That drawing is the odd thing for me. Why would someone add this to a CT-signed 1977 copy?

Khamûl wrote:
That drawing is the odd thing for me. Why would someone add this to a CT-signed 1977 copy?

Seems odd. Equally, why would anyone fake both on the same book? Is odd if genuine or fake.

Too many red flags for me.

Tbh, having just back-&-forth with the seller, it still seems like a genuine listing (by them personally); I'm not sure if they're going to pull it.

I agree about the (crude) drawing, and I too find the placement of the signature odd; but the signature itself doesn't strike me as an obvious forgery. It could be that somebody thrust the book, opened at that page, and a pen at Christopher Tolkien at some conference, while he was standing and couldn't sign it on a stable surface.

All that being said, even if we accept the signature as genuine, it's not a desirable copy, especially at that price!

Aelfwine wrote:
It could be that somebody thrust the book, opened at that page, and a pen at Christopher Tolkien at some conference, while he was standing and couldn't sign it on a stable surface.

That's actually a very insightful point. A signature whilst standing and holding a book is likely to suffer a bit relative to one signed against an immobile surface.

There's nothing (that I read) in the auction listing that says the book was signed in 1977, just that the book itself is a 1977 printing.

That does look like an amateurish copy of a known drawing though, I agree. I suppose it is possible that Ted drew a hasty sketch for someone from memory, but I think it really unlikely this is Ted's own sketch.

I agree, but where/when is this likely to have happened? Christopher has made very few appearances at "events" that would have involved this scenario. And those he has attended have been pretty organised in terms of people asking for stuff to be signed (from what I gather from people who attended) e.g. Mythcon 18 (1987) and Cent. Conf. 1992. Totally could have happened. But the seller isn't claiming this, there's no provenance.

Plus... that drawing! :D

EDIT: Urulókë, the seller doesn't appear to know anything about when/how it was signed, so you are correct about it not claiming to be signed in 1977.

Khamûl wrote:
I agree, but where/when is this likely to have happened? Christopher has made very few appearances at "events" that would have involved this scenario. And those he has attended have been pretty organised in terms of people asking for stuff to be signed (from what I gather from people who attended) e.g. Mythcon 18 (1987) and Cent. Conf. 1992. Totally could have happened. But the seller isn't claiming this, there's no provenance.

Plus... that drawing! :D

EDIT: Urulókë, the seller doesn't appear to know anything about when/how it was signed, so you are correct about it not claiming to be signed in 1977.

Yep, I think I had incorrectly taken the inference that it was an original signing from back-in-the-day.

Stu wrote:

I didn't agree with Trotter that it didn't *look* anything like a correctly styled signature.

My comments were not due to the style of the signature, but it looked like a crude attempt to copy Christopher's signature as it is not a fluid signature like the examples that I have seen in the past.

Trotter wrote:

Stu wrote:

I didn't agree with Trotter that it didn't *look* anything like a correctly styled signature.

My comments were not due to the style of the signature, but it looked like a crude attempt to copy Christopher's signature as it is not a fluid signature like the examples that I have seen in the past.

Yep, totally agree with that.