SoCal Autograph Odysses

 I went to Walmart last week, and for the first time in quite some time, actually found some product on the shelves.  I bought two Panini Prestige football blasters, one Panini Prizm baseball mega box, and one Topps Chrome baseball mega box.  I actually did hit an autographed card in the Topps Chrome box, which was not guaranteed.  The auto was a RC refractor numbered to 499 of Luis Garcia, the pitcher on the Astros. This isn't the worst hit, as it's numbered and it's a rookie card.  Plus, Garcia has had a pretty good first season and the Astros are very good at churning out good Major League caliber pitching.  There is some upside here even though it is a pitcher.  It's also an on card auto, which aesthetically is more appealing.  The Prizm box was guaranteed an auto, but my hit wasn't great.  I pulled a Billy McKinney auto.  He currently plays for the Dodgers but I believe he previously played for both the Brewers and the Blue Jays....

 On Friday I received a pretty cool return through the mail, coming back from a private signing that I found on SportsCollectors.net .  A couple months ago I sent a Winfield rookie card to the third party that was doing the signing, and it had a bit of extra meaning to me since the card is when Winfield was a member of the San Diego Padres.     

 Target has been selling cards online for awhile, and it's hard to find the products people want because they have bots programmed to pick up all the good stuff immediately.  That, combined with the fact I have to wake up at 4am pacific time to even have a shot at anything has made it very difficult to procure and NFL or NBA product.  Last week, I was actually able to get one blaster of Panini Select NBA and one blaster of Panini Prizm WNBA.  On top of that, I also bought a hobby box of 2021 Topps Fire baseball, which comes with two guaranteed autographs.  The products arrived today, and after finding nothing of note from an autograph perspective in either basketball product, I opened the Fire box last.  I knew going in that the cards aren't really my style, and seem to be more targeted at kids with their design.  I figured that I'd have to hit some good autos to make the box worth my while.  In my opinion, I did pretty well.  The first card ...

 I promise that I'm really not the type to send multiple requests to one person through the mail, however in the case of MLB Hall of Famer and former Chicago Cub Ryne Sandberg, I've sent items to him on three separate occasions. The reason behind this that the first time I sent an autograph request to him through the mail, I asked him to sign a baseball.  When I started switching to trying to obtain autographed cards more often, I sent him a Diamond Kings card.  However, when I first got that card back I realized immediately that I made a poor choice in card to send, since Ryne was wearing blue in the artwork of the card and he signed in blue.  Therefore, the autograph was lost a bit into the card.  This time, I decided to send a rookie card, and the result was much more to my liking.  As a side note, if anyone has a duplicate autograph that they are willing to part with for a Ryne Sandberg auto, let me know.  Also, if you want to check out the previou...

 I have previously met Fergie Jenkins twice, once at the Tristar show in San Francisco in 2012, and once in 2016 at the MLB All Star Fan Fest in San Diego.  Both of those experiences were captured on this blog, so I recommend going and searching for those by using the search feature on the home page.  In 2016 I just chatted with him, but in 2012 I actually got a signed baseball with the HOF '91 inscription.  If you're a common reader of this blog, you'll recognize that over the last couple years I've started focusing on getting cards signed by Hall of Famers, since they take up less space and more importantly, I don't have to stress as much about them fading or bleeding like I have to do with baseballs and photos.  As such, I sent a through the mail request to Fergie a couple weeks ago.  Yesterday, he returned the card signed along with a mini postcard style photo.  

 Most people my age know exactly what the 1999 US Women's National Soccer team was all about.  They won the World Cup at the Rose Bowl, and the country got swept up in their success.  The success they had was even parlayed into a professional women's soccer league, though it didn't last quite as long as it should have the first time around.  The ladies and their success was the first wave of what has become a dominant run of the USWNT, from the likes of Mia Hamm leading to Abby Wambach, then on to Carly Lloyd to Megan Rapinoe and Alex Morgan.  The most iconic goal scored by the team though, was scored by Brandi Chastain during penalties.  Everyone knows what happened next.  But if you need a recap, click this  link .   I wrote a letter to Brandi explaining that the autograph was actually for my daughter, who loves playing soccer and that the influence she got from me to play the sport actually originally stemmed from me watching that tea...