SoCal Autograph Odysses

 I was able to add two more NFL Hall of Famers to my collection at solid prices, including one that I have had trouble trying to get in person in the past.  Marcus Allen has always been notoriously difficult at in person signing attempts, and I experienced that same thing at a few of the celebrity golf tournaments held here locally in San Diego. I decided to add him to the collection via another National Treasures card.  Michael Strahan was more expensive than Allen but I still found a price I was fine with for an older, less coveted version of his autograph, this one coming via Skybox from the early 2000s. 

 I'm starting to run out of still living Hall of Fame baseball players to sign items to for signings, at least when it comes to the guys that played in the 90's and before. Some of the more modern Hall of Famers are much more expensive because they made so much more money during their careers that it costs more to get them to even participate in a signing in the first place. I just received a card back from an Ozzie Smith signing, and as you can see it's a 1987 Topps, which is a set I really like the look of.

  This is obviously not a sports related autograph, but it's cool nonetheless. About a year ago I saw that Thor himself, Chris Hemsworth, was doing a signing with SWAU, which is a company that hosts a lot of signings with big names actors in the Marvel and Star Wars worlds. They are often pricey as well, since sometimes they are huge celebrities. My wife loves Chris Hemsworth, so I decided to get her an autograph at the signing that was taking place. Unfortunately Covid restrictions and scheduling conflicts kept pushing the signing out, so when I finally saw that SWAU had finally sat down with Chris and have him sign, I got my hopes up. A week or so later, this photo came in the mail. We then took it to Hobby Lobby and had them frame the thing in the gold and red you see below.  Now we have to find a place to put this thing, which will probably be directly over my wife's head in her spot on the bed. 

 In a request that took about a month to come back, I got an NFL Hall of Fame kicker for the second time. This time, it was the "Great Dane" Morten Andersen. As mentioned, it's the second Hall of Fame kicker's autograph I've gotten, the first being Jan Stenerud in person at a celebrity golf tournament many years ago.  I've been spoiled with how much success I've had with through the mail autograph requests, so any time something takes over a month I do start to wonder if my card has gotten lost in the mail. As you can see in the above photo, I went with a 93 Fleer card since he was wearing the Saints white jersey, making it very conducive to a legible signature which is exactly what I got. I also like the little smiley face he added to the signature itself. Any time an athlete adds their little personal touch it gives an item a little something different.

 Quite often I'll see a signing going on and will look at the pricing, only to notice that there are signed cards available on sites like eBay that are cheaper than it would be to send a card in for said signing. As such, I frequently peruse possible additions and when I find a price I like, I make the move. Recently, I've added NFL Hall of Famer Ed Reed and Liverpool FC midfielder Thiago Alcantara to my collection. As you can see, this is a Prizm auto, and it is numbered to /149. I bought this card for the price that it would probably cost to buy an unopened Prizm blaster box, which is quite another point entirely. It is much cheaper to buy singles of cards that you like than it is to buy unopened product from coveted sets like Prizm, Optic, Select, etc. I understand that you lose the allure of opening something where you might find a huge hit, but honestly if I had hit this Ed Reed auto from a box I would have been ecstatic anyway so buying this makes more sense to me.  The s

  Prestige is not one of the glamour products in Panini's closet, but I have always bought a few boxes when it comes out because it's one of the very first products to have the new NFL rookie class. I'd also heard that some of the blaster boxes people were opening were stuffed with good cards, and one of the three boxes I opened definitely qualified. Not only did each box have two numbered cards, the box I am speaking of in particular also had not one, but two autographs in it! That has never happened to me in a retail product and I think this must have been some sort of QA issue at Panini. Not only did I pull two autographs, but both were rookies, and elite ones at that. I pulled the number three and number four picks in the draft, two highly promising rookie cornerbacks, "Sauce" Gardner and Derek Stingley. The Gardner card was a red ink version /199, while the Stingley was a base auto. I would have been thrilled with pulling one of these guys, so the fact I got