Hi everyoneI was wonderig what your favorite
autograph or inscription of Rays was?
I will start with my three favorites

sig1.jpg (180 Kb, 43 downloads)

Two

sig2.jpg (155 Kb, 42 downloads)

Three

sig4.jpg (158 Kb, 40 downloads)

Foury

untitled1.jpg (212 Kb, 30 downloads)

My neck hurts!

The signature and date in GOLDEN APPLES seem to be a tracing of those from the inscription to "Bob" (1963), dated 10 years later to the day

My take on the Golden Apples signature is that they didn't have those type of markers back in 1953. I may be wrong.

v-939938.jpg (129 Kb, 25 downloads)

Okay, I placed all four on the same canvas and made some comparisons.

To qualify this a bit, I do have some experience in these matters, but we'll leave it at that. Judge for yourself.



An additional point: The previous poster noted that the signature shown in the upper right could have been made with a pen not in existence in 1953, something I should have noted when I said 'if any of these are real sigs, this is the likely candidate.' Perhaps none of them are real.

Also, the printed 'F' letter in the upper left corner picture, and the printed 'F'(letters) in the lower left corner picture do NOT match. This is a bad sign.

The 'D's' in 'Drew' also do not match at all. Bradbury's 'Next in Line' was produced in 1992, while the other signature, supposedly 16 years earlier, signs 'Drew' with exclamation point in both examples. Also...not a good sign.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Robert M Blevins,

I studied the images again and thought about them for a while.

Final conclusion: There is evidence here that all the documents except the one in the upper right could be forgeries. The relationship between the top right and bottom left cannot be ignored. The signature on the '1963' document looks like a slightly smaller and rather poor tracing.
This calls into question the validity of the other two documents, since they are submitted by the same source.

The 'Next In Line' document and the '1976' signatures are suspect because the 'D's in 'Drew' do not match, and because the signatures are vitually the same size and identical. Yet, these documents were supposedly signed sixteen years apart.

Because of these things, and the other items I mentioned, the documents would have to be examined by an independent expert before being declared genuine.
And...there's always the chance I am totally mistaken. The 'X' factor...

I agree that these items look rather fishy. However, I don't see the point of such forgery, since Ray seems to sign thousands of items very year. His signature isn't exactly rare!

I've seen Ray's signatures from the early 60's and pretty much that's the way he wrote, as per the June 5, 1963 one.

As to exclamation points, 1/2 of his signatures during certain times have exclamation points!!!!

The April 8, 1976 is classic Bradbury....I compared it to one I have dated 1977, and they are virtually identical.

The Golden Apples of the Sun is a mystery! It just looks too gosh darrn like the June 5, 1963 version, to the littliest quirkey movements in the letters. Odd, no? And then the similar dating. drewbaker: What's the history on this one as you know?
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http://www.catchaway.com

I think they are legit. Why fake it, when Rays kindness is so accessable. I think he has old pics of he and Ray as well. When Ray personalizes books and such as opposed to just putting his name on it, it does not raise the value much. He does it so that someone isn't cashing in on that aspect. I have a signed numbered copy of The Love Affair that I purchased brand new off the presses in '82 and I remember paying a premium, maybe $25.00 or $30.00. I don't have a clue what its worth now, I'm sure more. I have a lot of others signed by him and personalized to me and my kids that probably are not worth much in terms of dollar value but priceless treasures to me and my family, especially one letter I received from him on Halloween Tree stationary and the added bonus of a Christmas poem. I just think we should give Drewbaker the benefit of the doubt.

Ray IS very generous with his autograph, so why the people who forge it do is a mystery. I have seen some obvious forgeries over the years, though, and the 1953 signature here is one of them--whether it's seen alongside the 1963 inscription or not. Yes, it is an obvious, exact, and hesitant tracing of the 1963 autograph--which looks just like all the autographs he was signing in 1963, and not much like the autographs he was signing in 1953, when his handwriting was looser and somewhat larger. In 1953 he almost always used black or blue fountain pen ink--never, from what I've seen, a black marker of any kind, whether or not the technology was available. He started using felt markers in the middle or late sixties, as far as I can tell, and has used those and sometimes ball point ever since. (Although I have a blue ball point inscription dated 1955, and there are probably earlier ball point examples out there.) My first thought here was that the 1953 signature had been copied in pencil from the 1963 and then gone over in marker. Look at the hesitation in the tail of the Y in "Ray." And look at how all the lines stop short, instead of trailing fluidly off. Someone could have gotten a more natural effect by making a rubber stamp of the 1963 signature. Exact replication seems to have been the goal--if not quite the achievement.

