Does anyone know if Cy Seymour autograph exists?
 

I have not yet seen an example of one. Just curious if any examples exist.

Thanks.

Hard to believe one doesn't exist when examples of players like Waddell, Delahanty, Chapman, even Joss have at least one. (not even worth mentioning 19th century guys). My guess is he was completely illiterate. Dying in 1919 (years and years after he retired) is too long a time to not have signed at least a few autos. Also had mental issues I've read, similar in some ways to Rube. Likely hindering autograph chances even more.

I can assure you he was literate. A handful of multi-page handwritten letters exist in the collections of the Hall of Fame, but I don't recall ever seeing even a single authentic autograph that made it into the hands of collectors. Like so many people of his time, he had beautiful penmanship. The signatures on the letters matched up favorably with a signed document once in the hands of the government before being destroyed in a fire. Thankfully, some very forward-thinking person thought it wise to convert these documents to microfiche prior to this fire, so while the originals are long gone, the copies live on in perpetuity. Seymour would have been made to sign the document himself, so if he had been illiterate, he would have signed with an X mark, but he signed his full first, middle and last names on that item.

Many years ago, I do remember seeing a tiny cut that was purported to be that of Seymour, but at the time, we could not authenticate it due to lack of exemplars. I was naturally suspicious of it to begin with. It wasn't until years later when doing research in Cooperstown that I chanced upon those letters. From what I can recall of the cut, it bore zero resemblance to the genuine article.

That was just the most likely scenario of why there are no examples. If there are letters, obviously I'm wrong.

Still weird how he lived to 1919 and there are no images available of an autograph.

on a few cards (Fan Craze, for example) he is referred to as...
 

J. Bentley Seymour -

that name sounds like someone who could read and write (as opposed to, say, Rube Waddell)-

You have to remember that people didn't start collecting baseball autographs in larger numbers until a decade after he passed. That is definitely a huge contributing factor. Hence why many from his era and before him are almost impossible to find.

With a fake sounding name like mine, many might expect that I would be illiterate.

Dug "he can't reed or rite but he's a" Goodman

Not mine, but posted on Net54 about 5 years ago…

https://net54baseball.com/attachment...2&d=1612809962

Begs the question "what did Beckett use for their exemplar?"

Since Seymour died in 1919 at only 41 years of age, there was a chance he signed a WW1 draft registration card; so I went to ancestry.com to see if I could find one.

Unfortunately, I found nothing for him. I found his death record in the New York death record index, saying he died from TB.

According to his obituary, which I found in the Brooklyn Times Union on newspapers.com, he was found physically unfit for military service when WW1 started; which probably explains the lack of a draft registration card.

Steve

It sure does, Scott. Especially considering it bears absolutely no resemblance to the genuine article.

Weird.

An opinion seller MUST have a reason for their opinion other that getting their invoice paid, don't they?

Whatever that slabbed cut is (as opposed to what I strongly feel it is not), it's clearly ancient by baseball standards and was never intended by its writer to be a forgery. If I had to guess, it could very well have been clipped from a piece of correspondence in which the author of the letter was mentioning Seymour in the body of his message. This wouldn't be the first time that I've seen a player's name clipped in such a fashion, then passed off by somebody to be an autograph of said player. Whoever initially cut that "Cy Seymour" and passed it off as his autograph likely did so long before any of us were alive.

There have been other, more innocent scenarios which have happened in the past, wherein a collector or researcher has contacted a player's family seeking an autograph. With perfectly good intent, a descendant has dutifully sent along what they thought was an autograph of their relative, but it turned out to have been written by someone else! Sometimes written by another family member; sometimes it was the autograph of another family member with the same name (such as a Sr. or a Jr.). On other occasions, perhaps it was a document that had been filled out by someone unknown. These things happen. In fact, I was gifted a turn of the century photo by the family of a player which had been taped into the player's scrapbook way back when. Their relatives were happy to inform me that there was an autograph on the back! It wasn't actually an autograph, but rather a penciled identifier just as we've seen on countless press/wire photos.

So, we will likely never know the actual story behind that piece, but the chances are great that it was one of these two scenarios! I've seen these occurrences before and will undoubtedly see them again.