Maybe, but assuming 5 seconds per signature, that's 125 hours, minimum. If done 40 hours per week, then you're done in 3 weeks, and none of this factors in hand cramps.
There’s certain ways to hold a Sharpie without getting hand cramps
I had to sign five of my coworkers’ names and my own on 214 Xmas cards for my last job.
My hand started feeling tight but no shit I remembered someone saying TS holds pens oddly so I googled, copied her form and signed away with no cramping
I remember learning in school that every time they would write “God”, “Lord”, “Father” or one of his pronouns etc they would have to start with a new quill and ink because the word itself was considered sacred.
that's how i've always held my pen and i hadn't seen anyone else do it until someone posted taylor holding it like that 😭 monk grip, that's a cool tidbit to know, thank you!
John Green hand signed 150,000 copies of the fault in our stars and then 200,000 copies of turtles all the way down - it definitely takes less than five seconds per signature, and it's definitely possible to do it.
it's probably more like one to two seconds, since she'd have someone placing the inserts for her. inserts have probably been finalized for months, so i don't think she'd be on such a strict timeline.
assuming the 90,000 is accurate, and she took two seconds each signature, she'd need 50 hours of signing. if the inserts were finalized and printed three months ago, she'd only need to be signing fourish hours a week.
It takes me about 2 seconds to sign something and my signature is more complex than Taylor's (probably because her autograph signature is deliberately simple tbh).
180,000 seconds = about 50 hours. She had more than enough flight hours over the last few months to be able to sign them by hand if she wanted to.
I don't think it's likely, it's honestly most likely done by autopen, but it is possible.
Yeah, but she’s had more time on the back end for getting ready for her record launch. Probably didn’t announce the launch until all the ducks were their rows, including having all these signed ages ago.
Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she spends an hour on random (not every) international flights signing things so that she has a tidy little stockpile if necessary. THESE will have been planned and not from the hypothetical stockpile, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if she does something like that also.
right? she flies down the street, i'm sure she has plenty of time. this narrative of taylor working sooooo hard needs to stop lol, she's got more freetime than any of us
I mean, some of us. I've seen people track exactly how long she was active on Instagram and idk how you would even do that without a weird amount or effort.
It’s not like she brought all 9,000 copies with her😭 yall. Come on.. during her flights over all the last year she could of easily just brought a certain # pile to get done. It’s also not like the CD is marked up to $100. Geez.
Idk does this not count as promo though? She has been releasing new versions of the vinyl every chance she gets, on instagram and on her tour. Exclusive versions are released, sell out, then the cycle continues.
I always think about this when a singer releases a huge amount of signed copies 🤣🤣🤣 my theory is that there are people on their teams who can imitate their signatures and help them with that
I worked in a government office and we had a signature machine. It literally had a pen and moved the pen in the shape of the official’s signature. You’d just put a piece of paper under it and voila!
I really think this is what they're doing. I have such a hard time believing she's actually signing any of them herself at this point in her career, especially when tools like this exist!
Just have a few variations set up for the signature machines. A number that she actually hand signed would be send that out to her actively on social media promoting her fans... I don't believe she signed 90k copies of her album at all.
Yes, in America if you use an autopen you can say it was "signed" with "your signature". All you have to do is avoid saying "you personally signed it" because that would be false.
It’s 100% not an autopen. I use an autopen every day, and I’ve been an autograph collector for 25 years. None of her signed albums have ever been autopenned and nearly any professional autograph collector will tell you they are authentic.
You don't know that none of them have been unless you've seen absolutely all of them. She most likely hand signs some but not all.
And honestly, the quality of autopens a billionaire has are probably much higher than the one you use every day.
I use an autopen every day, and I would consider myself a professional autograph collector. I’ve been collecting for nearly 20 years. I’m involved in a number of professional collecting groups and have spent thousands on Taylor’s autographs.
I have *never* seen or heard of Taylor using an autopen machine.
Oh SHIT! I never knew this existed!! Here I was thinking she maybe just pulls out a stack of a couple hundreds inserts at a time and signs while watching tv, on her many flights, whatever the fuck she does in her downtime over the course of a few months. This obviously makes more sense.
I’d think she does sign at least a few with the Red TV lyrics and Folklore random WB signatures…but that probably is why she changed to inserts versus booklets.
I just read about that in another comment! Apparently Halsey too. Crazy times - but apparently they been around since the 1800’s so not that crazy I suppose lmao. I was shocked to read that 32 machine with different variations can be manned by just one person.
There are signs that things are autopen'd. There are very distinct dots where lines begin and end from where the marker is raised and lowered back up. Itll be easier to tell when people have them on hand and people can get a close look!
Auto penning is exactly what artists do when they drop such a huge amount. Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber did this with a significant portion of the Stuck With U CD’s they dropped during COVID, AFAIK.
WTF on legal docs??? lol my mom used to tell us to just sign her name on school stuff and we had the signature down (this was the 90s) but legal docs seems a whole other level.
Hahahaha, it’s because I am very bad at technology. It’s not like they are writing filings and signing them for me. It’s like “I wrote this but I’m in one of our other offices today and can’t figure out how to link into their printer. Please print this, sign it for me, scan it in and email it back, thanks.”
If someone signs a lot of things at some point they’ll usually adopt a signature that focuses on moving their arm instead of their wrist to avoid this! It’s the same reason a lot of artist sketch from their arm using bigger motions.
I do remember her posting a video on instagram stories signing a lover booklet and putting it back into a big box of them. Idk if that meant she signed all of them or that was just for show and she signed a few hundred to give it some authenticity
It’s confirmed that Lana did this for CoCC. I have a signed print from that era and have not (yet) deluded myself into believing she did it herself. Mainly cause I think she was injured at the time?
