Posted by QuickReadAbout.com Staff in When you are collecting autographs there is always the possibility of not getting what you think you are getting. Unless you see the person sign his signature, you do not know unless you secure an Authentication Service. You say, but it cost money to have his service. Yes it does cost but only a true expert can authenticate a signature.
If you plan to sell this signature one day, you certainly want to know exactly what you are selling. In this way, you will be saved hours of painstaking research and legalities later on. There are authenticators for ever kind of collecting, so it is of utmost importance to obtain the services of an authenticator who specializes in autographs. Autograph collecting can be an important investment tool for your future. You just may be glad you have a certificate of authentication later on if you decide to sell some of your collection. Make sure when you are autograph collecting that all autographs are in ink. Pencil quality is not reliable. It just may fade based on storage conditions, such as heat, humidity, and light. You may wish to keep your most valuable autographs in a deposit box in your local bank.
Some people have had valuable collections totally destroy with house fires, tornado, hurricanes, floods and the like. If you have invested valuable time autograph collecting, you no doubt would like to protect this collection. Even with authentication, mistakes are still made. When you are autograph collecting and buy an authenticated signature, just as in medicine, a second opinion will not hurt. You must always remember that where there is greed there is fraud. Money somehow tends to bring the worse out of us on one hand and the best out of us on the other hand. Autograph collecting is also tricky from the standpoint that a signature can change. As you advance from one stage of life to another stage of life you may find a slight variation in signatures. You no doubt can remember making a letter one way at a certain time in your life and now you make that same letter different today.
This is especially true with capital letters. For some reason, you tend to change how you make them from time to time. Famous people will give you a scrawl or as some say “Chicken scratch” for a signature. Let’s face it, they are human and sometimes don’t have the time to do a lot of focused autograph signing. When you are autograph collecting a specific person, you may find a number of variations in the signature. This is especially true, if the person has a stroke or some other illness that will interfere with his or her ability to write.
Certainly the signature will be difference if the person is able to sign his name at all. Autograph collecting is always a leap of faith, when buying autographs. The best way to obtain an autograph as you know is from the real person. This requires a different type of investment – and that is time.