Autopen Signatures

An Autopen is exactly what it sounds like…a machine will hold a pen and automatically sign “autographs” on a photo, letter or other type of media. Generally, these are signed on photos and sent out to fans to fulfill requests. You can easily find numerous examples of these for sale on the internet, with many sellers falsely assuming these are actual autographs. Most would have to reason to think otherwise as they’ve found them in an attic, inherited them from a relative or found them on the internet.

Jordan Autopen Signature

This is the main autopen signature of Jordan's you'll find on items, especially one's that people find and think are actual signed photos. These can be found in silver, blue and black.

NOTE: Autopen Signatures are different from Secretarial Signatures. Secretarial Signatures were historically named for secretary’s that would sign for CEO’s, Presidents, and anyone that needed to sign a multitude of documents, sometimes for work reasons and sometimes for autographs requests. This term has been universally adopted to refer to someone who signs for someone else, including for athletes that receive a plethora of requests. Please see the section on Jordan Secretarial Signatures.

These Autopen signatures were given out in multiple ways. Some are listed below but this is not an exhaustive list:

If you joined Jordan fan clubs, etc, you would get a packet for joining and you’d get something like this in the packet
Most though the mail autograph requests would be fulfilled with one of these autopen signature photos
Many charitable requests are made to sports teams and athletes and Jordan was obviously no exception. Many charities wanted an autographed item to auction off, but with so many requests, most times they would receive an autopen photo for the auction, accompanied by a letter that stated Jordan gets numerous requests, sends his apologies for not being able to fulfill the autograph request, but instead, here is a facsimile signed photo. Many charities, knowing nothing about the autopen practice, auctioned these off as signed photos and didn’t even read the included letter. From this and from these being distributed 30 years ago, those letters have mostly been lost or thrown away and unknowing sellers market these as autographed.
I’ve spoken with another collector who said his sister worked for one of the agencies that represented Jordan in some fashion and that they would take an autopen version, then head to the copy shop to make thousands of color copies of one of these to mail out. I have no reason to doubt this story, so there was probably a mix of color copies and actual autopenned signatures being used to distribute.
There were two main sports agencies that were listed on these photos and I assume would send these out to fans, ProServ and F.A.M.E. You’ll find many of these autopen signatures found on these photos.
As you can see, the photos below all have the EXACT same signature, some in blue, some in silver and are all different photos, evidence of this autopen style.