Identifying Autopens
Spotting autopens is not easy at first but with a bit of practice you'll soon find yourself recognising common patterns at a glance or spotting tell-tale signs of autopen use even in unfamiliar signatures.
The following pages will attempt to explain some characteristic traits of autopenned signatures that will help identify them. It's important to realise that not all autopenned items will show all the traits described here. When in doubt you will need to use your own judgement to decide if an item is more likely to be genuine or autopenned, but at least you should avoid some of the more obvious examples.
Before getting into the details of how to spot autopens I should dismiss a couple of common arguments made by people for why their signed item must be genuine.
One of the most common statements you hear is that a crew-signed item must be genuine because it is signed in different inks by each astronaut. In fact this is extremely common with autopenned items as an autopen machine could be loaded with a different pen each time it was used and each time a different astronaut signature template was loaded. Also, each astronaut usually had their own machine, each loaded with a different pen type, and a crew-signed picture could be put together by passing the piece from office to office, with each machine adding its signature. Variation in ink color or pen type between signatures on a multi-signed item is clearly no proof of authenticity.
Almost as common is the argument that as the signed item comes from someone that worked at NASA, someone that met or knew the astronauts personally, or was received direct through the mail from an astronaut it must be real. Unfortunately, NASA routinely sent out autopenned signatures through the mail, gave them to staff, and even gave them to the astronauts themselves to hand out in person.
A person who met an astronaut and was given a pre-signed photo would often tell their family that the astronaut "signed it for them", giving the impression that it was signed in front of them. Since the recipient had no idea that the item may have been machine signed this minor exagerration would have seemed harmless at the time.
Unfortunately it's often difficult for children or grandchildren to accept years later that their parent or grandparent might have mistold the story of exactly how they received the cherished signed item, even when faced by clear evidence that the signatures are Autopens.
To put things in perspective I should point out that sometimes even the astronauts themselves unknowingly ended up with Autopenned signatures of their fellow astronauts in their personal collections.