SoCal Autograph Odysses

 My top 10 lists are statistically the most viewed posts I ever write, so I decided to do something cool and make top 10 lists of what I think are my best autographs in each of the main sports. I'll cover baseball, football, soccer, hockey, basketball, and the rest of the autographs I have will be under the "others" list. I'm going to start today with soccer. These lists will consist of the autographs I personally think are my best 10 in each sport. The considerations I took into account are player's status among the all time greats, whether the card is numbered, what set the card is from, or where I obtained the item. Without further ado, here are my top 10 soccer autos. 10. Paolo Maldini card 9. Robert Lewandowski card (out of /25) 8. Xavi card (out of 10) 7. Lamine Yamal Rookie Card auto 6. Virgil Van Djik auto mem card (out of /35) 5. Erling Haaland mem auto card 4. David Beckham card 3. Cristiano Ronaldo Cards (x2) 2. Messi signed artwork (out of 100) 1. Pele...

 Technically, I suppose I pulled a redemption before but that was for an expired redemption that expired in 2005 from a hobby box I bought of Topps baseball a couple years ago. It would have been an awesome card to pull at that time because it was a Zack Greinke rookie auto but since it was expired Topps just ended up sending me a care package instead. This time, I pulled a redemption from Panini and it came from a 2024 Rookies and Stars box.  It ended up being Bengals rookie tight end Erick All Jr, numbered /299. Not terrible, I suppose. 

 My birthday falls towards the beginning of the year so I usually get a chance to open some sealed product to kick the year off. This year, my wife got me a hobby box of 2023-24 Topps Merlin soccer. There is one guaranteed auto per box, plus a few numbered cards. My box was a total dud with the exception of pulling a Bradley Barcola numbered rookie. My auto was unfortunately a big miss, as I ended up getting a rookie auto of Ajax forward (now with Wolverhampton Wanderers) Carlos Forbs. Even though it's a rookie auto, this is probably less than a $10 autograph. This is what usually happens with hobby boxes for me as I tend to counterintuitively have better luck with retail autograph pulls which are not guaranteed.  Even though 2025 started off with a bit of a letdown of a box, I do think at some point I'll be pulling some big autos throughout the year which I should be posting on here. Happy new Year everyone.

 I know the calendar now says 2025 but there were some cool autographs that helped me close out the waning days of 2024 with some hits.  I hadn't posted about this one yet, but my son was gifted a Jackson Merrill autographed rookie card for Christmas. This was my own numbered rookie card that I sent into a signing he participated in and I received it back through the mail just a couple days prior to Christmas. My son was thrilled with the card. As you can see, the only bummer is that the yellow paint pen I requested the card to be signed in bled a bit so it's not an overly clean auto. The card is numbered /250 and to be honest, I don't think my son minds the slight sloppiness on the signature. The other cool thing about this is that Jackson was giving out much better autographs during this signing than the autos you'll see him sign for Topps products. I think overall that tradeoff is worth it.  Another monster card was the Xavi auto /10 that my son pulled from a hobby b...