Autographs from Minor Celebrities

email from "M.S", January 13, 2015 —

I am a German collector of famous autographs on historic shares/bonds. Some month ago I contacted Matthias Schmitt from HWPH with a question about the Frederick Weyerhaeuser signature (junior or senior). He told me he mailed with you and finally we solved the issue. In the meantime I checked my whole database against your webpage, "Known autograph occurrences on collectible certificates“ and I found some in my opinion missing autographs (railway related) which I would like to provide you. I hope the information is helpful and I am happy to provide more information or copies from auction catalogues. If you are still interested in signature samples I can provide as well some signatures which are still missing on your page, just let me know.

My reply —

I finally found some time to work on the list of autographs you sent. It was impossible to add information about certificates from several companies (North American Co and Northern Pacific Railroad Co, for instance) because I could not determine specific varieties.

Still, I was able to add about 70% of the entries on your list to the database..

I must stress that I do not create separate listings for autographs of minor celebrities unless those autographs add at least $25 and 25% to the value of certificates.

It is my experience that autographs of all types, including minor celebrities, attract higher bids in Germany than they do in the United States. With some exceptions, autographs of minor celebrities attract little attention in the U.S.

It is equally apparent that German collectors place much higher values on rarity than average American collectors, especially if certificates have plain appearances. This was not always true, but the fascination for vignetted certificates is currently very high (in the U.S.).

Note to blog readers —

I always ask contributors to send images when contributing information. Without images, I usually cannot ascribe information to correct varieties.