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The Ink Blog Rick Schnake Click here to email us with your comments or questions.
The worth of a “manufactured” piece? January 5, 2012 What is the worth of an autograph item if the signature is genuine but the signer really did not sign the item itself?
I refer to what are actually manufactured pieces. They are not what they appear to be. While they appear to be signed photographs, signed quotations, or even full letters, they have instead been manufactured by someone who has added text or a photograph to a preexisting genuine signature to create an item that the signer never actually signed or even intended to sign. Examples of these appear for sale on eBay, in recognized autograph auctions, and in some dealer inventories. They include souvenir copies of President Richard Nixon’s resignation letter and President Gerald R. Ford’s subsequent pardon of Nixon and pieces bearing a photo of President Ronald Reagan before the Berlin Wall with a printed quotation of his famous demand to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Two types of manufactured pieces recently stirred this debate again in my own mind. The first is a book entitled President Richard M. Nixon: The Watergate Tapes, published by FlatSigned Press. It has a beautiful gilt-embossed leather cover imprinted with statements that it is a “Signed Limited Edition of 94 Copies” that is “Autographed By President Nixon.” FlatSigned’s website says that it “is a limited edition book that chronicles the events of the Watergate Scandal, and is personally hand-signed by President Richard M. Nixon himself.” It explains: “President Nixon, like all authors who are having a Signed Limited Edition published, signed extra sheets to make sure there were sufficient signed sheets after any loss of the pages due to damage occurring during the printing and publishing process. FlatSigned Press has indirectly acquired the remainder of these sheets and bound them into this legendary quality leather book. This is only the third book in literary history to be published in a Signed Limited Edition posthumously. The previous authors who had Signed Limited Editions published after their deaths were Mark Twain with Works of Mark Twain, and Rudyard Kipling with Works of Rudyard Kipling.” Amid the suggestions that Nixon signed this “limited edition” itself is the disclosure that FlatSigned “indirectly” acquired signature pages that Nixon had previously signed and bound them into the copies of this book. The word “indirectly” indicates that FlatSigned did not get the pages directly from Nixon. What remains unsaid is that Nixon signed those pages for one or more limited editions of his own books, not for this one. Given its subject, Nixon likely would never have signed this book, even if he had been alive when it was published. As to this book, then, it seems clear that Nixon was not an author who was, in FlatSigned’s words, “having a Signed Limited Edition published.” This really is not a book “published in a Signed Limited Edition posthumously.” Instead, this is a manufactured item. FlatSigned offers this book, packaged in a handmade, felt-lined cherry box with “four audio cassettes of the infamous Watergate tapes,” for $699. The second, similar to this but used differently, are copies of the quintessential photograph of the Truman presidency—that of President Harry S. Truman gleefully displaying the Chicago Daily Tribune with its infamous headline prematurely proclaiming dewey defeats truman—skillfully added beneath genuine Truman signatures on unused pages that Truman signed for binding into limited edition copies of his book Mr. Citizen. Truman had signed the pages, which were numbered after the word NUMBER printed beneath his signature and then bound into the books. The unused ones later found their way to the autograph market. The word NUMBER appears almost imperceptibly in the dark area of the later-added photograph, a clear link to the Mr. Citizen pages. Truman could not, of course, have known that this would happen when he signed this piece. I recently found an unframed copy of one of these manufactured pieces, described only as a “printed reproduction of the famous photograph,” being offered by another dealer for $8,999. We sold one of these several years ago, fully described for what it was, for less than a tenth of that. That one, which we custom framed, is here. Granted that this is a wonderful image from the greatest upset in American political history. Actual signed prints of that photograph are rare and very desirable. A similar image signed by Truman, part of the Forbes collection, sold for $16,450, including the buyer’s premium, at Christie’s in New York in 2002. But Truman did not sign these manufactured pieces as photographs, but instead as pages to be bound into Mr. Citizen. What, then, is a manufactured piece worth? The value naturally depends on what the piece is and whose signature is involved. Generally speaking, though, since manufactured pieces seem to be popular with some collectors, the market accords them more than signature value alone. The question is how much more is appropriate. In my mind, a manufactured piece is not worth what it would be were it the real thing—the genuineness of the signature notwithstanding. How much it is worth beyond mere signature value depends on whether it is clearly and properly described, so that the fact that it is a manufactured item is fully disclosed and, thus, the buyer is fully informed. True value does not lie in what an uninformed buyer may be convinced to pay.
