Signature Certificate Of Authenticity - How To Acquire?

[Rauhbatz]

I have a fellow CAF team member that has several items signed by a well known aviation figure from the 1920s/1930s.

Im curious how one might go about determining whether the signatures are authentic.

Never been an issue with this sort of thing w my Robert Taylor prints...so wanted to get some steer in this area.

[JohnB]

Look online for an example of his/her signature.
Many Wiki listings have them.

Of course if they are from really famous folk there are experts you could send them to.

For aviation-grade famous people (aces, test pilots, etc) you might contact a gallery which specializes in signed prints.

Try organizations to which he/she may have belonged, or even local historical societies (example: Roscoe Turner in Indianapolis).

If they are associated with a specific aircraft make (Travel Air, Beech) contact an owner's club if there is one.
Also, try museums which display his/her aircraft or have an exhibit of him/her...like the EAA.

Back in the early '90s, I bought a copy of Don Gentile's wartime autobiography One Man Air Force from a small used bookstore in downtown Dayton.
I was stationed at Wright-Patterson, so I contacted the AF Museum archives department which was run by Dave Menard (if you have any USAF related aviation book from the 80s-90s, you'll usually find him acknowledged in it).

I went to the archives and he pulled the file on Gentile...filled with news clippings and a few AF service documents. On one was his signature...it matched.
Considering his untimely death in a T-33 crash in 1951, few autographs seem to survive compared to pilots featured in later prints

Considering his relative lack of fame (in other words, he is no Lindbergh or Armstrong), I figured no one would go to the trouble of forging a signature in an obscure book I paid less than $100 for. That he was a local made it more likely that copies of his book would be in the area.

Good luck.

[OD/NG]

I have a fellow CAF team member that has several items signed by a well known aviation figure from the 1920s/1930s.

Im curious how one might go about determining whether the signatures are authentic.

Never been an issue with this sort of thing w my Robert Taylor prints...so wanted to get some steer in this area.

What is their reason for wanting a certificate of authenticity? Is it for resale/insurance valuation or to prove if the signatures are authentic? If that person desires a certificate of authenticity, please realize that most of them are not worth the paper they are written on. Virtually every single "certificate of authenticity" you see on Ebay is completely worthless. Even the most famous authentication service of them all - PSA/DNA - has a very checkered past, with many stories of deception, embellishment, corruption, and authenticating known fakes. I don't recommend PSA/DNA services for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that they place permanent, possibly destructive chemicals on your signature to "mark them".

To truly authenticate something, they are probably going to have to go to a forensics signature authentication service. These are specialized people that have very specific criminal forensics training to assess authenticity of signatures. These people have training/backgrounds that allow them to testify in a court of law and often times work with law enforcement/FBI. Hiring one of these people is not cheap and the service often will exceed the valuation of the signature. There are several of these forensics experts who have appeared on television shows such as "Pawn Stars" and "True Crime" news shows. A quick google search will provide names of people who provide that service near your location.

Unless you have a very rare, expensive autograph, I wouldn't even bother, to be honest. Just my opinion.

Source: current owner of hundreds of rare autographs/signatures/pictures/documents, and my former friend was a long time (50 plus years) rare signature/autograph dealer who worked on Federal crimes with law enforcement/FBI as an "expert" in past cases.

[Rauhbatz]

Thanks for the great steer! Very helpful!