Bobby Moore's Signature: How to Recognise the Real Thing

Why a Moore autograph is judged differently

With a living player, a doubtful signature can sometimes be settled by a documented signing session. With Moore that door closed more than thirty years ago. What survives came from a limited number of routes: signing in person at matches and dinners, replies to fan letters, club and testimonial events, and pieces signed during his later years in management and broadcasting.

Because nothing new can be created, anything offered in bulk deserves suspicion. If a seller has a stack of identical Moore signed shirts, all at a similar low price, the arithmetic simply does not work for a man who has not signed anything since the early 1990s.

Where the forgeries concentrate

In our experience the riskiest Moore items are the ones that are easiest to make: modern replica shirts, large glossy photographs printed recently, and footballs. A 1966 replica shirt manufactured decades after his death cannot have been signed by him, however convincing the ink looks. Check the shirt's label and construction before you study the signature.

Printed and facsimile signatures are the other common trap. Many official souvenirs from the 1960s and 1970s carried a printed Moore signature, and those are often sold on, innocently or otherwise, as hand signed. Tilt the item under a light: real ink sits on the surface, can show pressure and variation in the stroke, and does not break up into a dot pattern under a magnifier.

• Check that the object itself dates from his lifetime
• Look for printed or dotted signatures under magnification
• Be wary of identical items sold in quantity
• Treat a very low price for a Moore shirt as a warning, not a bargain

Reading the signature itself

No one should authenticate from a written description alone, and we will not pretend a checklist can replace handling the piece. What we can say is that a genuine signature has the confidence of a man who signed thousands of times: fluent, unhesitating strokes, with the natural variation you would expect over a career that ran from the late 1950s to the 1990s. A signature that is slow, shaky, traced or identical in every example is a concern, because real autographs are never perfect copies of each other.

Compare any example against pieces with strong, documented provenance rather than against pictures on auction sites, which are full of the very forgeries you are trying to avoid.

Paperwork and provenance worth asking for

Ask where the item came from before it reached the seller, and whether that story is written down. A photograph of the signing, a letter, a dinner menu, a club connection or a named original owner all add weight. A certificate on its own proves only that someone was prepared to put their name to the piece, so ask who that someone is and whether they will stand behind it for as long as you own it.

Every item we sell is supplied with the WDW Certificate of Authenticity, signed by Derek Warwick and valid for as long as you own the piece.

Why prices for Moore signatures vary so much

People often search for what a Bobby Moore signature is worth, and there is no single answer. A signature on a small piece of paper, a signed photograph, a multi-signed 1966 montage and a signed West Ham display are different objects with different audiences. Condition, clarity of the ink, the other signatures alongside his and the strength of the provenance all move the price. We do not give valuations, and we would be wary of anyone who quotes a figure for an item they have not seen.

If you want to see how pieces are priced in practice, the Bobby Moore items we currently hold show their prices openly on the site, alongside the other members of the 1966 squad.