that he could have signed even half of the mail he received.

A growing number of collectors and dealers now believe that many if not most Johnny Cash through the mail autographs were secretarial. We want to see if we can identify any secretarial styles, and at the same time build a reference collection of no-question genuine Cash exemplars to help identifying forgeries.

Are There Johnny Cash Secretarials?
If So, How Do We Identify Them?
Help Find Out!

You can be an important part of the study in three ways:

Upload into this discussion images of Johnny Cash autographs that you personally received through the mail, and tell us when you received them. (The year is fine, but if you know the date, even better.)
Upload images of Johnny's autographs that YOU saw signed by Johnny yourself. Include the date or at least year, too. If you didn't see it signed yourself (like pre-signed ones sold or given away at shows), please don't upload it.
As more and more images are uploaded, see if you can identify characteristics that are commonly found on Johnny's through the mail autographs that are rarely if ever seen on ones signed in person.

With your help, we can identify Cash secretarials if they're out there. Over time this should increase the value of genuine Johnny Cash autographs, and help protect future fans and collectors against autographs that aren't authentic.

Once we finish this phase of the study, we'll go on to identifying genuine Johnny Cash autographs from forgeries.

Let's go!

Tags: Johnny, autographs, cash, genuine, mail, secretarial, the, through

12 members like this

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on January 31, 2018 at 7:46pm

Agree - been looking at this thread since yesterday. It does not appear to be Cash. It is so legible and deliberate.

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Permalink Reply by Corey Moylan on January 31, 2018 at 8:13pm

Looks like it could be signed by Joanne Cash..

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Permalink Reply by John Morris on February 1, 2018 at 2:11pm

Thoughts on this one?

Attachments: No photo uploads here

Cash - Ride This Train Record.jpg, 63 KB

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on February 1, 2018 at 2:18pm

It doesn’t look to me like Johnny Cash signed it.

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Permalink Reply by marc e on February 1, 2018 at 5:31pm

posted in other section and I said something doesn't seem right about it .it irks .so it wasn't just me not liking it

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Permalink Reply by SilentsGolden on February 11, 2018 at 5:14pm

You guys are great. I am trying to build a Johnny Cash reference library to make sure my examples are genuine. This is from a second printing of a Man in Black book....what do you guys think?

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Permalink Reply by marc e on February 11, 2018 at 5:26pm

looks fine

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Permalink Reply by SilentsGolden on February 11, 2018 at 6:59pm

Thanks John, and a special thanks for sharing your collection. I have really gotten into studying his signature. He is tough in the sense that there are so many variations.

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Permalink Reply by SilentsGolden on March 7, 2018 at 3:31pm

I thought it would be interesting to add this photo to this discussion. according to the seller this is a secretarial signature signed by no other than June Carter.