Card Identification Forum

Another autograph mystery here, although this one isn't through the mail, but rather "certified". 

The card I scanned above is of Roy Rogers, the basketball player, who attended Alabama. I have identified this card with the 1997 Genuine Article - Autographs insert set. Here's where things are weird though.

All of his other cards spell his name Rogers. I can't find anything online referencing his name as "Rodgers" like the card says. So both the base card in this set and this autograph insert are listed as UER. But if you look, he also signed his name "Rodgers." Why would someone misspell their name? The only thing I can think is that Genuine Article (who I've never heard of outside of this card and the Carmelo Travieso I have from the same set) issued the card with the name misspelled and someone besides Rogers was signing these and didn't realize it either. 

I've seen the same card with different serial numbers, one on eBay and one on Beckett as well. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? It's very clearly signed with a "d" in my opinion. Thanks in advance.

Jason

He's currently an assistant coach in the NBA. I don't remember the team. Maybe, if you can figure out which team, tweet them about the card.

My gut reaction is that you are correct in that this is not signed by the athlete...not just this card, whichever athlete it shows...but some card company employee. Unfortunately I don't have his auto to compare it to. But it's highly unlikely he would misspell his own name.

Wikipedia says he is currently coaching Rockets. Dang he was Wizards coach 2014-16 didn't recall that. Haven't paid much attention to Wiz coaches lately.

The ink for the signature looks the same color as the hand numbered 1169/7500. I'm not a handwriting expert, but I don't see any similarity in writing styles with the autograph.

Doing a little Google search on this card led me to these two links. 

http://www.beckett.com/news/this-roy-rodgers-card-remains-my-favorite-cardboard-mystery/

https://collectorempire.com/2012/03/20/genuine-really/

The "real" Roy Rogers autograph Chris Olds adds in the article is the icing on the cake that the autograph was signed by someone who worked at Genuine Article.

But it's "Guaranteed Authentic Unconditionally"!  That's 7,500 cases of fraud!  I wonder if that's even Andrew's signature on the back.

And again, another reason I don't chase autographs of any kind.  The only ones I wish to have are those I get personally from the person.  I always tried to imagine one of these players sitting down and signing their name on some hundreds of cards.  By the time they are done, it would be a scribble.

When I was with Star, we produced items with the sole intention of getting them autographed by the player on the card. It was a part of their contract that we would send them x number of cards for them to sign and return. We would send a sample showing the area we wanted them to sign, and instructions on how many per pen (so they didn't look like junk), etc. (We would send the pens, too.) We could tell which ones were signed early on and which ones were towards the end of the stack. They were not signed in our presence, however, if there is a Star Co card with a fake auto on it (and it was distributed autographed by Star, no after-market stuff), it's on the player as to why it's not real (contract!).

Thanks for all the responses. Luckily I didn't pay anything for this card; it was part of the initial stack my dad gave me years ago when I first got in to autographs. 

I'm very tempted to reach out to Rogers via Twitter (or maybe regular fan mail; maybe he can get me an actual signed card for my collection!) but I also wonder if he would even remember signing (or not signing) particular cards from 20 years ago.

One last thought from me: regarding the serial number, and Dan may be able to shed some more light on this depending on how Star did it, but I've got to imagine a company wouldn't ask the player to sign and number 7500 cards. I always figured the SNs were added by an employee before or after the signings. Which, I suppose matches up to the point above and adds more evidence to the situation (sorry, don't remember who said it and can't go far enough back on the mobile browser).

Usually done before or after the fact. I do believe in some cases, agents did the numbering for us.