An early signature is rare only until more of them turn up

The Obama cheques

Obama took his seat in the Illinois Senate in January 1997. His campaign committee, Friends of Barack Obama, paid its bills by cheque, and he signed them. The cheques were often filled in by someone else, for small amounts: a luncheon, a consultant, a reimbursement for tickets. One was made out to a pageant for twenty-five dollars.

Over the last few years those cheques have been coming to auction, and their prices tell a clear story.

July 2021, RR Auction: a cheque from July 1997, which the auction house called the first Obama cheque it had ever offered, sold for $8,346.

July 2022, Goldin: the cheque on this index's Obama page, dated 12 March 1998, sold for $4,440.

February 2023, University Archives: a December 1997 cheque sold for about $2,600, below its estimate.

May 2024, University Archives: a May 1997 cheque, with a Gem Mint 10 autograph grade, sold for about $1,200, well below its estimate.

October 2025, Heritage: a May 1998 cheque to AT&T sold for $937.50.

That is the same kind of object, from the same two years, losing most of its price in four years. The auction houses' figures are not all calculated the same way, so the exact numbers should not be pressed. The direction is unmistakable.

Why the premium was there

When the first of these cheques appeared, they had everything a buyer could want. They were dated. They had been through a bank. They came from a time when nobody was collecting Obama's signature and few people had any reason to fake it.

That last point matters for a modern president. Obama's White House used the autopen, and in 2011 he became, it was reported, the first president to sign a law with one, extending the Patriot Act while he was in Europe. A signature from 1997, on a cheque a bank cleared, carries no such doubt.

Why it faded

The likeliest reason is simple: more of them appeared. A campaign committee writes a lot of cheques, and once a few had sold well, others followed them to auction. Each one made the next a little less special. A signature from before someone was famous is valuable because there are few of them. When it turns out there are more than people thought, the premium goes.

Nothing about the cheques changed. What changed was how many buyers had already been offered one.

The older presidents: usually cheaper, not dearer

For most of the presidents on this index, the signature from before the fame is the cheaper one.

Lincoln. A legal document from his law practice in the 1840s sold for $3,884. His signed photographs from 1861 and 1864 sold for $81,250 and $181,250. Lincoln's law practice was not small. The project that gathered its records found more than 96,000 documents describing more than 5,000 cases handled by him and his partners. By Lincoln standards his pre-presidential legal paper is plentiful, and it is priced that way.

Theodore Roosevelt. His two letters and documents from his time as Governor of New York sold for $660 each. Dated pieces from his presidency sold for about twice that.

Franklin Roosevelt. His letters from the 1920s sold in the same range as his presidential ones, and the best of them, from 1929, sold for more.

Kennedy. A 1950 letter from his time as a congressman sold for $2,400, against $3,600 for a 1961 presidential letter. With Kennedy the early years are also the risky ones, because his secretaries were signing his name from the mid-1950s, as we set out in why a Senator Kennedy letter is the riskier buy.

Reagan was never unknown

Ronald Reagan is the clearest case of all, because he was famous long before he was a politician. He was a Hollywood actor from 1937, and he signed for fans for decades before he ran for anything.

The index shows it. A signed 1950s studio portrait from his acting years sold for $549. A 1972 letter signed with his nickname, "Dutch," while he was Governor of California, sold for $600. Those sit right alongside his ordinary signed photographs. One collectibles dealer puts it bluntly: demand for his Hollywood period is far lower than for his presidency.

And early does not mean safe. The Raab Collection notes that as an actor Reagan answered fan letters himself, and that his mother's handwriting somewhat resembled his. During the war, when he was in the Army, Warner Bros. had his mother, Nelle, answer his fan mail, and she signed the replies "Ronald." Those letters still turn up, written on studio paper in her hand, under his name.

When an early signature is worth more

Putting the presidents side by side, a pre-fame signature carries a premium only when three things are true at once.

The person became very famous later. The jump from unknown to famous has to be large enough that the early piece feels like a find. Obama's was. Reagan's never happened, because he was already a film star.

Very little survives from before. Lincoln's law practice left tens of thousands of documents, so his early paper was never scarce. Obama's state senate cheques looked scarce, until they were not.

The early piece is easier to trust than the later ones. A banked, dated cheque from 1997 is about as certain as a signature gets. A Senator Kennedy letter or a Hollywood Reagan fan reply is the opposite.

Even when all three hold, the premium lasts only as long as the supply stays small.

What to check before paying for early

Ask how many there are. If a type of early document exists because someone kept a whole run of it, cheques, receipts, legal filings, expect more to follow.

Look at the price history, not the first sale. The first example of anything sells to the most eager buyer. With the Obama cheques, the earliest sale we found was the highest.

Check who else could have signed. An early signature can come from a secretary, a studio, or, in Reagan's case, a parent. Buy it certified.

Pay for content before date. On this index the pieces that sold highest were the ones that said something: Reagan's handwritten oath of office, Lincoln's signed portraits, Obama's basketball bracket. An early signature on an ordinary bank cheque is a curiosity, and curiosities get repeated.

The thing worth sitting with

"Before they were famous" is one of the most appealing ideas in collecting. It promises that you found something the rest of the market missed.

Sometimes that is true. More often the early paper was always plentiful, like Lincoln's, or the person was never really unknown, like Reagan. And when an early signature really is scarce, the market tends to find the rest of them. The Obama cheques went from a headline to an ordinary lot in four years. The scarcity was real when the first one sold. It just did not last.

We look at the opposite question, whether the office itself adds to a signature, in when "signed as president" is worth paying for. You can read how we work the numbers out.

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