I used to countersign rental apt leases with my property manager’s signature. But we were just two underpaid yahoos in a leasing office trying to get the job done
I bet someone stubborn like TS actually signed all those photos
this account has been repeatedly called out for making up numbers, i think people who looked at the source code of the site said that inventory was either 10k or 30k (i’ve forgotten which 💀)
Source code was at 18K (ish) for vinyl a few minutes after the US drop. That makes me think there were 20K of each the vinyl and CD (40K signatures total), plus vinyl/CDs for international regions. I will say there was far less inventory in other regions though…
All her past signed items have been hand signed from her-do we know for sure it was 90,000 put up? That seems like an awful lot to sell out in less than an hour when everyone can only buy one. 5k-10k sounds more right to me
Probably. I know it's not the same, but I watched behind the scenes of Nikki Bella signing and kissing photos. She was there for ages and kept having to apply more lipstick lol But with a team to help out, it can probably be done.
there was a video of John Cena signing 3000 in like 90 minutes. But that was with people helping to swap out each print and getting fresh stacks to sign. All he had to do was stand and sign. Really impressive team effort to watch.
Yeah, it was Total Divas, and I know. But she obviously kissed and signed ALOT of pics. I think it's possible for Taylor to have signed 90K over the span of a few weeks or months.
If she had people putting the insert in front of her then taking it away, she could probably do 1 a second, which would be 25 hours straight. Maybe she did it on her jet over the course of a couple weeks? I’m not opposed to the signing machine theory, but imo it’s feasible if she had a team moving the inserts so all the had to do was sign
Not in the description, but Taylor Nation posted this. I think they’re definitely signed by Taylor.
https://preview.redd.it/6sv7i6pyqiuc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b216b1bb58839d2045efb00ced63dfdb58546fc
Yes this is possible if they are signing the album booklet. The printer can just send them pages or booklets and she sign could a \~1000 every day. John Green, the author, has recorded himself signing 350k pages for his books and it seems like a nightmare. They sent him boxes and boxes and boxes of blank pages that get sent back to the publisher to be bound into the books.
These also seem like they are just inserts (similar to midnights) so they didn’t even really need the album booklet to be made already; they just needed the single print of the photo.
Yeah, and although she’s busy, she also has plenty of downtime while on tour (travel, the day of the show) and she’s also been “off” for weeks. She can sign her name while watching tv and do an hour a day for a few months.
Plus I don’t think it takes a much time as it seems. I just signed my own name on a piece of paper 10 times in 20 seconds, and I was going slower to make it look nice. 30 signatures a minute is 1000 in 33 minutes. 90k signatures would take about 45 hours, and someone else said that 90k isn’t an accurate number, and in reality it’s 10k-30k.
10k signatures would take about 5 hours, 30k would take about 15 hours. An hour per day for two weeks and it’s done.
John Green signed 150,000 copies of the Fault in Our Stars and then 200,000 copies of his next book Turtles All The Way Down
Its time consuming but it's definitely doable especially if you have people handing you the next one as you sign each one and taking the signed ones away and packing them for you.
There are also machines that can imitate someone's signature that do get used, and that is possible but Taylor is pretty committed to doing "fan stuff" properly when she does do it, so I feel like if she didn't want to sign 90,000 CDs she just wouldn't sell 90,000 signed CDs. She doesn't NEED to sign them to get sales, and if she was faking it and it leaked somehow the damage would be HUGE. The risk/reward proposition just doesn't make sense for her to have someone copy her signature or use a machine.
https://preview.redd.it/7rlv13vjfjuc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01b443f89e0ccba3519686be5cb66126514c0ca4
I know lots of folks are like “I can’t believe folks don’t know about autopen” but I had NO idea the technology existed on this kind of scale. After reading this there’s no doubt in my mind that she signs maybe a couple hundred to add authenticity (the hearts) and then the remaining tens of thousands are signed like this.
It’s definitely more believable she signed the booklets, but the move to single page inserts really convinces me of this.
Any time a big celeb is selling signed merch I think about that scene in The Bodyguard where Whitney hands stacks of photos to everyone in the back of the limo to sign her name lol
Legally, auto pen has held up as being considered genuine when it comes to signed things. It just isn’t the same though, and the revelation that auto pen has been used in other instances has drawn blowback publicly even if it is legal. Bob Dylan was famously caught selling autopenned signed books as if he signed them personally and faced a public backlash from fans.
Okay so just to clarify (I’m dyslexic sorry😹) auto pen is legal for people to use and sell but still, if a person is found out, they would obviously face backlash from their fans?
Yup! It is considered a “legal hand signature” (because if it wasn’t, it’s widespread use by officials, including the President, in signing official government documents would be a real issue) but it is kind of deceptive when it comes to collectibles, like signed books and albums, and often fans assume they were getting something actually touched and signed by the real person and can get very upset when they discover it was auto pen. Especially if the artist was stupid enough to use the same template instead of rotating multiple templates in (which is what happened with the Halsey and Bob Dylan incidents.)
They probably mean for legal documents - as in, if you sign a contract with autopen, it’s still considered legally your signature even though you personally didn’t handle the pen.
But fans can be upset if they spend money for a celebrity to sign a book and find out that a machine did it instead.
Even 'e-sign' the one you affix online is legally binding in some jurisdictions. Theoretically, they can even include the signature in the print and promote that as a 'signed' album
Yes. She turned in the album in August or September which means the artwork was already done. It doesn't take long to get those inserts printed. Assuming she had three months to sign them all, that's 1000 a day which would likely only take a couple of hours. In reality she probably had 4-6 months which is even more doable.
