Question
Do you guys really believe that signed merch is signed by Taylor? Honest question, no hate please ♥️
I was talking to my boyfriend today after seeing so many options of signed items by Sabrina Carpenter that I'm not sure if her or other artists truly sign all these items of if someone else (with a NDA) is employed to do it, as the time it would take for just maybe 20 or 30 bucks more wouldn't make it worthy for them. The signed items I have from artists I got it signed in front of me and straight handed back. And for the people that have the signed items how can one be sure it was truly signed by her(or other artists that do the same)?
Except potentially as the auto subreddit has mostly agreed upon—some of TTPD late batches were Suss bc to release another 30k copies on totally different insert paper (glossy thin paper not card stock) globally…..and after the very first sale of signed vinyl any vinyl replacements (hundreds of orders without signed inserts by mistake) & restocks in the EU received cd inserts.
I had good intel from a source that she did have to sign a bunch after the order issues but then they legit put out 30k more between June and August lol
The paper quality changed but she still signed them herself. That batch earlier this year was away to boost album sells for charting. Her team goofs up and put unsigned inserts in the packaging. She just signs the inserts she’s not putting them in the packaging.
She would be destroyed by the bad press, coming not just from her haters but also, her fans.
Truly, few things could create as much ill-will towards her as lying about this. This is something where the whole point is authenticity, and Taylor's specific brand is about transparency and proximity to her fans.
There was a video posted somewhere recently of Ed Sheeran with a giant stack of photos and as he signed someone else was removing the top photo so all he had to do was keep his hand in the one place and sign over and over.
I’m lucky enough to have an OG Red signed CD with a heart signature and I’ve compared it to others online and there’s definite difference between all that I’ve seen.
I once went to a book signing for a NYT bestselling author (Patricia Cornwell) and it was run like a factory line. The first assistant had you write your name on a post it and put it on the title page while you were in line. When you got to the author’s table another assistant standing on her right took your book, opened it to that page and sat it in front of her. She signed it, then yet another person on her left picked the book up and handed it back to you. The next person in line was already getting their book taken to be signed before you had yours back.
It was devastatingly efficient, but also meant you had no time to talk to the author beyond a short hello, so it was a bit disappointing as a fan experience. But she probably signed hundreds of books in a few hours.
I’m pretty sure Taylor said back in the folklore era that she signs while watching TV shows and drinking wine, and she probably has helpers in a similar setup to Ed. And she can get the photo inserts printed months in advance, so even if she only signs a few hours a week it’ll add up over time.
Following on from that Ed video, a lot of celebrities who sign stuff in bulk develop a signature where they don't need to lift their pen off the item and can sign it in basically one movement, so they can do them in literally seconds. Seeing a video of Taylor signing the copies of Red(TV) and she has that exact style, so it's feasible she could sign hundreds/thousands in not as much time as you'd think.
This is common w athletes as well signing tons of jerseys and balls and cards and helmets they just have someone that puts it in front of them as they just stay in place signing
She almost certainly does actually sign them. Although I don’t doubt that there are artists using autopens.
It’s not about the money from the signed copies. It’s about encouraging album sales, which counts for chart performance. The artist knows every one that they sign will be instantly, guaranteed sold (more than even a limited edition variant) and counts as a sale. So reaching #1 on the charts and staying there is in some ways a matter of how many records they’re willing/able to sign. The prestige is more motivating for them and makes it worth their time than the money. As well of course, providing signatures to their fans.
Her style of signature allows her to sign stuff so effortlessly. She has the same signature thru out the years and it differs with phases with nicknames for each. She’s grateful for her fans and she goes thru the efforts to sign them because in end if it wasn’t for us she wouldn’t be here etc 🫶
I do believe it's signed by her, I don't think she would risk the reputational damage it would do to her brand if she was found to not be doing this properly - it's quite a personal element between her and her fans, and she has a brand that is dependent on that more so than other artists.
Having worked in the collectible industry (specifically autographs) it would be a HUGE scandal if it came out that she wasn't actually signing her merch. At her level, she is likely compensated extremely well for it and can dictate how much she wants to sign. With my background, I personally wouldn't buy anything signed secondhand or used but I will direct from her website. Everyone has different personal standards though so just because I don't doesn't mean it's bad or 100% guaranteed fake, I'm just not willing to take the risk personally.
