SoCal Autograph Odysses

The fourth item I sent out using the through the mail strategy I started a couple months ago was delivered in the mail today.  I sent an official Rawlings Major League Baseball to former Red Sox great Bobby Doerr.  Mr. Doerr is the oldest living member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, at the young age of 98.  I had read that Mr. Doerr was fantastic about signing everything through the mail, and I happen to think it's awesome that at his age he's so willing to respond to fan mail and fulfill autograph requests.  Here is a photo of how the ball turned out. I am now 4 for 4 on everything I have sent out, and plan on doing more research online to see which players are good at responding to these requests.  Mr. Doerr brings my Hall of Fame baseball number to 35, and mail successes now include this, Ryne Sandberg, Wade Boggs, and Dirk Nowitzki.  Thank you for reading.   

Something arrived in my mailbox yesterday with perfect timing, as the Chicago Cubs had just won the World Series for the first time since 1908 the day prior.  I sent a baseball to Ryne Sandberg back on October 20th, and the former Cubs great (and Major League Baseball Hall of Famer) sent me the ball back signed.  This is my third success out of three tries with the through the mail autograph website I'd stumbled across previously.  I currently have a fourth baseball out to another Hall of Famer, but it looks to perhaps have been lost in transit.  Here is the photo of the Sandberg ball;

I've mentioned the website before, but I like to use signings as a website to get a lot of information on which sports athletes (and some celebrities) are signing and when/where they are signing.  There are filters you can use to narrow down what exactly you're looking for, from which teams, states, and even types of award winners.  As I have quite the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame project going on, I've been keeping an eye on some private signings going on around the country.  As such, I came across a signing in Pennsylvania by a company called Total Sports Enterprises, which can be found Here .  They had a very affordable signing with Pirate legend Bill Mazeroski.  The ball came in the mail yesterday signed on the sweet spot with HOF 01, as well as JSA in the presence verification.   Mazeroski is a player I highly doubt would make it out west at any time for a signing, so I figured this was an affordable and trustworthy way of adding him to my c...

As I did on my last post with Dirk Nowitzki, I sent a something through the mail to the address of Wade Boggs, hoping to land a nice signature.  I've done quite a bit of research on which players are most apt to sign, so I figured I'd give Wade a shot as well, seeing that he seemed to have over a 90% success rate with this endeavor.  This one cost a bit more as shipping a major league baseball is a bit costlier than an 8x10 photo, plus the cost of the ball itself.  Earlier this week I received the Nowitzki photo, and yesterday it was a nice surprise to see the package I had sent shoved into my mailbox.  I hurried back into the house, cut open the envelope, and found this beauty; This brings the number of Major League Baseball Hall of Famers I have signed baseballs from to thirty two.  The list is as follows; -Don Sutton -Ozzie Smith -Andre Dawson -Ken Griffey Jr. -Phil Niekro -Gary Carter -Eddie Murray -Stan Musial -Willie Mays -Lou Brock -Yogi Ber...

I tried something new recently, and sent an 8x10 photo to Dallas Mavericks star and future Hall of Famer Dirk Nowitzki.  I sent this photo through the mail, because I had come across a website which serves as a database for athletes and their "through the mail" signing habits.  Through this website, I saw that Dirk had a success rate of 100%, which means that whatever people send he signs and sends back.  As this was my first attempt in doing this venture, I researched what to do and how best to maximize my probability of getting an autograph back.  I purchased an 8x10 photo for five or six bucks, mailed a self addressed stamped envelope, and hoped for the best.  I sent the photo out to the Dallas Mavericks facility on September 10th, so you can imagine my surprise when I picked up my mail yesterday and found an envelope.  Inside was this photo... I have to say, that's a pretty nice autograph to get at little cost through the mail from a player of Dirk N...

As I have mentioned in a post or two previously, Tony Gwynn is my all time favorite player and a major icon in the lexicon of San Diego sports.  He often appeared in the community, and as such, I was able to gather a bit of sports memorabilia from the man.  I have two baseballs signed, two identical 8x10's, and a throwback 1984 Padres jersey he signed for me with his 3141 inscription (which is his hit total).  My wife and I decided to have some of my items put together as a big montage as part of a nice shadowbox we can display on the way up to my sports memorabilia man cave.  I wanted to use the jersey as the centerpiece, one of the 8x10's and the 1998 World Series ball.  I decided against using the HOF 07 ball he signed for me because I preferred to keep it in my baseball Hall of Famer case, of which I currently have 31 signed baseballs in.  I took my items in to Hobby Lobby (religious nuttiness aside), brainstormed with my go to guy for framing, and they...

