2020 year in Review

 One of the good things to come out of 2020 from a personal standpoint was my newfound interest in ramping up my through the mail autograph game.  I spent about half of 2020 looking at Sports Card Forums and signing up for Sports Collectors.net to hone in on some of the athletes that have the most success with through the mail returns. My success rate was a hit on everyone except for two; Wayne Gretzky and Phil Jackson. My successes are as follows;

MLB

• Wade Boggs 2x cards
• Mike Mussina 2x Cards 1x baseball
• Andre Dawson
• Goose Gossage
• Anthony Volpe (my son got him as well)
• Ryne Sandberg
• Carl Erskine
• Xavier Edwards
• Paul Molitor
• Rafael Palmeiro
• Jim Palmer
• Rob Manfred 
• Bobby Witt Jr.

NFL

• Charlie Joiner
• Dan Fouts
• Eric Dickerson
• Jerry Rice
• Peyton Manning
• Bob Lilly

NBA

• Bob Cousy
• Robert Parish
• Gail Goodrich
• Lenny Wilkens

NHL

• Rob Blake
• Olaf Kolzig
• Chris Pronger

Here are some photos of my favorite hits;

Obviously public signings were non existent, and privately held signings waned a lot especially during the harder hit Covid times.  That didn't stop me from adding two more pieces to my Mike Trout collection.  I purchased a signed bat straight from MLAM as well as a signed jersey from one of his signings. This brings my total of Trout items to two baseballs, one large photo, the bat, and the jersey.  Since I value my life, I told my wife I'm done with the Trout stuff.  

2020 saw me also making a concerted effort to add some of the biggest names in baseball history, to add in one corner of my man cave.  I added varying sized autographed photos of Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, and Mickey Mantle.  They are all framed and displayed on one corner, in the elite wing of my autographs next to my Hall of fame baseball case, Mario Lemieux, Junior Seau, Mike Trout, and Magic Johnson.

For the first time, I dipped into the celebrity pool and added four signed books at a really cheap cost of Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, Steve Martin, and Martin Short.  I cut all four of the autographs out of the books to display as autographed photo ensembles.  The results were positive in my autograph groups.  The Martin/Short autos are currently being constructed and will be ready to go in the next couple weeks.  Here is how the others turned out;

Lastly, I added a bunch of other autographs via Ebay and private signings and directly from memorabilia companies I trust.  Here are some of my favorite things lumped into this group. 

Anze Kopitar 8x10

Wander Franco MLB

Cal Ripken Jr. MLB

Hideki Matsui 09 WS MVP

Jim Rice HOF 09 MLB

Tyreek Hill 8x10

Fernando Tatis Jr. MLB

Duke Snider MLB

Overall, it was a fantastic year for me in terms of autographs.  This is probably around half of what I added to my collection this year alone.  I personally don't think I will have a year quite like this again, as I am going to get to a point when I am not sure who else I want to add.  Eventually I will run out of space and probably have to consolidate my collection a bit.  Please feel free to scroll around the blog and look up any of my posts from 2020 or years prior.  You can use the search feature at the top of the page to search the name of any player you can think of.  If there is a blog post about that player, it will pop up.  The most rewarding part for me was the fact that both my sons and my daughter have begun taking somewhat of an interest into the hobby.  My six year old daughter asks me for some of the autographs and memorabilia cards I pull from card packs.  My sons have their own cards displayed, and my thirteen year old even asked for sealed hobby boxes of cards for Christmas.  As they get older I look forward to sharing more of my passion with them if they keep their interest.  Perhaps as I age and run out of players to get autographs from, I can start all over again through the eyes of my own children. It is what the hobby is all about.

Thank you to everyone for reading and please continue to check in as the collection grows in 2021.