Autopen

The autopen is one of the biggest foes of the autograph collector. When collecting autographs remotely, while impossible to know 100 percent if an autograph is authentic, there are signs and ways of making a very educated guess. The first is to compare to known authentics.

The autopen machine makes this more difficult because the signature looks like an authentic. That in fact is the whole purpose of the autopen, to sign something delivering exactly the programmed authentic pattern. The two ways to identify an autopen are 1) find another signature exactly the same (no person signs their name exactly the same twice) 2) looks for the tells of the autopen.

This week we sadly got an autopen response. I verified this in both ways, but was put on the trail by the signs of the autopen itself. A normal signature trails off at the points of entry and points of exit of the pen lines. An autopen tends to make dots at the pickup and drop points as the mechanical arm lowers and raises the pen to contact the surface. This can be seen in the enlarged scan of our most recent response. Note the little drops at the start and end of penstroke lines. (it is not initially apparent, but becomes easier to spot with experience)