Do your homework. October 9, 2010 Forgeries may contain obvious errors. Misspelling the signer’s name, signing an item that shows on its face that it was created after the signer died, and similar mistakes are easy to discern if you simply pay attention. But forgeries sometimes have less obvious errors that instantly give them away to the trained eye but nevertheless may fool those with less training. So collectors—particularly those who have not collected long or who have little or no experience with a particular name—have to do their homework. Consider the first day cover illustrated below that we recently saw for sale online. The cover commemorates the 150th anniversary of Missouri’s statehood. It is postmarked at Independence, Missouri, on May 8, 1971, which was Harry S. Truman’s 87th birthday. The signature on the cover purports to be that of Truman. The dealer offering it apparently thinks that it is his. Without doubt, however, Truman did not sign it. There are plenty of things that are wrong with this signature, but the most obvious—if you have studied enough to catch it—is that it does not reflect the form of Truman’s signature by that stage of his life. The signature on this cover is patterned after Truman's signature from the early 1950s to the early- to mid-1960s:
At age 87, though, Truman was an old man whose hands no longer worked as well as they did when he was younger. So his signature, like that of most people, underwent a transformation. Truman’s extremely old-age signatures took on an almost printed quality, with a printed middle initial “S” and a printed “T” on Truman. Here is a genuine example of Truman’s signature from a letter dated May 14, 1971, just eight days after the first day cover:
The differences are manifest. Determining which one is real is easy if you know enough about Truman’s autograph to know his signature at different points in his life. So check the websites of various dealers and auction houses to see how the person’s signature appeared at various stages in life. Look at more than a few pieces. Eventually you will see the formations and trends that disclose the time frame in which a signature was signed. That, in turn, can help to distinguish the good signatures from the fakes. Even those whom the autograph community generally regards as experts can misfire because of their own lack of knowledge. This old-age form of Truman’s signature is one that renowned, respected dealer Charles Hamilton, in his book Big Name Hunting, declared to be an “inept imitation” of “Truman’s own signature.” Yet I can say—as one who has seen dozens of these while focusing on Truman material in my personal collection for more than two decades—that the old-age signature shown above is the real McCoy. So consult more than one source, and make sure that those sources routinely handle the type of material for which you look to them for guidance. There are many signers whose signatures varied over the years. Sometimes the differences are stark, and sometimes they are subtle. Names that come readily to mind include Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Neil Armstrong, and Adolf Hitler. One can tell Gerald R. Ford’s presidential signature from his post-presidential one by the form. The form of a signature is not, of course, the only factor to consider when determining authenticity. But for this Truman first day cover, and for other pieces, it is determinative. So before you buy an item, do your homework.
Humanity in high places. September 19, 2010 We often tend to put the people of history on pedestals, as though they belong in a museum, and view their lives through the lens of history rather than the lens of humanity. We forget that they—like us—are human beings who love, laugh, cry, worry, celebrate, and mourn. The humanity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt emerges in a wonderful story that one of our clients recently told us about the time his father confronted him. As a child in the 1930s, the man lived in Keene, New Hampshire. His parents dressed him in a Buster Brown outfit, which was typical for children in that era, to see Roosevelt when he appeared in Keene for a speech. The little boy, dressed in his Sunday best, stood directly in front of the podium from which the President was to speak. Roosevelt saw him in the crowd and called him up on the stage. He then picked up the boy and sat him on his lap. “What a cute little girl you are!” the President exclaimed. “I’m not a little girl!” the child retorted. “I’m a boy! How would you like a punch in the nose?” Roosevelt, with his great charm and wit, immediately began to laugh. The Secret Service, of course, then whisked the child away for fear that he would make good on his promise. Stories like that illustrate just how very human those in high places can be.