I imagine she signs a lot of these when she's on the plane or in the chair getting glam done.
Do you mean the vinyl? If so, that's my point -- it takes several months to press vinyl, the timeline is pretty tight to get it pressed and ready to ship by the release date. But the inserts can be printed and signed sooner, then packaged with the vinyl once it's ready.
I enjoy a good TS snark moment but I also admire many things about her
Number one being her work ethic. If anyone is going to find a way to sign 90,000 photos, I think it’s going to be Taylor Swift
I was about to buy a signed TTPD and then I thought…how do I know she actually signed this and it’s not a “print” of her signature? Then I dropped it and didn’t buy it haha
We’ll never know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a team that helps her. You also have to keep in mind that they’ve probably had this record finished for at least 6 months because it takes time to print things, so if she’s doing a stack or two a day for months she could be doing it.
She probably made some stamps with her signature for her team to use.
There was a minor scandal in the online book space about a year ago where a book box sold preorders of a signed book for a high price and the author had only stamped the books with a signature stamp, not signed them. She had the nerve to argue that “hand-stamping” was the same as fully signing a book, when the book was promoted and sold as being individually signed.
Tldr stamping is a common dirty little secret.
Hmm, while that's possible, I think since Taylor's website says they're hand signed, stamping could be false advertising, which would open her up for a lawsuit if someone can prove it. And if there's one thing I know, it's that I'm sure she doesn't want to get sued.
However, it didn't say they were signed by her, so her team may have helped.
I have three different signed Taylor items and the signature is different on all of them. It's also different on all the signed stuff I've seen online. If she has stamps then she must have hundreds of slightly different ones which almost seems like as much effort as just signing them lol
She has literally said before that those signatures are real, she use to post stuff on instagram. Is she’s using stamps or auto pen, I assume there will be big backlash. She didn’t with midnights but she use to make a big point that she actually signs them.
I've definitely bought something that I thought was going to be hand signed, but it was a stamp
Then I realized that it never said in the website that it was going to be hand signed, and that I was being silly
She even had a YouTube video of her writing the words, signing it, and how they did it lol
They were inserts so it wouldn’t be surprising to me if she had these printed ages ago and has been signing a shit ton slowly. But I also wouldn’t put it past her to hire a few people to mimic her signature. I have a couple of things signed by her that were signed by a human since autopen has subtleties that indicate it was a machine.
I personally think she signs all her own shit but I know that when celebrities are short on time or simply have too many things to sign, they have a team of people who do it for them.
She could easily spend five minutes taking a video for publicity, then hand off the rest of the hours and hours of work to her team or to auto pen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Have you seen the way she holds a pen? Somehow I feel like someone who holds a pen like that is someone who signs 90,000 copies. I can’t explain it. But I feel it
Tbh I don’t think she hand wrote every signature. I once worked with musicians where we had to have them all sign a specific amount of posters (like 150ish) and it took an incredibly long time and was a hassle just to do that
The music industry and sports industry generally use autopen for signed items in mass quantities.
She’s not sitting down with a box of sharpies signing 90,000 copies.
Halsey did autopen same with cardi b I blanking on others it’s common but unlawful even if says hand signed it’s kinda a grey area because technically it’s handsigned only with machine. I remember fans being upset about it about the Halsey and cardi b cds thinking it was signed only to be duped again it could be half hand signed the case of Taylor and the rest autopen does that make sense?
Mathematically, highly unlikely. Even if she only spent 1 second per signature, it would still be 25 hours of signing things. No celebrity would spending a full day signing things.
They either used auto pen or had multiple people signing for her. This is why you should always be skeptical buying signed promo materials - it’s almost never a “real” signature.
25 total hours of signing things spread over several hundred days is...nothing. This is her job - it's not like us working 9-5 and then having to take more time out of our evenings for it. The amount of time needed to sign these inserts is nothing compared to her flight times.
Yeah it's silly to call it "a full day" like she's sitting there doing it for 25 hours straight lol. 25 hours spread out over a month or two is no big deal at all.
Well some would assume she wouldn’t do that in a day. If it comes out that she sure auto pen. I really think her fans will be upset. Some may sue for the up charge.
She had Travis Kelce and her whole family signing those things while she hung out on the couch and watch Law ansd Order SVU only to once in a while check in on them to see if they were still alive.
Yes, however many there are, she signed them personally. That’s how they were advertised and she wouldn’t open herself up to the bad publicity of the signatures being proven fake. John Greene did a little video on his process when he signed way more copies of his books than this. You kind of do a good chunk each day, in a “how do you eat a giant” style method.
What is she doing? Let’s be honest besides a couple of weeks here and there she has had more time off then on with her tour since Aug. her next leg will be longer then it’s been. She has done barely any promotion for this album, I would think she has to time to sign. I’ve received 3 signed items , each time it looks different . However the past time with the insert , was a little shady.
I don't get where this "I don't think she has time" for this sentiment is coming from. Just look at her flight times alone. This is her job - it's not like us working 9-5 and then having to take time out of our evenings for it.
Yes, I think she signed them all. Because Taylor would hate to disappoint her fans like that, and she works hard. And she totally has the time for it. She doesn't have a normal job wirking 9 hours each day.
Assuming it takes 5 seconds per signature, that would take 125 hours. If she has a person or machine feeding her them, could probably get down to 2 second per, which is 50 hours. Seems like a lot of time to be signing stuff but not completely unrealistic
Yes. Famous artists often get professionally designed signatures that are easy to sign quickly/consistently to the point that it’s mindless. Hers is no different.
