SoCal Autograph Odysses

 I received a mail return on consecutive days, this time in the form of MLB Hall of Famer and former owner of the total saves record, Lee Smith.  I chose an 82 Donruss card with a good background for a signature. I also requested the HOF 2019 inscription, and Mr. Smith was kind of enough to oblige.  I don't really ever talk about the associated fees, or "donations", required by the different athletes for these requests, but this one did require a small amount of money.  Most of the returns I post on here require varying degrees of money included, but some are free.  For details about each individual athlete, I again recommend SCN.  This card came out very nicely.

 Yesterday I opened my mail to find a return from former Seahawks safety and Hall of Famer Kenny Easley.  He only played seven seasons in the NFL and had to retire early due to kidney disease, which means he must have been an outstanding player to get into the Hall anyway.  I picked a 1988 Topps card of his with a light background, and it came back signed in blue. 

 I used  SportsCollectors.net  for another private signing being held.  This time, it was for Giants Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, and I sent another Allen & Ginter card through the mail to be signed.  The signing took place in the middle of the month, and the organizer sent my card back quickly after it was complete.  I like the result. Again, I will always choose a card that lends itself to having a visible signature, and I don't like sending expensive rookie cards through the mail where they might get lost.  Allen & Ginter has many cards that look good with autographs and I've mentioned in the past that art centric cards look nice with an autograph right below them.  I have a couple other requests in the mail for private signings on big name baseball Hall of Famers occurring over the next couple of months, so keep your eyes on those posts as well.  

 April has been a bit of a slower month from a through the mail request standpoint, as yesterday's return was only my third of the month.  Since I sent so many requests to athletes through the better part of 2020, the truth of the matter is I also have fewer people remaining that I actually want to try and get an autograph from, so I do expect these posts to slow down in general.  That being said, I did see that former NFL QB and Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgensen was returning requests, so I found a chrome reprint of his rookie card and sent it to him.  Since the card has a very smooth texture, I did prep it with a white eraser in hopes it would prevent smearing.  It worked, check out how the card came out.   Mr. Jurgensen was also kind enough to include the HOF 83 inscription.  A pretty cool return, and yet another one of the former NFL QBs I have received items back from to great success like Peyton Manning, Roger Staubach, Dan Fouts, and Fran Tarkenton. 

 My daughter has really gotten into the collecting of cards with me, so since my trip to Target last week was so successful, I decided to give Topps Heritage another go and this time purchased a Hobby Box.  In a Hobby Box, you're guaranteed one auto or relic card.  Since Topps Heritage is on the affordable side, I decided to try and collect as many of these cards to make a set with my daughter.  We spent a couple hours yesterday putting the cards into a binder in their numbered order.  She had fun looking at the cards and then calculating which sleeve it would be put into.   When the Hobby Box came in the mail, we actually took our time to look at each and every card and put them in the correct place, and it ended up taking close to an hour to do the entire box of 24 packs.  It was something I enjoy doing and allowed me to spend some bonding time with my daughter.  She is still young, so she still thinks looking at sports cards with dad is cool and fun to do.  I fully expect this t

 It's a pretty well known fact that sealed product in the sports cards realm is damn near impossible to find when you go to Walmart and Target.  With the spike in sport card values over the last twelve months, there has been a bigger impetus on the Ebay flippers to go out and buy up all of the available product they find on shelves.  The methods they use to get all this product is an entire blog post on its own, but the main takeaway is that these giant retail chains have started to adapt and make new rules to prevent the jackholes from monopolizing the product and flipping it for three or four times the cost.  My local Target recently enforced a new process in which product is only available at 8am on Fridays on a first come, first served basis.  This week, I tried this out for myself.  My brother and law and I headed over and arrived at about 7:40.  There were already about 16-20 people in line.  Target was organized and had an employee come out and get everyone's name and ph

