Ledger as Joker autograph - real or fake - ???

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I'm an autograph collector with a decent collection. I have Bale as Batman and my holy grail would be Ledger as Joker. I've researched it a bit and from what I've seen, most collectors estimate there's only between 10-20 legit Ledger Joker pieces in the world so I would be 100% skeptical of any one of them being sold on ebay. Ebay is BAD for autographs anyway unless you find the 1 or 2 honest dealers on there. It does seem true though from what I can find that the 1st teaser Joker image was the only thing available to sign before he died.

I'd expect your best bet would be to wait for a respectable organization to auction one but it will most likely be out of the range of most of us unless you pull 6 figures a year, I'd bet.
Keep and eye on the PSA/DSA site: https://www.psadna.com/authentication.chtml
 
Wookiee Breath said:
I'm an autograph collector with a decent collection. I have Bale as Batman and my holy grail would be Ledger as Joker. I've researched it a bit and from what I've seen, most collectors estimate there's only between 10-20 legit Ledger Joker pieces in the world so I would be 100% skeptical of any one of them being sold on ebay. Ebay is BAD for autographs anyway unless you find the 1 or 2 honest dealers on there. It does seem true though from what I can find that the 1st teaser Joker image was the only thing available to sign before he died.

I'd expect your best bet would be to wait for a respectable organization to auction one but it will most likely be out of the range of most of us unless you pull 6 figures a year, I'd bet.
Keep and eye on the PSA/DSA site: https://www.psadna.com/authentication.chtml
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Words to live by right there.
 
It's much nearly impossible to come by them nowadays. One of my dealers has one he he paid a few grand for it. I had to settle for the index card, but like I said I' rather have his sig then no sig at all. Overall it makes a very nice center piece for my batman display. As very few people have a legit Ledger autograph...and since he's no longer with us, he won't be signing anymore. Add that to the fact that there are only a hand full of legit ones out there and your going to be paying a pretty penny.

This two would be a real one:

st_HeathLedger.jpg


This one obviously fake:

40614795_1.jpg


Be careful of preprints as well.
 
Buttmunch said:
Anyone know why John Hancock's signature is so famous? Because you can read it!
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Actually -- it was because Hancock's signature was huge. His signature on the Declaration of Independence is about twice the size of everyone else's -- partially because the remaining 55 signers had to squeeze their names in after Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress, signed first. I suppose being able to read it helped -- but you could read most (if not all) of the signatures on the Declaration.

SnakeDoc
 
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Yeah, that's a really bad one. None of those people sign even remotely that legible. Plus the poster was not released until after his death.

Very few of those cast signed posters are ever real. Be pretty hard to meet all of those famous actors and the real ones that can be verified go for a lot.
 
Darth Madden said:
No, I'm not serious. I thought it was an interesting picture and figured I would share. No need to be an ass about it.
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Somehow with the name calling and snippy comment, I have a feeling I'm not the donkey's behind here.

Plus you make no sense, you ask if its real, yet claim to not be serious and think it's interesting? I just don't get it man. First I thought you were really uninformed, and shocked about how uninformed you were...now I just think your a ^^^^.

Chill out and stop wasting are time with these interesting fake posters then.
 
Hello, I can help you here. I own an autograph of Heath Ledger as the Joker. It is GAI authenticated. And actually there were ONLY TWO pictures of Heath released before his untimely death.. the teaser and the one of him sitting in the jail cell featured as the Empire magazine cover. If you have seen ANY other photos that claim to be signed by him on eBay or anywhere else, I can guarantee they are FAKE. If you would like to see a pic of the autograph I own, I will post it. I hope I could help and wish I saw this board sooner!
 
I know of at least one in existence that was auctioned off before his death for some charity thing and it had him in the jail cell outfit. Was the other one released before or after that one? Had anyone known he'd die, they would been all over that autograph. I'm usually not one for that kinda collectible, but being one of only two in existence is pretty nifty...
 
I believe the "leaked image" was released before the Empire magazine cover jail cell one. Here is the pic of mine (notice the GAI authentication sticker that I mentioned on the bottom right-hand corner) ...
 
kitfisto92 said:
Hello, I can help you here. I own an autograph of Heath Ledger as the Joker. It is GAI authenticated. And actually there were ONLY TWO pictures of Heath released before his untimely death.. the teaser and the one of him sitting in the jail cell featured as the Empire magazine cover. If you have seen ANY other photos that claim to be signed by him on eBay or anywhere else, I can guarantee they are FAKE. If you would like to see a pic of the autograph I own, I will post it. I hope I could help and wish I saw this board sooner!
Click to expand...