I came across a Corey Seager signing hosted by Honabach and Sons as well as the OC Dugout, and being held at Frank and Son's Collectible show.  When I first came across this signing, I purchased both an autograph ticket for a baseball as well as an inscription.  Corey was scheduled to appear approximately from 6-7:30, but the time was not set since he was coming after the Dodgers Cubs game earlier in the day.  He started signing at 6:15, and I didn't have to wait too long before it was my turn. Corey was real friendly, and took pictures with everyone who asked and conversed pretty well with them as well.  Since I still had a couple of the 2016 Petco Park All-Star balls left over from my lack of success during All-Star week, I decided to have Corey sign one of these and to put the 1st All-Star game inscription.  I told him that I'm actually a Padres fan but did not boo him during the homerun derby, like many of the fans did.  He seemed to get a kick ...

This autograph deserves a post of its own.  Through an event at my wife's work, I was able to attend a taping of a live Greg Maddux interview.  This was something available only to employees of the company as well as their guests, so I feel fortunate to have been able to attend.  Here is a photo of how close I got to the action, where I sat on a small sofa with my wife.  After the interview wrapped up, the host let everyone know they had to rush Greg out of there since he was scheduled to be up in Dana Point shortly.  Therefore, he left without signing anything for people.  Autographs were of course not guaranteed by any means, but it was still a bit of a bummer.  Luckily, my wife was able to track him down after the taping and asked him to sign a ball.  He stopped and signed for her, and even more amazingly, inscribed HOF 14 after she asked for that as well.  He even gave his full signature, which is a rare thing.  So I ended up w...

I'm going to do something for the first time on this blog, and promote something a family member of mine is selling.  It is still an autographed item, so I thought it would be a cool thing to show on this blog.  What is being a sold is a very rare lithograph of the five captains of Star Trek.  It was signed by all five actors who portrayed the characters, and only ran in a limited edition of 300.  The artist is Jerry Vanderstelt.      William Shatner (Kirk) Patrick Stewart (Picard)   Avery Brooks (Sisko) Kate Mulgrew (Janeway) Scott Bakula (Archer) For those who are seriously interested in buying it, know that it is fully authenticated and purchased at a Star Trek convention.  Here is the link to the listing; Star Trek Litho For the rest of you, it is still a pretty cool thing to marvel at, especially for those into Star Trek or the collectible industry in general.  Thanks for reading.  ...

For those of you that don't know, San Diego is hosting the Major League Baseball All-Star game this week, and along with that comes a lot of pomp and circumstance.  Part of the hoopla is the five day event called Fan Fest, which serves as a smorgasbord of baseball festivities that any hardcore baseball fan would love.  It includes autographs, museums, trade shows, Q & A sessions, interactive activities, etc.  As this is an autograph blog, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what my intention was when heading to the event. For some background on how my experience went, I should note that I had been preparing for this event since the day it was announced.  Maybe I set myself up for some unrealistic expectations because in the end, I think the whole day was just kind of meh.  My friend Lawrence and I showed up in line out front of the convention center in downtown San Diego at 6:45 AM.  We were literally two of the first 15 people in lin...

The Major League Baseball All-Star game and all the festivities it comes with are heading to my city of San Diego, and to unofficially kick it off, Sycuan Casino had a three night event in which former star Steve Garvey hosted a different Hall of Fame player each night to discuss the game of baseball.  The first night he hosted Goose Gossage, the second night was with Dave Winfield, and the third was with Reggie Jackson.  Sycuan Casino is a pretty good drive from my home in north county and autographs were never actually specified, but the event sounded like a good time so I drove down with my friend Lawrence and met up with another friend of mine named Nouky to see if we could perhaps add a couple of good signatures to our collection. The event was to begin at 8:00PM, with the doors to open at 7:00.  We actually arrived around 6:30 and were the sixth people in line.  This was a good thing since it was general admission.  Through some small talk with others in...