Topps called him Bob. He signed Roberto.

His signed 1955 Topps rookie has sold for six figures on the results this index records for him. Which makes it worth knowing exactly whose hand was on some of the paper going out of Forbes Field.

What happened after 1960

Clemente reached superstardom with the 1960 World Series, and the Heinz History Center's account of his signature puts the consequence plainly: his dramatic and elaborate autograph became highly sought after, and the fan mail arriving at Forbes Field became excessive.

Somebody had to answer it.

Sally O'Leary, a long-serving Pirates employee, practised Clemente's signature and then signed it on letters going back out.

Phil Dorsey, a close friend of his and a Pittsburgh postal worker, signed for him as well.

That is a team employee and a personal friend, doing what a studio artist did for Walt Disney and what DiMaggio's sister is alleged to have done for him. It is the ordinary answer to a volume problem in an era before anybody thought a signature might be worth thousands of dollars.

And he signed a great deal himself

This is the part that gets lost when the secretarial story is told badly.

The same account is clear that nobody could satisfy every request and the circumstances were not always right, but that Clemente very frequently took the time to sign for fans.

The 1960s gave supporters access that no longer exists: an annual photo day at Forbes Field, players walking through East Liberty and Oakland, chance encounters in the city. He gave away gloves, jerseys, bats and equipment as well.

So the population of genuine Clemente signatures is real and was built in person, over twelve seasons. The proxy signing sat alongside it, on the mail, rather than replacing it.

The name is the tell

Here is the detail that makes this practically useful, and it is sitting on one of the cards in our own records.

Topps printed him as "Bob Clemente." The 1967 Topps card number 400, which appears in the results recorded here, says BOB CLEMENTE across the front.

The Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince called him Bobby.

And by the account of the museum in his adopted city, he signed always as Roberto, possibly never as Bob, and not as Bobby either.

A man whose own card manufacturer got his name wrong, and who answered by writing the right one every time.

That is not an authentication method and we are not offering it as one. But a signature reading Bob Clemente on an item claiming to be signed in person is a question worth asking out loud.

Where his signature starts

Worth knowing for anyone chasing the earliest material.

His first significant autograph was on a 1954 Brooklyn Dodgers minor league contract to play for the Montreal Royals. The Dodgers could not keep him hidden in the farm system, Pittsburgh claimed him in the Rule 5 draft, and he signed a Pirates contract in 1955.

So the signature has a documented starting point in professional baseball, and eighteen years of it in total.

The supply closed on New Year's Eve

On 31 December 1972 he boarded an overloaded aircraft carrying earthquake relief to Nicaragua. It went down shortly after take-off. He was thirty-eight.

Everything that exists was signed before that night, by him or by the two people answering his post, and the population has been shrinking ever since.

Which is the background to what his signed cards now cost. Five of the six results recorded here are the same card, his 1955 Topps rookie, and they run from thirty thousand dollars to a hundred and twenty.

What this means if you are buying

Three things.

Buy it certified, and understand what that means here. An authenticator comparing against known exemplars is comparing against genuine Clemente signatures. A proxy signature written by somebody who practised his hand is exactly the kind of item that separates a good authentication from a confident one.

Treat fan-mail-format items with more care than in-person ones. Signed photographs returned by post from a team office in the 1960s are the category the proxy signing lived in. An item with a story attached about where and when it was signed is worth more than one without, and not only for sentimental reasons.

And do not read the proxy story as a reason to avoid him. He signed constantly and in person for twelve years. The problem is confined to a channel, not to the market.

The thing worth sitting with

A Pirates employee sat at a desk and practised a man's signature until she could write it well enough to send out, because too many people wanted it.

Fifty-odd years later, the same signature on a 1955 card sells for more than a house.

Nobody involved at the time thought they were doing anything except answering the post.

This index records documented sales of his signed material. There are companion pieces on the clubhouse attendants who signed for the stars, the four hands that signed Joe DiMaggio's name, and why a cancelled cheque is harder to fake than a photograph. You can read how we work the numbers out.

Sources