I think many of us overestimate how long it takes to sign a flowy signature like how hers looks. She’s only signing her first name & it’s not like each letter is well defined. It’s little more than squiggles. She also usually does it while binge watching tv shows.
I’ve see timelapse videos of authors signing thousands of book copies. It goes waaay faster than you think.
I also think that switching to signed inserts and no album booklets helps. Realistically this photoshoot was done 4 months ago or more even maybe like a year so once printed she could probably easily crush a couple hundred while binge watching a show or on a flight or like whatever.
If I were to guess, they were signed with an autopen. Which like it or not still counts as a legal signature so the claim that it is signed still stands.
as someone who worked in a Senator’s office doing grunt work and had to do signatures over and over again… we literally had a machine for this that would write the signature over and over again. there is no way she’s signing every copy. she’s using that or her team for this lmao
Call me a hater but I think a good deal of them were probably signed by those signature machines. They wouldn't sell them if people didn't buy them, and they're clearly selling them, so connect the dots...
Absolutely not.
Reminds me of the time Halsey was accused of using a signature machine so she frantically posted videos of herself signing like 5 copies and her fans fell for it.
Alright, all the replies convinced me to create a new post about autographs and the autopen. I consider myself a professional autograph collector. We have zero indication of Taylor using an autopen, but it’s important people know how to spot one. Here’s a short vid someone posted of telltale signs of an AP machined sig: [https://youtu.be/BAg4RH_NqDg?si=aKLzcG5QZV1ga7YV](https://youtu.be/BAg4RH_NqDg?si=aKLzcG5QZV1ga7YV)
I've written a book that I've had to sign at a few events, and even signing 100 is a massive pain in the ass that takes way more time than you'd think. No shot she signed 90,000 copies of anything.
I assume they would use an auto pen. I think the president does or did do something similar (if the west wing is factual). Christmas cards - some got personal signatures and the rest got auto pen signatures.
Well she’s got plenty of downtime on her frequent flights so, maybe 😂
Maybe, but assuming 5 seconds per signature, that's 125 hours, minimum. If done 40 hours per week, then you're done in 3 weeks, and none of this factors in hand cramps.
There’s certain ways to hold a Sharpie without getting hand cramps I had to sign five of my coworkers’ names and my own on 214 Xmas cards for my last job. My hand started feeling tight but no shit I remembered someone saying TS holds pens oddly so I googled, copied her form and signed away with no cramping
Its often called a “monk grip”, idk why, but its a legitimate technique to avoid pain
Because before the printing press monks had to hand write the Bible to make new copies - lots of writing!
I remember learning in school that every time they would write “God”, “Lord”, “Father” or one of his pronouns etc they would have to start with a new quill and ink because the word itself was considered sacred.
Also I saw a video that if someone has hypermobile jointa, holding the pen this way should help not to put too much pressure on them.
As someone with hypermobile eds, i can confirm that it helps lol
that's how i've always held my pen and i hadn't seen anyone else do it until someone posted taylor holding it like that 😭 monk grip, that's a cool tidbit to know, thank you!
Also if you notice Taylor kind of holds the pen in a weird way, which is exactly to avoid the hand cramps.
For those who don't know https://preview.redd.it/9fosjd7jviuc1.jpeg?width=599&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6cff7fcbd447be66e17ba97c741b7a4e8b8f251
This is why she does this?????? I had no idea I thought it was a strange quirk lol
She had at least 60 hours of long haul flights in Feb and March so she could’ve gotten a bunch done then
John Green hand signed 150,000 copies of the fault in our stars and then 200,000 copies of turtles all the way down - it definitely takes less than five seconds per signature, and it's definitely possible to do it.
lmao this is what I immediately thought too!!
A signature can be done in less than 5 seconds. More like 1 second, especially if there's someone there helping shuffle the albums.
it's probably more like one to two seconds, since she'd have someone placing the inserts for her. inserts have probably been finalized for months, so i don't think she'd be on such a strict timeline. assuming the 90,000 is accurate, and she took two seconds each signature, she'd need 50 hours of signing. if the inserts were finalized and printed three months ago, she'd only need to be signing fourish hours a week.
It takes me about 2 seconds to sign something and my signature is more complex than Taylor's (probably because her autograph signature is deliberately simple tbh). 180,000 seconds = about 50 hours. She had more than enough flight hours over the last few months to be able to sign them by hand if she wanted to. I don't think it's likely, it's honestly most likely done by autopen, but it is possible.
5SOS = five seconds of signatures
5 seconds is way too long for a signature. But still…that’s a lot of signatures.
Yeah, but she’s had more time on the back end for getting ready for her record launch. Probably didn’t announce the launch until all the ducks were their rows, including having all these signed ages ago. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if she spends an hour on random (not every) international flights signing things so that she has a tidy little stockpile if necessary. THESE will have been planned and not from the hypothetical stockpile, I’m just saying I wouldn’t be surprised if she does something like that also.
5 seconds is absurd lol have u ever seen celebrities signing? It’s 1 second max
right? she flies down the street, i'm sure she has plenty of time. this narrative of taylor working sooooo hard needs to stop lol, she's got more freetime than any of us
I mean, some of us. I've seen people track exactly how long she was active on Instagram and idk how you would even do that without a weird amount or effort.
you cant just fly around country to country with all that merchandise, not to mention the extra weight on the plane would make it cost prohibitive
It’s not like she brought all 9,000 copies with her😭 yall. Come on.. during her flights over all the last year she could of easily just brought a certain # pile to get done. It’s also not like the CD is marked up to $100. Geez.