If nothing else convinces you, the marker should.

The later autographs look just like his later autographs (from those periods) should. Those signatures are NOT identical, surely you can see--just hold them to the light.

The one quality you can count on in Bradbury's signing over the years (with certain obvious differences in his handwriting and phrasing in different periods) is its variability--which can make spotting forgeries very difficult. One of the surest signs of it is when someone tries to make one signature look TOO much like another. His autograph in 1947 looked nothing like his autograph in 1955; his autograph in 1955 looked only a little like his autograph in 1965; and his autograph ever since has included just however many letters of his name as he's feeling at a given moment. The 1953 autograph just isn't what he would have signed in 1953--not the spacing, slant, or size of the letters; not the awkward distance between his name and the floating date; probably not even where it is in the book, on the half-title page: in those days, he almost always signed on the first blank.

I'm not accusing anyone of producing or peddling forgeries, but personally I would not have touched that GOLDEN APPLES with a pretty long pole. I'd strongly advise the owner of the books, if he or she cares, to get an expert's opinion in-person. (Unfortunately even that might not help; a lot of experts will sell their favorable opinion for very little these days.)

Rocket says:

quote:

I think they are legit. Why fake it, when Rays kindness is so accessable.

Ray's kindness is well known, but not the point here. Remember: If a source submits signatures, and at least SOME of them are suspect, this definitely calls into question the validity of ALL. There is no getting around this fact.

Edited by Robert. Obviously I was wrong on this one...

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Robert M Blevins,

Not trying to pick a fight, of course, but I still don't understand the suggestion that the two later autographs are the same. Yes, they're both in the handwriting and type of ink I'd identify as 1970s-1990s Bradbury (whose handwriting did undergo changes during that period, but not such drastic changes that his hurried autographs didn't frequently look the same across the whole period). And both autographs inscribed to the same person, or at least the same name (presumably the poster, one Drew Baker, whose ownership signature that is, I guess, above Bradbury's 1976 inscription in--what? a copy of WHEN ELEPHANTS LAST IN THE DOORYARD BLOOMED?). But beyond that, the signatures themselves look sufficiently different and sufficiently unhesitant, and the phrasing and placement of the inscriptions is beyond reproach. They look and sound exactly like the inscriptions he's been writing in books for the past 30, 35 years. He has an inexhaustible stock (!) of exclamation points, and he's been doling them out for that long and longer.

Forgers rarely try to learn anything beyond a celebrity's autograph--a clumsy further inscription is more likely to give away the game. It wouldn't be worth it for anyone forging Bradbury to attempt much more than a signature (like the 1953 example)--and only to attempt that if they were going to put a desirable early date on it (like the 1953 example). Bradbury's later autograph is so common that relatively FEW identifiable forgeries have surfaced, compared with other popular writers who are either dead or a little more reluctant to sign.

In the two later-signed cases here, there would be no value in forging more than Bradbury's autograph, because (1) the forgery would sell better without personalization anyway (a trend I don't agree with, just one I'm observing), and (2) a botched inscription would unveil the whole scheme, and possibly ruin any chances of reselling the item that's been signed. The mere fact that there ARE inscriptions here, and that the inscriptions DO look perfectly authentic, is enough to convince me they're real. Pretty dime-a-dozen, but real.

Besides which, these inscriptions are to the original poster--poor Drew Baker, who seems to have retired from this discussion. I'd finally suggest that the two "Drew" inscriptions are authentic because the only person who might have forged them, in this case, is the original and current owner. But why would a collector and seeming admirer of Bradbury take such great pains to forge a perfect Bradbury inscription (let alone two inscriptions) to himself, when he'd be the one who always knew they weren't real, and when real ones were available right around the corner (drewbaker lives in LA), or for the price of a stamp? No, these inscriptions are real. How one unfortunate forgery ended up in Mr. Baker's collection I won't venture to guess--but it seems to be surrounded by genuine articles.

So (Robert), I'd be happy to take you up on your bet. I say three reals and one fake. I haven't talked about the 1963 inscription in depth, but I'll just say it looks right to me: exactly what he was doing at the time. The only one that doesn't fit "what he was doing at the time" is the 1953 signature; it's also, incidentally, the only signature here that's clumsily drawn, with a probably-anachronistic marker. That there are SO MANY things wrong with that one, and nothing clearly wrong with the others, is further evidence (to me) that the others aren't also forgeries--at least not by the same mind and hand.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: unsuspecting,