Stepping into history. July 15, 2010 I was surfing the web while on vacation in Florida a few days ago when I came across the website for the Gold Coast Railroad Museum in Miami—and there, in all its glory, was Harry S. Truman’s railroad car, a Pullman car named the Ferdinand Magellan. I was elated to learn that the car still existed. There was far too much history in it for a Truman buff like me to miss it. It was around the Ferdinand Magellan’s dining table, for example, that Truman and his staff played poker with former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on their way to Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill delivered his famous “Iron Curtain” speech on March 6, 1946. Churchill bragged so much about his poker prowess that Truman was concerned about American honor. After Churchill continually lost for over an hour, though, Truman told his staff during a break that they should let up on him. Truman’s military aide and court jester Harry Vaughan protested. “But Boss,” he argued, “this guy’s a pigeon. If you want us to play our best poker for the nation’s honor, we’ll have this guy’s pants before the evening is over.” The Ferdinand Magellan was the site of much greater political lore two years later as Truman scored the biggest upset in American political history. He logged several thousand miles onboard as he barnstormed the country, giving ’em hell, as some said, in speeches from the car’s rear platform during the fabled Whistle Stop presidential campaign of 1948. It was an election that really no one, except Truman himself, thought he would win. Late in the campaign, Newsweek reported that the nation’s top 50 political pundits unanimously predicted that Republican Thomas Dewey would win. After one campaign stop, Truman aide Clark Clifford tried to sneak aboard the train without Truman noticing that he had a copy of the magazine. Truman saw him and told him to disregard the poll. “I know every one of those fifty fellows,” he said, “and not one of them has enough sense to pound sand into a rathole.” The Ferdinand Magellan was also the site of the most memorable photograph of Truman. On November 4, 1948, two days after his reelection, Truman stopped at Union Station in St. Louis on his way back to Washington from his home in Independence, Missouri. Someone handed him a copy of the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that he detested. A beaming Truman displayed the Tribune with its banner headline screaming “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN.” Experiencing this railroad car was like stepping into history. In the dining room, my fingertips felt the smooth mahogany table at which Truman and Churchill sat. I stood in the rear observation lounge where Truman calmly reassured Clifford. On the rear platform, emblazoned with the presidential seal in brass, I could almost hear Truman pouring it on the Do-Nothing 80th Congress and see him gleefully gig the Tribune. I have the museum staff to thank for the opportunity. The car is no longer open for the public to wander through it. Guided tours are available, but the volunteers who usually lead them were gone the day my family and I were there. The museum’s executive director happened to be there, though, and kindly gave us the tour, even though he, too, was on vacation. The Ferdinand Magellan shows its age. The original carpet and the original furniture and curtain fabrics are dingy and worn. Even so, the Ferdinand Magellan is still majestic—railroad car U.S. No. 1, the only car ever built especially for the President of the United States. It is a magnificent relic from yesteryear and a priceless piece of presidential history. Having found it, I would not have missed it.