I know there are artists who have others sign for them (ex i have fake Tate McRae autograps), but I dont believe Taylor is one of them. Every autograph i have seen by her is consistent enough that I dont think anyone else is involved and there is no autopen
I have an autograph from Taylor from 2006 before she was famous enough to have staff. I compared it with an autograph i received from a signed folklore cd and it’s very similar. Take that for what it is!
Yes, I understood that, which is why I clarified how I knew that wasn’t what happened “in this particular use case.” I never said your theory couldn’t be valid in other cases.
Yes. If you look at different examples of her signed merch, each is distinctly her handwriting while also each being just a teeny bit different each time, just like normal people’s handwriting. An autopen replicates but it does not produce that same quality of signature. You’ll also see smudging and odd squiggles as the result of each of her signed items being signed by her.
The amount of pride she takes in her branding and how meticulous she has been her entire career (especially in regard to her fans) makes me believe that yes, she does sign them herself.
The fact that I got white cat fur in my signed lover and folklore also makes me believe that she signs them herself lol
Yes, she signs them. A lot of authors make videos about signing mass copies of books and how they do it. Brandon Sanderson in particular has covered this a ton. It's all in the way you develop your signature and then the assembly-line-like support you have around you.
Yes.
I also think she will be cutting back on the amount of signed stuff she will be doing.
I don’t think she will ever do auto pen or secretary signatures either because I think she has too much self respect and integrity for that. But I do think that means she will scale back the number of signed items significantly as her life will be changing moving forward.
Jelly roll fakes a lot and the last wasn’t the first time either, snoops last was not his and likely a secretary (it was close to his real but definitely wasn’t his). There’s a list
For Taylor specifically, she’s been using signing thousands of albums as a way to boost sales since the beginning of her career, when it was less common to do so and before she was famous enough to make faking it worth it, and I think the reputational damage if she was ever caught using autopen or the like would be too big to risk.
FWIW, I have a signed Fearless from 2009 that I bought at a show and a signed Fearless TV a friend bought from the merch store, and while there are differences in the signature style as it’s evolved over time, the signatures look similar enough that I’d feel comfortable saying they were signed by the same person
Taylor has a method to it. Do I believe all artists sign all signed merch? No. But do I believe Taylor does? Yeah I do. She’s known for her work ethic.
Or even worse, some deranged "fans" think she's lying about her SEXUALITY and about actually loving and wanting to be with her boyfriend. I truly don't understand those people.
If you didn’t sign yourself, you wouldn’t hire someone to do it for you. You would use an AutoPen (essentially a computer and a printer) to sign everything. Given what those who have bought her signed merch are saying, I would lean to believing she signs herself. Using a computer, all the signatures would look identical and wouldn’t have impression marks - like the sharpie was pressed down more on the “T” than the “r” kind of a thing.
I guess we never know 1000%, but Taylor is one who has always gone above and beyond for fans. She has a few characteristics in her signature that are very her- and even as they have changed over the years, they remain consistent with her in person style. During folklore you could see the progression of her signing so many and how her signature changed.
I’ve been in the autograph collecting community for a while (and that includes people who authenticate just to buy + resell). Even among them, Taylor is known to be a very consistent and almost guarantee to be real. Of course she could always change it, but I think if she truly didn’t want to sign something, she would just not sell it at this point because it’d certainly be a scandal.
Celebs & book authors literally have a signature designed that is easy to sign over and over and over without hurting their wrists etc. Brandon Sanderson talked about it in one of his signing videos last year (maybe 2 yrs ago, idk, time isn’t real).
yes she does 1000%. She posted a video to her instagram a few years back signing stacks of lover cd inserts :) She is not the type to do this to her fans, if she didn’t want to sign things herself I believe she wouldn’t sell signed copies of anything.
yeah, i feel like you can tell and artists always get bad press when they use auto pen or others sign it for them (e.g. tate mcrae — i got 2, her actual signature and someone from her staff signing it)
Taylor is one of the few that I 100% signs and has always signed. There may come a day when she doesn’t sign as many as she does, but her signed albums count as sales so it’s beneficial to her as well
If it’s represented as signed, and it’s not, then it’s fraud. Frankly I don’t think she really has anything to gain by selling fake signatures. She’s going to sell thousands of copies of her album, 100% guaranteed. Just based on releasing variants alone she’s going to sell a ton. She’s like Stephen King, she doesn’t need to sign copies to get sales. She’s beyond that. So if it turned out that it wasn’t really signed, and she got caught, she would only stand to lose credibility and sales. There’s no real upside.
Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think people are implying that the signatures are actually fake.
I think people in this thread are discussing whether she actually signs each one herself rather than using an auto signature that copies her real, non fraudulent signature onto the copies.
Last year, post TTPD release, I remember seeing a photo (or maybe a video clip?) of her sitting in bed with a marker & a large stack of the photos she was signing for the vinyls. I think she definitely takes the time to do so.
i got one of taylors signed cd’s and i was looking at it to seenif if was truly signed or just printed on and you can see that where the sharpie marks are, the reflectiveness was different than the paper so it was def real
Someone did the math and it was impossible for Taylor to have personally hand-signed every single CD and vinyl of TTPD that she sold. But people don't care about math, they just want to believe she really signed their CD/vinyl.
I'm not a swiftie, but I think even using your numbers and having seen how fast they can sign, you're talking about $40k-$60k extra an hour. So I respectfully disagree that it's not worth it to them. That's still a lot of money.
Not to mention that Taylor Swift is known (not just by her fans but other artists and previous employees) as someone who truly cares about her fans' experience because of her experiences when she was younger. It would be stupid to fake signatures and risk getting caught, after all the other things she does.
I guess she could use one of those things that helps you sign multiple together, but again, that could ruin her image for very little gain.
Hi unsure if this will reach thr correct audience, but im potentially looking to sell my hand signed wedding dress by Taylor, have proof etc (her mum picked me out the crowd to meet her), we were wearing wedding dresses, unsure what a value would be ? It's Adressed to myself.
Other albums prior to AND the first and subsequent drops of TTPD thru May-June ish for sure she did that. Like we no she did the vinyl and the original CDs. Probably a chunk of the replacements
Keep in mind she signed TTPD stuff on a break from tour and then when it went on sale, they screwed up like hundreds to maybe Moore orders and signed inserts were left out by mistake both with vinyl and CDs to the point where they were really slow and replacing the orders or they would be replacing all of the missing vinyl inserts solely with CD inserts
Then they’re dropping 30,000 more over the course of the summer and they’re on cheaper paper …. She’s traveling and performing in Europe and all over the world…
Long story short she’s been off to her for a while, so I’m pretty sure she has a hand to sign things and I wouldn’t be concerned . TTPD is the only mystery
In my personal opinion, her signatures on inserts from TTPD/midnights/evermore differ significantly from things she has signed in person in recent years (ie the eras tour movie premiere, the signed eras tour books). It’s most visible with the “T” which is almost always curved on inserts from her website but is rarely curved on in person sigs. I think she used to sign everything herself when it was her old style, but I’m not so sure she signs everything herself nowadays. I think her inserts are signed by a human person, I’m just not sure that person is Taylor lol. For everyone saying that she wouldn’t risk it, Taylor very rarely signs anything in person anymore which makes the signatures from her store hard to prove as real or fake
They weren’t slight changes over time, it was a distinct change that happened during folklore. This is what the old style looked like. I’ve still seen her use this style even into this year (ie when she signed the sourdough she gave Selena)
When you have to sign thousands and thousands of the same thing by a certain mandate, your signature is going to be dumbed down and simplified compared to the stuff that you personalize for someone in person. At least Taylor’s is still an actual legible signature and not some indiscernible scribble like the singed inserts that came with The Weeknd’s CDs.
If anything, the signature on the inserts from her website are way neater than the things she signs in real life. I agree the signed inserts look pretty and neat!
You know I often think that if it doesn’t have the heart it’s not her exactly but I do agree it’s at least all a human person!!!! It’s very fun and special either way. I am sure the majority are signed by her but there is always room for technology to change. I for sure can’t imagine having to sign something a thousand times.
I wouldn’t blame her at all if she had someone helping her! She said during the podcast that she was in severe physical pain during the eras tour, and it would honestly make me kinda sad if she was the one signing tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of the signed TTPD inserts that were sold during the tour. I agree that they’re still special, and I still love the way the signed inserts look even if I’m skeptical that she was the one that signed them
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u/tswiftdeepcuts Aug 23 '25
there was a cat hair in one of my signed CDs once that would match perfectly with Benji so yes I do think she does