Autographs
There was a recent story I read about a retired baseball player that found a box of old mail so he decided to go ahead and sign the items sent and to write back to those who had sent the letters years earlier. I found this to be cool for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that a relatively minor pro athlete would get so much mail.
See, for a while there I would drop a card in the mail with a SASE and ask for autographs. I probably got 75 percent of them back pretty promptly. It was a good way to get a lot of cards signed and since I could also keep the envelopes I had a sort of certificate of authenticity. (Unless they were being signed by staff, a certain amount of faith is placed in the process.)
I had tried on a number of occasions to get cards signed by going down really early to when the players would come to the stadium. It was like a circus. Players would get mobbed. I didn’t like it. It felt like so many of those items would just be immediately sold. In 1990 I can distinctly remember getting Erik Hansen’s card signed and watching as the crowd moved on to the next player. Hansen looked back over his shoulder and silently went in the stadium. No one continued to chat with him once the item was signed. I stopped doing that.
There is such a large amount of presumed fraud in the autograph market that I just don’t buy autographs on general principle. Often I will have a card or item personalized, which actually enhances the value to me but cuts its sales potential sharply. I hope that the athletes notice that.
On the wall in the kids’ room is an autographed photo of Shaq as a Laker. It was procured in a slightly different way. When the kids were really little I was watching the NBA Finals when the announcer gave one of those cute anecdotes about a player to try and make the player sound more interesting than just being an athlete. It was disclosed that Shaq likes to go to the zoo when he travels. So, I told the kids and we took a picture of them from the zoo and sent it to Shaq in Los Angeles with an invitation to go to Woodland Park the next time the Lakers were in town.
In short order the kids received a package from Shaq. They had been added to the Shaq Kids Club. Every year since they get cards and stickers, although they are no longer Lakers purple and yellow they are now Heat red and black. Well, in one of those packages in the fall of 2001 were these inflatable beach ball basketballs. Unfortunately, the material was packaged with a sort of talcum powder to keep the non-inflated plastic from sticking together.
Remember the fall of 2001? This was just after 911. Anthrax was being mailed around the country in the form of a white powder from somewhere in Florida. The return address was Florida. I couldn’t imagine it was Anthrax but I called the Lakers just in case. I was referred to a couple of different people, leading to a fairly frantic call from one of David Stern’s main people from NBA headquarters in New York who assured me that he had looked in on it after my call and that he was assured it was safe. The underlying current, don’t sue us for you getting freaked out. I was satisfied.
A few weeks later, a personalized 8 by 10 color glossy photo from Shaq and letters thanking me for basically not freaking out (in not so many words) came in the mail. This was not one of those obviously mechanically reproduced signatures, it was clear that a marker was used. I tend to believe that Shaq really signed that one.
There was a recent story I read about a retired baseball player that found a box of old mail so he decided to go ahead and sign the items sent and to write back to those who had sent the letters years earlier. I found this to be cool for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that a relatively minor pro athlete would get so much mail.
See, for a while there I would drop a card in the mail with a SASE and ask for autographs. I probably got 75 percent of them back pretty promptly. It was a good way to get a lot of cards signed and since I could also keep the envelopes I had a sort of certificate of authenticity. (Unless they were being signed by staff, a certain amount of faith is placed in the process.)
I had tried on a number of occasions to get cards signed by going down really early to when the players would come to the stadium. It was like a circus. Players would get mobbed. I didn’t like it. It felt like so many of those items would just be immediately sold. In 1990 I can distinctly remember getting Erik Hansen’s card signed and watching as the crowd moved on to the next player. Hansen looked back over his shoulder and silently went in the stadium. No one continued to chat with him once the item was signed. I stopped doing that.
There is such a large amount of presumed fraud in the autograph market that I just don’t buy autographs on general principle. Often I will have a card or item personalized, which actually enhances the value to me but cuts its sales potential sharply. I hope that the athletes notice that.
On the wall in the kids’ room is an autographed photo of Shaq as a Laker. It was procured in a slightly different way. When the kids were really little I was watching the NBA Finals when the announcer gave one of those cute anecdotes about a player to try and make the player sound more interesting than just being an athlete. It was disclosed that Shaq likes to go to the zoo when he travels. So, I told the kids and we took a picture of them from the zoo and sent it to Shaq in Los Angeles with an invitation to go to Woodland Park the next time the Lakers were in town.
In short order the kids received a package from Shaq. They had been added to the Shaq Kids Club. Every year since they get cards and stickers, although they are no longer Lakers purple and yellow they are now Heat red and black. Well, in one of those packages in the fall of 2001 were these inflatable beach ball basketballs. Unfortunately, the material was packaged with a sort of talcum powder to keep the non-inflated plastic from sticking together.
Remember the fall of 2001? This was just after 911. Anthrax was being mailed around the country in the form of a white powder from somewhere in Florida. The return address was Florida. I couldn’t imagine it was Anthrax but I called the Lakers just in case. I was referred to a couple of different people, leading to a fairly frantic call from one of David Stern’s main people from NBA headquarters in New York who assured me that he had looked in on it after my call and that he was assured it was safe. The underlying current, don’t sue us for you getting freaked out. I was satisfied.
A few weeks later, a personalized 8 by 10 color glossy photo from Shaq and letters thanking me for basically not freaking out (in not so many words) came in the mail. This was not one of those obviously mechanically reproduced signatures, it was clear that a marker was used. I tend to believe that Shaq really signed that one.
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