Oh, for a genuine signature! May 27, 2010 People who do not know the difference routinely offer us material that is not genuinely signed. Presidential land grants dated after Andrew Jackson’s first term and more modern items bearing preprinted, secretarial, or Autopen signatures are typical. Occasionally, though, we are offered a piece that makes me really bemoan the fact that it is not genuine. It happened again the other day, this time with a secretarially signed form letter that Franklin D. Roosevelt sent out just before the 1928 election to promote the candidacy of the Democratic nominee, New York Governor Alfred E. Smith, against Republican Herbert Hoover. We had another copy of that letter in our files, but seeing this letter again brought back that same sense of regret—form letter or not. Roosevelt, who served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President Woodrow Wilson, and who in 1928 was himself running for Governor of New York, solicited a potential Democratic supporter in the strongest terms: I have not heard what decision you have made as between the two Presidential candidates, but remembering your firm belief in the policies and ideals of Woodrow Wilson, I am encouraged to hope that you have decided as I have decided—that under Governor Smith our country stands far more chance of returning to the path blazed out for us by our greatest President, than under the materialistic and self-seeking advisers who surround the other candidate; men whose influence has already made it manifest that high ideals and a forward-looking policy—not only for this country, but for the world—would stand as little chance under Mr. Hoover as they have stood under President Harding, President Coolidge and Mr. Mellon. To me, the contemptuous casting aside of all of President Wilson’s wonderful dreams of a better world, and the substitution of crass materialism and a dollar-and-cents viewpoint of everything has been a world tragedy. I know Governor Smith and I know that in his own way his interest in humanity, his intolerance of the oppression of the weak and his desire to help those handicapped by circumstances has led him to the same belief as to what our country’s attitude should be, and as to how its course should be guided, as animated President Wilson. I would deeply appreciate it if you would write me confidentially what you have decided, addressing the letter to my house, 49 East 65th Street, New York City. What would that letter be worth if FDR had signed it himself? He wrote thousands of letters, and routine examples abound. But letters with content of this quality rarely appear. The owner was certainly disappointed to learn that the signature was the work of a secretary—and, for obvious reasons, so was I.
Articulate thoughts. May 4, 2010 Sometimes, I think, as 21st Century people we tend to think of the distant 19th Century as a time when people were less civilized, less educated, and less articulate. As autograph collectors know, that is far from the truth. We recently acquired a fascinating collection of autograph letters that proves the point. It consists of five scrapbooks full of letters from people of prominence, some much more than others, in the 1890s. The collection was assembled by a professor in the Department of Accounting and Penmanship at the Kansas Normal School, now Emporia State University. He had his students write to ask for handwritten items—sentiments, words of advice, or reminiscences—to be included in these albums. Amazingly, although it was certainly a different time, people complied. The albums contain letters and notes from presidents, senators, representatives, Supreme Court justices, Civil War generals, authors, activists and reformers, educators, and others. Many comment on the value of education. But many others relate to the interests and careers of the writers themselves. Among the items are a letter by Susan B. Anthony demanding that the men of Kansas “repent” and grant women the right to vote; one from the United States consular official in Sierra Leone, who recalled watching the exhumation of the body of Napoleon on St. Helena; a seven-page autobiographical letter by the first United States Senator from Iowa, George Wallace Jones; and a letter describing how Indians chased the author’s stage coach across the western plains. One of my favorite reminiscences is by former Confederate Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee, who recalled nearly riding his horse over a wounded Federal soldier lying in a field of tall grass one night after the Seven Days’ Battles around Richmond, Virginia, in 1862. The soldier, he said, “faintly cried out, ‘don’t ride over a dying man.’” Lee dismounted, raised the soldier’s head on his arm, gave him a drink of whisky, and called an ambulance to take him to a Confederate field hospital. “Thank you,” the soldier said. “I have a father and mother in Maine who will bless you and thank you for this kindness after I am dead.” He indeed later died. “God grant!” Lee wrote, “that no one of your eighteen hundred students will ever behold the horrors of a bloody battle field—that our grand reunited country has seen its last Civil War.” One cannot read these letters without appreciating how very articulate those people were. That, in turn, makes collecting their letters all the more enjoyable.