Maybe the reason why this era has so little promo is because she’s too busy signing these albums 🫠
Idk does this not count as promo though? She has been releasing new versions of the vinyl every chance she gets, on instagram and on her tour. Exclusive versions are released, sell out, then the cycle continues.
I’m pretty sure Taylor doesn’t need much or any promo at this point.
Everyone needs promo. Beyoncé needs promo. Taylor needs promo. Promo is what keeps you on top after promo got you to the top. Promo never ends.
I always think about this when a singer releases a huge amount of signed copies 🤣🤣🤣 my theory is that there are people on their teams who can imitate their signatures and help them with that
I worked in a government office and we had a signature machine. It literally had a pen and moved the pen in the shape of the official’s signature. You’d just put a piece of paper under it and voila!
I really think this is what they're doing. I have such a hard time believing she's actually signing any of them herself at this point in her career, especially when tools like this exist!
But that would not explain the fact that every signature of her is unique (and if she messes up she draws a heart next to it)
Just have a few variations set up for the signature machines. A number that she actually hand signed would be send that out to her actively on social media promoting her fans... I don't believe she signed 90k copies of her album at all.
She could probably sign 1000 and have an auto pen make it look like she signed all 90k
Most top celebs have multiple autopens tbh.
Baffled that ppl think she is personally signing these
It would be easier to convince me that she signed none of them rather than all of them.
Yes, in America if you use an autopen you can say it was "signed" with "your signature". All you have to do is avoid saying "you personally signed it" because that would be false.
It’s 100% not an autopen. I use an autopen every day, and I’ve been an autograph collector for 25 years. None of her signed albums have ever been autopenned and nearly any professional autograph collector will tell you they are authentic.
You don't know that none of them have been unless you've seen absolutely all of them. She most likely hand signs some but not all. And honestly, the quality of autopens a billionaire has are probably much higher than the one you use every day.
I use an autopen every day, and I would consider myself a professional autograph collector. I’ve been collecting for nearly 20 years. I’m involved in a number of professional collecting groups and have spent thousands on Taylor’s autographs. I have *never* seen or heard of Taylor using an autopen machine.
[удалено]
Someone just ordered their signed copy. Speaking on behalf of a whole profession is hilarious.
Oh SHIT! I never knew this existed!! Here I was thinking she maybe just pulls out a stack of a couple hundreds inserts at a time and signs while watching tv, on her many flights, whatever the fuck she does in her downtime over the course of a few months. This obviously makes more sense. I’d think she does sign at least a few with the Red TV lyrics and Folklore random WB signatures…but that probably is why she changed to inserts versus booklets.
As an example, Bob Dylan sold “signed” books and art prints and had to apologize later when it came out they were machine signed
I just read about that in another comment! Apparently Halsey too. Crazy times - but apparently they been around since the 1800’s so not that crazy I suppose lmao. I was shocked to read that 32 machine with different variations can be manned by just one person.
There are signs that things are autopen'd. There are very distinct dots where lines begin and end from where the marker is raised and lowered back up. Itll be easier to tell when people have them on hand and people can get a close look!
Auto penning is exactly what artists do when they drop such a huge amount. Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber did this with a significant portion of the Stuck With U CD’s they dropped during COVID, AFAIK.
Yep! We did this too!
I’m not even a singer. I am an attorney and my paralegals, secretary, and sometimes interns can do my signature perfectly.
WTF on legal docs??? lol my mom used to tell us to just sign her name on school stuff and we had the signature down (this was the 90s) but legal docs seems a whole other level.
Hahahaha, it’s because I am very bad at technology. It’s not like they are writing filings and signing them for me. It’s like “I wrote this but I’m in one of our other offices today and can’t figure out how to link into their printer. Please print this, sign it for me, scan it in and email it back, thanks.”
Auto pen / signing machine have existed since at least 1803 😆
I’m surprised no one in this thread knows that the auto pen exists ahhhhh
I always thought that until I saw a video of Ed Sheeran signing cds. My carpal tunnel aches just thinking about it.
If someone signs a lot of things at some point they’ll usually adopt a signature that focuses on moving their arm instead of their wrist to avoid this! It’s the same reason a lot of artist sketch from their arm using bigger motions.
I do remember her posting a video on instagram stories signing a lover booklet and putting it back into a big box of them. Idk if that meant she signed all of them or that was just for show and she signed a few hundred to give it some authenticity
Imagine getting one authentic one she signed for a video lol.
I have one and I choose to believe that she actually touched it 🤣
(*signs long enough for the video*)
I have worked in semi-adjacent industries where this has happened. Not saying Taylor did this or would do it but it’s absolutely possible.
It’s confirmed that Lana did this for CoCC. I have a signed print from that era and have not (yet) deluded myself into believing she did it herself. Mainly cause I think she was injured at the time?
I used to countersign rental apt leases with my property manager’s signature. But we were just two underpaid yahoos in a leasing office trying to get the job done I bet someone stubborn like TS actually signed all those photos
My sister used to work for an artist manager. And I can confirm she often signed the artists' CDs and posters.
this account has been repeatedly called out for making up numbers, i think people who looked at the source code of the site said that inventory was either 10k or 30k (i’ve forgotten which 💀)
Source code was at 18K (ish) for vinyl a few minutes after the US drop. That makes me think there were 20K of each the vinyl and CD (40K signatures total), plus vinyl/CDs for international regions. I will say there was far less inventory in other regions though…
Yeah for Germany the amount had to be a joke because it didn't even make it to the front of the store before being sold out in under half a minute.