 I tend to think I am pretty good about being ahead of the curve when it comes to autographs and buying things for what I consider to be a good price.  That being said, I went against my better judgement and spent way too much recently on a 2019 Bowman Chrome box.  These boxes come with only three cards, and all are autographs.  I found this at the closest local card store to me, Honey Hole Collectibles, which I talked about a month ago on this very blog.  I also tend to have some decent luck when it comes to opening packs of cards, but this time the script was flipped and I pretty much got my ass handed to me from a value standpoint.  I got three prospects I have never heard of, and missed out on the big names in the set like Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto, and Wander Franco.  Instead, I pulled Carlos Hernandez, Jared Oliva, and Jonathan Ornelas.  I suppose the one good thing was the Hernandez and Oliva cards were colored and numbered.   Jared Oliva purple to 250 Carlos Hernandez green

 For the very first time, I have added a racing autograph to my collection.  I saw that racing legend Mario Andretti was someone people were having success with on through the mail requests, so I decided to send him something and see what happens.  I was actually able to find an Allen & Ginter card of his from a baseball set in 2007.  It took about five weeks before I received this in the mail over the weekend. For those of you like me, who know little to nothing about racing other than recognizing some of the driver's names, I took a blurb off of wikipedia to help me outline Mr. Andretti's accomplishments; Mario Gabriele Andretti is an Italian-born American former racing driver and one of the most successful Americans in the history of the sport. He is one of only three drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR. He also won races in midget cars and sprint cars

 About six weeks ago I posted about the 11x14 photo I had signed at a Justin Herbert signing that was done in the beginning of February.  I found out shortly thereafter that he was going to be doing another signing, and in this instance I decided to send in for it again.  His price is so low compared to the current QB greats in the NFL, and I think there is significant profit potential long term for my kids. I sent in a Panini Mosaic 2020 rookie card this time, and again asked for the light blue paint pen.  The result was beautiful.  I'm going to keeping my eye out for PSA or Beckett authentication events going on in Southern California to get this thing slabbed.  

 The other autograph I received through the mail yesterday was arguably the better one, but since it was technically not a TTM request but an order I sent in to a private signing I wanted to talk about it second.  I again will reference  SportsCollectors.Net  as the place to go if you want to see hundreds of private signings listed or addresses to send autograph requests to athletes or celebrities.  It's chalk full of information and I really can not recommend it enough.  It's $15 a year to have access to all this information.  Few things annoy me in Facebook collectors groups as much as the people who inevitably ask for you to give them an address.  Pay the $15, and figure it out yourself, it's really not that hard.  As for the card itself, see for yourself; Ripken wasn't signing rookie cards, at least not through the organizer I used, so I chose a 1987 Topps version of the card.  I chose this one because like all the others, it has a light background and I knew the au

 Today might have been the best mail day I have had.  I've hit on big names on a one at a time basis (like Peyton Manning, Roger Staubach, Jerry Rice, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc.) but today I had two huge returns. The one I am posting about today is the through the mail request, with the one I will post about tomorrow being a paid signing that took place through the mail.  In staying the with the successful NFL quarterback theme, today I received a Fran Tarkenton signed photo, and he also included the HOF 86 inscription.  This is a great start to the week.  Kicking off a week with two big returns on a Monday is nice.  I have a feeling this week is going to be a big one for my blog in the autograph hobby so keep checking back to see what else is added to the collection.

 One of the perks of using sportscollectors.net is not only the addresses you can get for through the mail requests, but the access to a bunch of private signings being run by other members. One such signing I sent a card into was that of former Padres and Major League Baseball hall of famer Trevor Hoffman.  This one means a bit more to me since I am a Padres fan and grew up watching Trevor set all kinds of records.  This is not the first item of Trevor's I have, but it's the first card. During my previous autograph odysseys down to Petco Park, I was able to get a few baseballs and a photo signed by Trevor.  I chose the 2020 Allen & Ginter as I have with a few recent autographs.  Here are some of the other items signed by Trevor during the course of my collecting exploits.