Oscar Wilde's signature was worth up to £500 yesterday, when a British company specialising in autographs came on a shopping spree to Dublin.
Fraser's Autographs was offering hundreds of pounds for items signed by Irish heroes and celebrities. Daniel O'Connell's signature was worth £500; James Joyce's up to £400; Michael Collins's £250; W.B. Yeats's about £200; and more recent autographs like those of U2 band members were valued at £100.
If those sound expensive, consider that the company is selling a handwritten manuscript of John Lennon's Imagine for £25,000 sterling.
However, Fraser's manager, Ms Poppy Collinson, said: "There must be quite a few people in Ireland who are sitting on a fortune and won't even know it.
"Oscar Wilde is just huge at the moment. There was a film about him a few years ago and everyone loves him," she said. "James Joyce's is very rare, but he is more of an acquired taste."
Ms Collinson warns that, although some forgeries can look moderately convincing, most have obvious mistakes. Experts examine the type of paper used, which must be at least as old as the signature is supposed to be. They compare the writing style, where on a page a signature appears and on what type of document. Contracts, wedding certificates or literary manuscripts are difficult to fake, she said.
The object the autograph is written on can add to the value, too, with signed cabinet photographs, for example, tending to be worth more than autographed scraps of paper.
The show is in Duke's Hotel, Belfast, today.
The company deals in signatures ranging from Queen Elizabeth I to Cameron Diaz, so Ms Collinson said they were open to anything. Autographs are priced from £5 and come with a lifetime authenticity guarantee.