There's a baseball sitting around here somewhere, a Harridge ball, that has a Jimmie Foxx signature on it, among others.
My grandfather got it at Fenway Park way back when, everybody in my family has always lived in Massachusetts, and between all of us we've been to hundreds of Red Sox games.
This baseball has been carefully passed down from generation to generation, with the story about how my grandfather got it at Fenway on the day Foxx hit his 50th home run in 1938.
The Foxx is a clubhouse signature. But if I didn't know that, and was tempted to sell this beloved heirloom, I'd probably send it to a premier auction house, and maybe on the day their third party of choice reviews it somebody has a toothache or heartache or something and it slips through the cracks and gets the go-ahead. And then a bunch of people start bitching about it on a forum.
I'd probably be mad and exclaim: "This has been in my family for 60-odd years and are you calling my grandfather a liar!?"
And I would not be lying. And the autograph would not be any more real.
Obviously something different is going on with the photos in question, but I think it's a similar overall mindset.
I'm the first to admit that I do not know Ruth signatures well enough to confidently call one real or not real, if I'm looking at them in a vacuum—but there is enough 'off' about this group that I wouldn't spend ten dollars on any one of them. The group of 11 signed photos and their general characteristics—that is, looking at the signatures, inscriptions, inks, photo types, and story behind them......something feels like it doesn't quite add up. I am not accusing any person or company of being unscrupulous. Something just seems fishy.
I think maybe a lot of people are used to seeing Marino forgeries or Coach's Corner specials. Compared to good forgeries those signatures look like they were drawn by a demented puppy with a hurt paw.
All that said, I would very much like for these photos to be real. They are absolutely beautiful. But, I would not buy them.
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