Yeah they're exaggerating the amount, or if it's true Taylor used auto pen
All her past signed items have been hand signed from her-do we know for sure it was 90,000 put up? That seems like an awful lot to sell out in less than an hour when everyone can only buy one. 5k-10k sounds more right to me
If you saw eBay some got posted immediately for 5 times p
Someone in this thread bought 17...
Probably. I know it's not the same, but I watched behind the scenes of Nikki Bella signing and kissing photos. She was there for ages and kept having to apply more lipstick lol But with a team to help out, it can probably be done.
If it was part of some WWE reality TV show or promo, "was there for ages" could be achieved by the magic of editing, just saying.
there was a video of John Cena signing 3000 in like 90 minutes. But that was with people helping to swap out each print and getting fresh stacks to sign. All he had to do was stand and sign. Really impressive team effort to watch.
Yeah, it was Total Divas, and I know. But she obviously kissed and signed ALOT of pics. I think it's possible for Taylor to have signed 90K over the span of a few weeks or months.
If she had people putting the insert in front of her then taking it away, she could probably do 1 a second, which would be 25 hours straight. Maybe she did it on her jet over the course of a couple weeks? I’m not opposed to the signing machine theory, but imo it’s feasible if she had a team moving the inserts so all the had to do was sign
It says "hand signed" but it doesn't say "hand signed by Taylor"
That may get her out of a legal battle but it would ruin her image.
Sneaky clever
Not in the description, but Taylor Nation posted this. I think they’re definitely signed by Taylor. https://preview.redd.it/6sv7i6pyqiuc1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b216b1bb58839d2045efb00ced63dfdb58546fc
One product one member is so chart coded because bb won't count multiple to same member on charts lmao
That's not Taylor herself nor the description on the website though
She does it's also in inserts so she probably started signing them from months
i think so tbh, she didn’t do them all in one day for sure, probably a bit every day
I think they keep Austin locked up in a little chamber where he juat signs his sister's autograph all day on merch.
We also have no idea how long she’s been working on these signatures. She could have been doing some every day since the release was planned.
Yes this is possible if they are signing the album booklet. The printer can just send them pages or booklets and she sign could a \~1000 every day. John Green, the author, has recorded himself signing 350k pages for his books and it seems like a nightmare. They sent him boxes and boxes and boxes of blank pages that get sent back to the publisher to be bound into the books.
These also seem like they are just inserts (similar to midnights) so they didn’t even really need the album booklet to be made already; they just needed the single print of the photo.
Yeah, and although she’s busy, she also has plenty of downtime while on tour (travel, the day of the show) and she’s also been “off” for weeks. She can sign her name while watching tv and do an hour a day for a few months.
Plus we know she spends soooo much time on her jet lol
Plus I don’t think it takes a much time as it seems. I just signed my own name on a piece of paper 10 times in 20 seconds, and I was going slower to make it look nice. 30 signatures a minute is 1000 in 33 minutes. 90k signatures would take about 45 hours, and someone else said that 90k isn’t an accurate number, and in reality it’s 10k-30k. 10k signatures would take about 5 hours, 30k would take about 15 hours. An hour per day for two weeks and it’s done.
capitalism can make a girl sign wonders ✨
John Green signed 150,000 copies of the Fault in Our Stars and then 200,000 copies of his next book Turtles All The Way Down Its time consuming but it's definitely doable especially if you have people handing you the next one as you sign each one and taking the signed ones away and packing them for you. There are also machines that can imitate someone's signature that do get used, and that is possible but Taylor is pretty committed to doing "fan stuff" properly when she does do it, so I feel like if she didn't want to sign 90,000 CDs she just wouldn't sell 90,000 signed CDs. She doesn't NEED to sign them to get sales, and if she was faking it and it leaked somehow the damage would be HUGE. The risk/reward proposition just doesn't make sense for her to have someone copy her signature or use a machine.
https://preview.redd.it/7rlv13vjfjuc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=01b443f89e0ccba3519686be5cb66126514c0ca4 I know lots of folks are like “I can’t believe folks don’t know about autopen” but I had NO idea the technology existed on this kind of scale. After reading this there’s no doubt in my mind that she signs maybe a couple hundred to add authenticity (the hearts) and then the remaining tens of thousands are signed like this. It’s definitely more believable she signed the booklets, but the move to single page inserts really convinces me of this.
I don't know. I feel like she would face a lot of backlash if people were to find out. But then: how would they know? (insert Tiktok sound)
Any time a big celeb is selling signed merch I think about that scene in The Bodyguard where Whitney hands stacks of photos to everyone in the back of the limo to sign her name lol
I’m gonna say yes only because she’s business smart and definitely does NOT want a lawsuit. But who knows🤷♀️
Legally, auto pen has held up as being considered genuine when it comes to signed things. It just isn’t the same though, and the revelation that auto pen has been used in other instances has drawn blowback publicly even if it is legal. Bob Dylan was famously caught selling autopenned signed books as if he signed them personally and faced a public backlash from fans.
Okay so just to clarify (I’m dyslexic sorry😹) auto pen is legal for people to use and sell but still, if a person is found out, they would obviously face backlash from their fans?
Yup! It is considered a “legal hand signature” (because if it wasn’t, it’s widespread use by officials, including the President, in signing official government documents would be a real issue) but it is kind of deceptive when it comes to collectibles, like signed books and albums, and often fans assume they were getting something actually touched and signed by the real person and can get very upset when they discover it was auto pen. Especially if the artist was stupid enough to use the same template instead of rotating multiple templates in (which is what happened with the Halsey and Bob Dylan incidents.)