Remembering the Holocaust. February 26, 2010 This week I talked with a local man who, as a German child in southern Poland, lived much of the Holocaust experience that I discussed in my last article. He choked with emotion as he recounted Nazi horrors that he had experienced. His parents were not Jewish, but both opposed the Nazi regime. His mother was executed in Plötzensee Prison, and his father died at the Mauthausen concentration camp. He recalled that he was 4 years old when an SS detachment came to arrest his mother. The soldiers picked her up in a convertible Mercedes-Benz. One of them leaned down to him and said that she would return in two hours. She never came back. He has a letter from Heinrich Himmler, the Nazi Reichsführer-SS, refusing permission to see his mother. He also has a postcard that his mother wrote to his aunt, who was caring for him and his sister, saying that she would no longer be alive by the time that the children and their aunt read the card. Finally, he has a card from the prison authorities simply informing the family that his mother was no longer there. His home in Poland was next to the railroad track. He told me of sitting on a high wall as a 7-year-old child and watching SS soldiers herd Poles, Czechs, and Jews like cattle into boxcars on trains bound for the gas chambers at Auschwitz. When a car was full, he said, the soldiers slammed the doors shut. A child separated from the parents was unceremoniously herded into the next car. The Nazi atrocities were indeed beyond words. Some may wonder, then, why I handle Nazi autograph material. One reason is that the historical impact of the Third Reich is undeniable, for the immense world war that Adolf Hitler spawned set the stage for the Cold War that shaped the military and economic history of the second half of the 20th Century. One does not have to agree with Nazism to recognize the significance of its historical role. But there is another reason, one that I believe is more compelling: We must never forget what happened, because we never allow it to happen again. President Harry S. Truman rightly insisted on holding the war crimes trials in order to document Nazi atrocities systematically and publicly so that no one could ever convincingly claim that they did not happen, were minor, or occurred without the authority of the German government. The evidence from the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials overwhelmingly debunks the claims of modern revisionists who deny the Holocaust. While I respect the sentiments of dealers who decline to handle Nazi autograph material, as a matter of conscience I would view my own refusal to do so as aiding those who want to sweep the Third Reich under the rug. I could not do that before—and, after talking with this man earlier this week, I certainly could never do it now.
Unknowns. January 8, 2010 I often say that given the option of spending a few thousand dollars on a signature of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln or spending the same amount of money on a good-content letter, I would take the letter every time. With few exceptions, as seasoned collectors know and new ones quickly learn, it is the message that gives real historical value to the signature. Even many seasoned collectors, though, ignore those whose names themselves mean nothing. Yet there are many unknown people whose letters are every bit as fascinating and as much a part of history as those of leaders of the time. For example, letters of Civil War soldiers on both sides, describing the battles in which they participated and conditions under which they lived, provide historical insight that a study of those in power cannot. This comes to mind as I am preparing to list a group of Holocaust and related letters that come to us from a noted author. Most are family letters from no one of historical significance. Yet the history that the letters reflect makes owning them worthwhile. They include letters from prisoners in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau—people who could say little, and whose mail the Nazis heavily censored, yet who managed to convey the difficulty of their existence in the few words they were allowed to write on officially-issued paper. Consider, for example, the Sachsenhausen prisoner who asked his wife, with obvious pain, “Please let me know how you meant it in your letter before the last with the greatest humiliation of a woman through a man. I do not understand that well.” He added, “In reading your letter I walked with you through our entire place. I thought of each little place which reminded me of any happy, content, and beautiful experience. I do not think about the discontented ones.” Then there is the Auschwitz prisoner, who—perhaps knowing, but perhaps not, that the Nazis likely blocked communication from his family—wrote to his wife, “I am really glad to have received a letter from you but am curious why you haven’t written for such a long time. . . . Please write to me often, and please answer every one of my letters.” As I held and read these letters, images flashed through my mind of Jewish men lined up to be shot at the edge of a mass grave and of women, with looks of knowing fear, clutching and comforting their children in line for the gas chambers. The Nazi atrocities were beyond words. The people who wrote these letters lived experiences such as those and likely died as a result. Their names mean nothing autographically, but their letters bring history alive. As such they are well worth collecting.
