Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Help: Is This An Authentic Autograph?

Back when I first re-entered this glorious hobby, I was faced with getting organized. While it took me quite a while to finally feel like I had achieved that goal, my first attempts mainly consisted of separating my cards by sport, and occasionally by set.

In doing so, I came upon a group of cards that Night Owl would describe as wholly imbuing a West Coast flavor: Mother's Cookies. I had a vague memory of these from years gone by, but it was pretty cool to come across a small piece of my youth. If you've ever scanned my Want List, you'll see that I almost have the entire 1996 Team Set, less four cards. As I began to group the Mother's Cookies cards I had together, something caused me to flip at least one of them over.

I have no idea what possessed me to do so. But had I not, I would not have come across this potential authentic auto.


Clear as day, that says John Roseboro. The question, of course, thus becomes whether or not it was John Roseboro himself who wrote John Roseboro.

I honestly have no idea how I would have gotten Roseboro's signature, and why I would have used a Mother's Cookies card of Tommy Lasorda in doing so. My best guess would involve me somehow being near field-level at Dodger Stadium once upon a time (so much easier to do back yonder, before the McCourts), with this card as my only available item to be autographed, and Roseboro there as well.

Not entirely impossible, and even, I would go so far as to say, decently plausible.

Anyways, quickly back to my attempt to put the 1996 Team Set together. Lasorda is one of the cards I'm missing, though as you can see, I'm technically not sans-Lasorda. However, as you might imagine, if this is in fact a real John Roseboro auto, this card will go with the rest of my Dodger autos, and not with the team set. But if it is indeed a falsified John Hancock, I'll throw it in with the team set.

So, for those of you kind souls who read this far (or just decided to skip this long-winded diatribe and answer my question), is this a real John Roseboro autograph? A quick Google search has me wondering, if only because some show a similar "J" but a different "R", while others show a similar "R" but a different "J".

So yeah.

I have no idea.

Though I'm leaning towards legit, if for no other reason than it would be cool to have a Roseboro auto.

3 comments:

  1. Well Greg, the "John" portion looks quite similar to the "John" in my Xmas card auto. Now in regards to the "Roseboro" portion, while the "R" is different, the "s" is the same (resembling a "u"), and the "b" to "o" transition is very similar as well. I'm calling it authentic.

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-f96yPArWHe8/TePG4F8s_0I/AAAAAAAABUk/W-BTm9fAqzo/s1600/Gibbys+Autos+Galore+9.jpg

    http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i2941AxMSzg/TeTwyZW4h3I/AAAAAAAABVE/EVCw5w35efA/s1600/Roseboro+Auto+--+Perhaps.jpg

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  2. Oh, and now I notice a little "up-tick" at the end of the "R" in Roseboro in both autos as well.

    ReplyDelete