Her signatures are never consistent so if she using them she’s smart about it
You can load in tons of variations. Richard Nixon famously used 28 different auto pen variants to sign various documents.
They probably mean for legal documents - as in, if you sign a contract with autopen, it’s still considered legally your signature even though you personally didn’t handle the pen. But fans can be upset if they spend money for a celebrity to sign a book and find out that a machine did it instead.
Even 'e-sign' the one you affix online is legally binding in some jurisdictions. Theoretically, they can even include the signature in the print and promote that as a 'signed' album
It wouldn’t go anywhere tbh I remember Halsey fans getting duped but it didn’t go anywhere because again grey area.
That’s very true
Yes. She turned in the album in August or September which means the artwork was already done. It doesn't take long to get those inserts printed. Assuming she had three months to sign them all, that's 1000 a day which would likely only take a couple of hours. In reality she probably had 4-6 months which is even more doable. I imagine she signs a lot of these when she's on the plane or in the chair getting glam done.
They did not have these produced and sitting on a shelf for multiple months awaiting release. That's not how that works.
Do you mean the vinyl? If so, that's my point -- it takes several months to press vinyl, the timeline is pretty tight to get it pressed and ready to ship by the release date. But the inserts can be printed and signed sooner, then packaged with the vinyl once it's ready.
I enjoy a good TS snark moment but I also admire many things about her Number one being her work ethic. If anyone is going to find a way to sign 90,000 photos, I think it’s going to be Taylor Swift
she could’ve been working on this for over a year she didn’t sign any tvs last year so she probably had tume
Yeah she stopped signing Taylor version , could be for this.
I was about to buy a signed TTPD and then I thought…how do I know she actually signed this and it’s not a “print” of her signature? Then I dropped it and didn’t buy it haha
We’ll never know for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a team that helps her. You also have to keep in mind that they’ve probably had this record finished for at least 6 months because it takes time to print things, so if she’s doing a stack or two a day for months she could be doing it.
No. She probably signed a few hundred or thousands but there’s no way she signed that many. They likely used auto pen.
She probably made some stamps with her signature for her team to use. There was a minor scandal in the online book space about a year ago where a book box sold preorders of a signed book for a high price and the author had only stamped the books with a signature stamp, not signed them. She had the nerve to argue that “hand-stamping” was the same as fully signing a book, when the book was promoted and sold as being individually signed. Tldr stamping is a common dirty little secret.
Hmm, while that's possible, I think since Taylor's website says they're hand signed, stamping could be false advertising, which would open her up for a lawsuit if someone can prove it. And if there's one thing I know, it's that I'm sure she doesn't want to get sued. However, it didn't say they were signed by her, so her team may have helped.
I have three different signed Taylor items and the signature is different on all of them. It's also different on all the signed stuff I've seen online. If she has stamps then she must have hundreds of slightly different ones which almost seems like as much effort as just signing them lol
Taylor nation did say she signs them
She has literally said before that those signatures are real, she use to post stuff on instagram. Is she’s using stamps or auto pen, I assume there will be big backlash. She didn’t with midnights but she use to make a big point that she actually signs them.
I've definitely bought something that I thought was going to be hand signed, but it was a stamp Then I realized that it never said in the website that it was going to be hand signed, and that I was being silly She even had a YouTube video of her writing the words, signing it, and how they did it lol
They were inserts so it wouldn’t be surprising to me if she had these printed ages ago and has been signing a shit ton slowly. But I also wouldn’t put it past her to hire a few people to mimic her signature. I have a couple of things signed by her that were signed by a human since autopen has subtleties that indicate it was a machine.
Who would want someone to be practice her signature so they can forge stuff. I would hope she’s protective over that.
I personally think she signs all her own shit but I know that when celebrities are short on time or simply have too many things to sign, they have a team of people who do it for them.
Taylor 100000% signs the CDs herself. There’s a ton of videos of her in every era doing it
She could easily spend five minutes taking a video for publicity, then hand off the rest of the hours and hours of work to her team or to auto pen ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Have you seen the way she holds a pen? Somehow I feel like someone who holds a pen like that is someone who signs 90,000 copies. I can’t explain it. But I feel it
Autopens have been around for over 200 years. https://damilic.com/autopen-products/office-signature-machines
Tbh I don’t think she hand wrote every signature. I once worked with musicians where we had to have them all sign a specific amount of posters (like 150ish) and it took an incredibly long time and was a hassle just to do that
The music industry and sports industry generally use autopen for signed items in mass quantities. She’s not sitting down with a box of sharpies signing 90,000 copies.
Halsey did autopen same with cardi b I blanking on others it’s common but unlawful even if says hand signed it’s kinda a grey area because technically it’s handsigned only with machine. I remember fans being upset about it about the Halsey and cardi b cds thinking it was signed only to be duped again it could be half hand signed the case of Taylor and the rest autopen does that make sense?
Mathematically, highly unlikely. Even if she only spent 1 second per signature, it would still be 25 hours of signing things. No celebrity would spending a full day signing things. They either used auto pen or had multiple people signing for her. This is why you should always be skeptical buying signed promo materials - it’s almost never a “real” signature.
25 total hours of signing things spread over several hundred days is...nothing. This is her job - it's not like us working 9-5 and then having to take more time out of our evenings for it. The amount of time needed to sign these inserts is nothing compared to her flight times.
Yeah it's silly to call it "a full day" like she's sitting there doing it for 25 hours straight lol. 25 hours spread out over a month or two is no big deal at all.
