It’s a coincidence that I follow yesterday’s Stadium Club Manny Ramirez post with another ManRam one. I’m not doing this for page views or pandering to the crowd. I’m doing this because I really need some opinions. What are your opinions on these Manny Ramirez autograph rookie cards I received in the mail yesterday?

First, a little background: So the other night/early morning I happened upon a poorly titled auction for “Manny Rameriz 4 cards.” Notice the transposing of the “i” and the “e” here. Anyhow, There were four cards: 1992 Bowman rookie graded 10 by BCCG (BGS off brand), a Topps Pristine bat card and these two signatures. Truthfully, I only have $15 sunk in this lot, and that aint bad considering the Bowman rookie can be resold for at least that much, so it’s not going to kill me if these are fakes.

But the I find the autographs intriguing. Manny has signed his name so many ways in the last 16 years that I’m finding it almost impossible to dismiss their authenticity. Hell, if you go back and look at Manny’s supposed first certified signature — 1992 Front Row — many of them look different.

Anyhow, as it pertains to these cards, the signatures look like they say “Manuel Ramirez,” which signifies to me that if these were signed by Manny, they would have been obtained really early in his career. The “Ramirez” aspect of the signatures do share some characteristics with those early certified ones. In particular, look at the “a” and the “z.” But the first name has me boggled, but I find it very interesting. The name on both cards are signed exactly the same, which is pretty tough for someone to fake unless they’ve been practicing certain attributes for days or even weekend. I’m a little perplexed as to why the “a” in the first name is signed differently that that in the last name, but I have weird handwriting characteristics, too.

I’ve contacted the seller — who lives in Florida — to get some background, but I wanted to present this to the readers and get your opinions. Any help would be appreciated.

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This entry was posted on November 21, 2008 at 9:26 am and is filed under Newspaperman with tags autographs, baseball cards, Cardboard Icons, Dodgers, Manny being Manny, Manny Ramirez, ManRam, poll, Red Sox, rookie, TTM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.