Fairness and trust. December 7, 2009 A few evenings ago, I had a nice visit with a client. The topic turned to fairness in autograph prices. There is a fairly well established range of value for most material. Prices vary based on a number of factors, which famed autograph dealer Mary A. Benjamin cogently explained in her book Autographs: A Key to Collecting. Generally speaking, those variations establish a range of values for a given item. Prices that fall within the established range are reasonable, while prices that greatly exceed it, absent a reasonable explanation for doing so, are not. I recalled a gallery that I saw while on vacation a few years ago. In the window was a beautifully framed Abraham Lincoln piece. It was an autograph endorsement, signed A. Lincoln as President, on the back of a letter. Lincoln wrote lots of those, referring letters to cabinet officers or directing that a petitioner be discharged upon taking a loyalty oath, and consequently they are among the most common Lincoln autograph pieces. Because of Lincoln’s status as one of the great Presidents, though, and because of his role in maintaining the Union, his autograph material is uniformly expensive. Most dealers offer endorsements such as that in the range of $6,500 to $7,500. Only endorsements with independent historical significance or an excellent association command higher prices. The framed endorsement that I saw in that window, though, was priced at $19,900. The exquisite framing added value, to be sure. But it struck me that I was looking at some $13,000 worth of framing—and that the price was aimed at buyers who might want a piece of history for display but who would have no concept of the true value of the autograph piece itself. Some would say that such a price is fair if a buyer is willing to pay it. I have a different view. Since my clients look to me for knowledge, advice, and effort, I have a responsibility to treat them in a way that creates and reinforces trust. Lasting relationships, and indeed friendships, rest on candor and fairness. The collector whom I might be tempted to overcharge today will assuredly never be a client who asks my help to build a collection tomorrow. Hence I cannot be a mere purveyor of paper—and professionalism, with all that the term implies, cannot be a mere shibboleth.
Hidden treasures. November 6, 2009 After more than 20 years of working with historical autographs, I am still amazed at where people find some of the most wonderful pieces. I spent some time tonight with an auction catalog. One of the items listed was an 1858 Abraham Lincoln letter that someone found a few years ago inside a book at a flea market. That reminded me of a piece in my own collection. About 10 years ago I bought a World War I soldier’s pay book issued to a sergeant in Battery D, 129th Field Artillery Regiment, 35th Division, a National Guard unit composed of soldiers from Missouri and Kansas. It is dated November 1, 1918, just ten days before the armistice that ended the Great War. The captain of that artillery battery, which came under fire in the Battle of the Argonne Forest, was my fellow Missourian, Harry S. Truman, whose autograph material forms the centerpiece of my private collection. Truman had signed the pay book in blue fountain pen as the commanding officer and added his rank below his signature. The piece is in extra fine condition—as though it were issued yesterday. At the time, it was the earliest Truman piece that I had ever seen on the market. The seller was from Independence, Missouri, where Truman lived most of his life. He told me that his mother had bought a used book at—you guessed it—a local flea market and had later discovered the sergeant’s pay book underneath the fly leaf, which had been glued down around it. Apparently whoever owned the book had put the pay book beneath the fly leaf for safekeeping. There is no telling how long it had been there. So things like that really do happen. Be sure to check twice before you sell something at a garage sale or throw it away.
Simple math. October 29, 2009 Sometimes all it takes to determine that an autograph could not possibly be genuine is a little math. Over the past few months we have been offered a couple of autographs that themselves proved that they could not possibly have been genuinely signed. One was a signature of J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the other was a signed engraving of famed British Africa explorer David Livingstone. The Hoover signature was on the back of a post card from a Miami, Florida, hotel. The card bore a 1975 copyright date. But that was the problem—Hoover died in 1972. Since the card was printed at least three years after his death, Hoover could not possibly have signed it. The card itself disproved the autograph. The Livingstone engraving was on book weight paper with water stains at the bottom. The owner speculated that it had been removed from the front of a book that was discarded after it became wet and speculated that Livingstone had signed the book. Our first thought was that the signature was probably preprinted. Books by and about notable people, with printed facsimile signatures below their photographs, were common in Livingstone’s time. Yet the scan we received did not suggest a printed facsimile signature. There appeared to be depth of ink where the strokes crossed, all in the right places. At the bottom, though, the engraving bore a small printed legend stating that it was published in London in 1880. Since Livingstone died in Africa in 1873, this piece likewise disproved itself. So there was no need to examine the signature further. Even if it was hand signed, assuredly David Livingstone did not hold the pen. Sometimes autograph authentication is difficult. Sometimes, though, all it takes is a little math. |
