The second card I received as part of my last post is a Fleer card signed by Bobby Abreu in blue sharpie. Both this card and the Todd Helton cost me less than $10 a piece.
I decided to head downtown to Petco Park for the first time this new season for my first foray into my hobby of collecting autographs in quite some time. I skipped out on Opening Day due to the fact that all the hoopla associated with the opening of any new season. I walked to my spot during the bottom of the ninth in what turned out to be a 4-3 Dodger win. I found out from one of the guys waiting (a nice fellow who was visiting from Florida) that the Dodgers were staying in the Omni Hotel, which is actually connected to Petco Park by a bridge that visiting players often use to circumvent the autograph hounds that wait below. This was a little disheartening at first, until I also found out that most of the dodgers actually walked out at ground level the night before. All in all there were only about ten or so "graphers" waiting, as opposed to the rumored forty the night before, so the potential for a good get was obviously there. On this night, I was focused ...
I've recently made a couple purchases from eBay of NFL Hall of Famers, including one my favorite players of all time, LaDainian Tomlinson. I went with the National Treasures on card auto for Tomlinson, and it's a good looking card numbered 14/49. This is the third Tomlinson item I have obtained, the first being a football he signed during his rookie year and the second being a jersey at a signing I attended 20 years ago. The other eBay item that recently was delivered was newly inducted former offensive lineman Joe Thomas of Cleveland Browns fame. As you can see, this card is numbered /50. Offensive lineman have almost no value to people that sell, so I was able to add this card in particular for real cheap. Any time I can get a cheap Hall of Famer, I'm in, especially an all time great player.
As mentioned on a few of my previous threads, I have recently become interested in the idea of obtaining autographs through the mail. There is a quite a bit of research involved in deciding which former athletes to send my items to, as I don't want to be spending money or using unsigned items on guys I have little to no chance of receiving anything from. So far, this has paid off because up until this point I was 4/4 by sending things to Dirk Nowitzki, Ryne Sandberg, Wade Boggs, and Bobby Doerr. You can read about all of those ventures and what I got signed by looking back on this blog. Back on the 17th of January, I decided to mail an 8x10 photo to former Major Leaguer and Hall of Famer Al Kaline. I chose a photo rather than my preferred choice of official baseball since I read on forums that Mr. Kaline won't sign baseballs through the mail. As such, I found a photo I thought was cool, and sent it to the proper address using the correct channels....
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