Maybe I just don't understand how movie studios work but for a movie that big and that close to release I just find it hard to believe that there were only 2 pictures of him as joker. A studio can make a picture anytime the want so they could have made thousands of Joker pictures and had them signed all through filming. I'm sure you are right but it just seems weird to me if thats the case.
 
Hey Darth,

You make a good arguement. That's the thing with Ledger pics, or any pics from films for that matter, there is usually no exact release date, and in the case of the joker, there is no known exact date of any pics except the leaked teaser, so we will never know if the jail cell pic was even released before his death. Either way, as stated the leaked photo is the only concrete photo that was undoubtably released before he passed.
 
The EMPIRE cell pic was definitely revealed before Heath's death. I tend to agree with Darth on this, who knows how many pictures they had and were having signed during production. All we know is that their were only two official pictures published worldwide before Heath's untimely passing.

Basically, I would not trust any autograph unless I had had it signed in person, which is the whole point in my view anyhow.
 
Darth Madden said:
Maybe I just don't understand how movie studios work but for a movie that big and that close to release I just find it hard to believe that there were only 2 pictures of him as joker.
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You have to take the timing into account - Ledger died about 7 months before the movie was released. And it was only about a month after the first full-length trailer came out in December.

There was a LOT of hype for that movie - lots of pics, promos, trailers, commercials, ads, etc. But they generally don't ramp that up until just a few months before the release - otherwise, you end up beating a dead horse (backlash to excessive hype has become a real concern nowadays - you want to hype something a lot to sell it, but if you overdo it, people will react negatively).

Additionally, there was a lot of secrecy - which is tradition for the Batman movies, as well as for Chris Nolan. So they didn't want to let anything out too soon, to satisfy both Warner Bros. as well as Nolan's personal style (he doesn't like revealing the magic behind the movie). Plus, the more you hide things, the more eager you make people to see them!

Had Ledger died just a few months later (but still well before the release), there likely would've been a lot more publicly available images for him to choose from when autographing. There were certainly lots of pictures ready for release - they just weren't authorized yet, as the time wasn't ready (according to the studio).

A studio can make a picture anytime the want so they could have made thousands of Joker pictures and had them signed all through filming.
Click to expand...

Again, there were more pictures ready for release, just not officially approved yet.

Furthermore, a studio cannot make an actor sign autographs - unless it's part of a contract (which it rarely is, especially for big actors like Ledger!). That's just not part of standard publicity - it's up to an actor himself to choose whenever to sign autographs (either as personal favors, for individual transactions, or in a contract-setting, like for trading cards).

So the studio wouldn't have had him signing anything while he was filming. (Plus, no one knew he was going to pass away so soon! It just wasn't an issue!)
 
kitfisto92 said:
And actually there were ONLY TWO pictures of Heath released before his untimely death.. the teaser and the one of him sitting in the jail cell featured as the Empire magazine cover. If you have seen ANY other photos that claim to be signed by him on eBay or anywhere else, I can guarantee they are FAKE.
Click to expand...

That's actually completely false.

There were only two pictures "officially released" at the time of his death. But there were others out there.

Specifically, on August 16-17, 2007, a series of 19 production stills were leaked to the public. These weren't footage from dailies or grainy spy-shots - they were full-on publicity photos, touched up and ready to be let loose. However, someone leaked them early (so many of them were never "officially released," even later on).

Of these 19 photos, 5 featured the Joker. They included:

-A close-up of the Joker, smiling during the interrogation
-The Joker sitting during the interrogation, with Batman standing behind him
-The Joker kicking Batman with his knife-shoe in the Penthouse party scene, with a clown goon holding Batman from behind.
-The Joker with his mouth wide-open, holding a knife next to Rachel Dawes' face (during the Penthouse party scene)
-The Joker falling against the wall during the interrogation, with Batman standing over him.

Some of these would make for good autographs (especially the first), others not so much.

When they were leaked, there was a huge clamp-down. I posted them on my site, but I was a pretty small guy, so I never got any flack. But any links or postings to them on the big sites or forums (like Super Hero Hype) warranted bannings, as Warner Bros. was PISSED.

Anyway, my point is, an autograph hound could've used any of these for autographs (especially the first pic, I think it was the best pic available at the time, and perfect for an autograph). There may be other pics too, but these are the ones I can be sure of.

That doesn't mean that a Ledger autograph with one of these pics -IS- real, but it does mean you can't reject it out of hand. Any dedicated Joker, Batman, or Ledger fan could've gotten their hands on these pics easily (especially as they were leaked a good 5 months before Ledger died).
 

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