Here is an interesting signature with a sketch. What do you guys think?

http://cgi.ebay.com/JRR-Tolkien-Penci ... 2|39%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

This one is even more hilarious than yesterday's signature.

I love the quote "i have no idea who the portrait is of or whether it is genuine or original".

How many people in the world have not heard of J.R.R. Tolkien They do not know who the portrait is of, yet the Ebay listing is '"JRR Tolkien Pencil Portrait" Signed'. How did they come up with the listing title if they did not know who the portrait is of?

This must be in the top 10 of the worst forgeries I have ever seen, terrible!!! It is a very nice sketch that is ruined by a fake signature.

I'm glad I discovered this forum as I was one of the bidders for this item and was going to try to win it in the morning. Just curious, but what is it about the signature that raises alarm bells?

Thanks, Jim.

Have a look at this article on the Tolkien Library.

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/fascimilesignatures.htm

This particular 'signature' has far to many problems even after the main issue which is that you should be very skeptical of any signature that has no provenance.

Here are a few, the dots under the signature are in the wrong place and the final dot after his name is missing. The dots are to signify abbreviation so Tolkien took care to put them in the right place i.e. after his initials (J.R.R.), this 'signature' has a dot after the T of Tolkien.

The flourish under the signature is not his usual style and if you look at it carefully it has gaps in it. Tolkien would have drawn it as one line (no gaps) and finally all the letters are wrong (the J is very bad, the i does not have a dot. There is no gap between the R and the T.

Andrew

Thanks Andrew.