What are Original Autographs?

When collectors search for or refer to original autographs, they mean those that are authentic, and signed by the person in question.

By definition of original autographs, they are hand-signed and authentic, and not copies, fakes, or forgeries.

When buying autographs on you need to be careful to select for an original and unique signed piece, and not a reprint autograph, for example. There are thousands of auctions and websites promoting authentic signed preprint autographs.

A reprint or "preprint" is a copy of an authentic signed item. Obviously a genuine autograph is going to be many times more expensive than a reprint or copy due to basic supply and demand.

Preprint's are becoming more difficult to spot to the untrained (and trained) eye. A magnifying glass helps you spot a preprint. I look for the parts of the autograph that overlay an image on the signed photo to see if the ink is raised, or part of the overall image.

You will also want to be careful when examining a signature that it has not been created by an autopen machine, as these have also "improved" along with technology. There seems to be more and more celebrity autographs being created by this machine, so watch out!

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