This kind of discussion is exactly why I love this site. I can understand Beren's fear of providing resources to forgers. My question served its purpose. Should I have further needs, I now know how many examples Beren has access to.

Just pondering the matter, I wonder how many things we sign in a lifetime? What got me to thinking was the 1500 items in Beren's list. Averaged over his life, that is less than 20 items per year. I'd bet that major sports figures sign 1500 per year. Thanks for the comments all!

Away from The Green Hill Country,

Parmastahir

Parmastahir said,

Tolkien is probably at the low end of the scale here, he was never "in the limelight" doing mass signings, etc.

Personally, I probably sign less than two dozen things a year, mostly paperwork for my job (I am not the check/cheque writer of the family). Some authors have had "signed limited editions" put out post-mortem where the signatures are actually cut from checks, since they signed so few items when they were alive.

Someone like Alan Lee has probably signed thousands of items per year since the movies came out. Some very popular authors I know have done five hundred book signings in a few hours. So a book tour would produce possibly tens of thousands of signed books in a year.

Circling back to Tolkien, I think it is quite fortuitous that he saved carbon copies of so many letters he wrote - the bulk of the Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien would not have been possible if he hadn't kept those, since the copies that were mailed are likely mostly lost forever.

I agree with Jlong here. I don't think us discussing (& posting) on this site really has any baring or influence on the counterfeit market.

First and foremost this forum is for discussion. Talk of archives and databasing, whilst interesting and in many respects appealing, is one step (in my opinion) towards shattering the whole appeal and pleasure in collecting for the amateur/private collector. By quantifying everything (or aiming to), we risk loosing (sanitising) everything that makes (for me) book collecting (I include in this the collecting of information of any kind about books) what it is.

If I have any issues or questions about signatures, I'll continue to raise them here on the forum, or simply communicate them privately with Beren...

BH

To add a late thought to this thread, a public database of signatures would almost certainly involve legal rights issues, in that one would be reproducing a significant mass of material compared with, say, Beren’s very limited selection on the Tolkien Library site. Christina and I have a large collection ourselves, but many of the examples are on documents gathered with the understanding that they would be for our personal research only.

Wayne