Through the Mail-Tony Esposito

-

 Towards the end of last week, I got the most somber return I'd received on any of my through the mail autograph requests.  Towards the end of last month, I had sent a card to NHL Hall of Fame goalie Tony Esposito.  On Tuesday of last week, I had heard that he had passed away.  I knew that he still had my card at the time, so expected not to see that card again after the news of him passing.  Two days later, on Thursday, I actually did get the card returned to me, and it was signed.  

One can't help but notice the timing of this return, between his passing on Tuesday and receiving the card on Thursday.  This card came from Wisconsin based on the USPS stamp, which is about three days of shipping.  That would mean that Mr. Esposito signed this very shortly before his death, which is very sad to think about.  It could very have been the last autograph he signed.  I checked Sportscollectors.net to see if anyone else has received anything in or around this time, and the last return before mine on that site was July 24th, and none since.  I'm honored to receive a return from Mr. Esposito, as he was one of the NHL's greatest 100 players ever, and among the upper tier of NHL goaltenders to ever play the game.  RIP Mr. Esposito. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Al Kaline-Through the Mail

-
Image
As mentioned on a few of my previous threads, I have recently become interested in the idea of obtaining autographs through the mail.  There is a quite a bit of research involved in deciding which former athletes to send my items to, as I don't want to be spending money or using unsigned items on guys I have little to no chance of receiving anything from.  So far, this has paid off because up until this point I was 4/4 by sending things to Dirk Nowitzki, Ryne Sandberg, Wade Boggs, and Bobby Doerr.  You can read about all of those ventures and what I got signed by looking back on this blog.  Back on the 17th of January, I decided to mail an 8x10 photo to former Major Leaguer and Hall of Famer Al Kaline.  I chose a photo rather than my preferred choice of official baseball since I read on forums that Mr. Kaline won't sign baseballs through the mail.  As such, I found a photo I thought was cool, and sent it to the proper address using the correct channels....
Read more

Los Angeles Dodgers @ Petco Park 4/10/13

-
Image
I decided to head downtown to Petco Park for the first time this new season for my first foray into my hobby of collecting autographs in quite some time.  I skipped out on Opening Day due to the fact that all the hoopla associated with the opening of any new season.  I walked to my spot during the bottom of the ninth in what turned out to be a 4-3 Dodger win. I found out from one of the guys waiting (a nice fellow who was visiting from Florida) that the Dodgers were staying in the Omni Hotel, which is actually connected to Petco Park by a bridge that visiting players often use to circumvent the autograph hounds that wait below.  This was a little disheartening at first, until I also found out that most of the dodgers actually walked out at ground level the night before.  All in all there were only about ten or so "graphers" waiting, as opposed to the rumored forty the night before, so the potential for a good get was obviously there. On this night, I was focused ...
Read more

TOOL Concert San Diego January 9th 2016

-
Image
As some may recall, I posted photos of an autographed TOOL concert poster previously from a concert back in March of 2014.  One of the coolest and most unique aspects of TOOL artwork is that much of it is done by guitarist Adam Jones.  What makes finding the signed versions of these tour posters even more difficult is the fact that getting tickets to the concerts themselves is hard.  When tickets went on sale for this event at Viejas Arena on the SDSU campus, tickets were literally gone within seconds.  The demand was so high that the band even set up a second date for next day (today, coincidentally) and those tickets were gobbled up just as quickly.  Also, the band will only sign a couple hundred posters at most, which means you have to go straight to the merchandise tent and hope they still have them.  One more very cool thing about these posters is that each one is different for the specific city they are playing in.  Since I went to the concert la...
Read more