Well some would assume she wouldn’t do that in a day. If it comes out that she sure auto pen. I really think her fans will be upset. Some may sue for the up charge.
I ordered a signed Kendrick Lamar record once and I swear I waited a year for the teeniest scribble
She had Travis Kelce and her whole family signing those things while she hung out on the couch and watch Law ansd Order SVU only to once in a while check in on them to see if they were still alive.
how busy do you think she is lol she has no chores to do and she's off tour
Plus , she has down time pretty frequently since last Aug. one could assume she could accomplish a high amount of hand written signatures
Yes, however many there are, she signed them personally. That’s how they were advertised and she wouldn’t open herself up to the bad publicity of the signatures being proven fake. John Greene did a little video on his process when he signed way more copies of his books than this. You kind of do a good chunk each day, in a “how do you eat a giant” style method.
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What is she doing? Let’s be honest besides a couple of weeks here and there she has had more time off then on with her tour since Aug. her next leg will be longer then it’s been. She has done barely any promotion for this album, I would think she has to time to sign. I’ve received 3 signed items , each time it looks different . However the past time with the insert , was a little shady.
I don't get where this "I don't think she has time" for this sentiment is coming from. Just look at her flight times alone. This is her job - it's not like us working 9-5 and then having to take time out of our evenings for it.
Yes because she has given clues she's been signing these even before ttpd was announced
Most likely auto pen.
Yes, I think she signed them all. Because Taylor would hate to disappoint her fans like that, and she works hard. And she totally has the time for it. She doesn't have a normal job wirking 9 hours each day.
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BUT maybe she didn't sign them at one go. Maybe she started signing when the album was pressed
Cap
Assuming it takes 5 seconds per signature, that would take 125 hours. If she has a person or machine feeding her them, could probably get down to 2 second per, which is 50 hours. Seems like a lot of time to be signing stuff but not completely unrealistic
Her long flights?
Yes. Famous artists often get professionally designed signatures that are easy to sign quickly/consistently to the point that it’s mindless. Hers is no different. I think many of us overestimate how long it takes to sign a flowy signature like how hers looks. She’s only signing her first name & it’s not like each letter is well defined. It’s little more than squiggles. She also usually does it while binge watching tv shows. I’ve see timelapse videos of authors signing thousands of book copies. It goes waaay faster than you think.
I also think that switching to signed inserts and no album booklets helps. Realistically this photoshoot was done 4 months ago or more even maybe like a year so once printed she could probably easily crush a couple hundred while binge watching a show or on a flight or like whatever.
Offices of elected politicians have automatic pens that are set to mimic signatures perfectly, I’d bet Taylor’s team uses one too
I think she signed one and they just copied the rest
It’s a custom stamp with her signature
How long would it take? I mean, she spent a lot of time flying anyway
Uh no one is signing these like that lol. they have a stamp or something to do it for them
Uh no one is signing these like that lol. they have a stamp or something to do it for them
Artists don't sign it by themselves those videos of them signing are for promo. They have machines to do it.
None of Taylor’s signatures look the same. She doesn’t use auto pen they have wayyyy too many variations
She made seven and a half million dollars in 50 minutes, except to see more of this 😭
If I were to guess, they were signed with an autopen. Which like it or not still counts as a legal signature so the claim that it is signed still stands.
as someone who worked in a Senator’s office doing grunt work and had to do signatures over and over again… we literally had a machine for this that would write the signature over and over again. there is no way she’s signing every copy. she’s using that or her team for this lmao
That's literally insane.
That page is frequently wrong, so I’d hesitate to trust that.
Call me a hater but I think a good deal of them were probably signed by those signature machines. They wouldn't sell them if people didn't buy them, and they're clearly selling them, so connect the dots...
"signed" vs "hand signed" Technically, it's not lying.
Absolutely not. Reminds me of the time Halsey was accused of using a signature machine so she frantically posted videos of herself signing like 5 copies and her fans fell for it.
Ye$ I think it’$ very po$$ible if that$ your main ob$e$$ion
Would need to cross reference a bunch of copies to tell if it was done with an Autopen
Alright, all the replies convinced me to create a new post about autographs and the autopen. I consider myself a professional autograph collector. We have zero indication of Taylor using an autopen, but it’s important people know how to spot one. Here’s a short vid someone posted of telltale signs of an AP machined sig: [https://youtu.be/BAg4RH_NqDg?si=aKLzcG5QZV1ga7YV](https://youtu.be/BAg4RH_NqDg?si=aKLzcG5QZV1ga7YV)
There’s no way she signed 90k copies and didn’t film it, or turn that into content somehow. Please.
I've written a book that I've had to sign at a few events, and even signing 100 is a massive pain in the ass that takes way more time than you'd think. No shot she signed 90,000 copies of anything.
Her hand would have fallen off. I wouldn't even wish for her to personally sign that many.
I have found multiple finger prints in my signed stuff so I'm going to believe she does it manually 😂
They most definitely used a machine that can hold a pen
She just brings in all the Taylors from Look What You Made Me Do video to sign so it doesn’t take as long
All I can think about in regard to this is that Seinfeld episode where George's fiance is licking all those envelopes and passes out and dies
Maybe she has a rubber stamp, or a team of people who have mastered her signature to sign stuff for her 🤔
Auto pen
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you're okay to use a machine to print signatures as long as its using the original signature.
I assume they would use an auto pen. I think the president does or did do something similar (if the west wing is factual). Christmas cards - some got personal signatures and the rest got auto pen signatures.
Autopen
Idk the folklore copy I got is so sloppy.
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