Today I want to discuss sending autographs through the mail. I started doing this 5 years ago and my success rate for getting positive returns was around 77%. I spoke to others who have been doing this for 20+ years and they said back then you got almost everything back that you sent out. I have also noticed that the players from today's games mostly scribble their autograph so why would any collector want their autograph in the first place. My answer is because as a collector of my teams autograph and trying to get every player that ever wore my team's jersey, that is why I do it.
When I send out to the older players, I get beautiful looking autographs that are easily read and if I send to an older player, you can see the shakiness in the autograph, but it is still better than these players today. I sent out 27 autograph requests on August 25th and to date I have only got 2 back. Yesterday I sent another 10 out and some I did not have the players address so I try sending to the team the player plays for.
The only problem is if I send to the players home address, he may be leaving for the training camps, so it is a risk either way. There have been some players that are great and sign but as a collector I think many will agree that I hate the waiting. I use the postal systems informed delivery every day to see if I have any coming in for that day and it is quite depressing when day after day, I get none back.
I see this happening with all sports, and I wonder if the pandemic has hurt in that players don't want to open mail during this time. It is not only depressing but it is getting more costly with the rise in postage, the cards I buy are common cards and I usually only pay about 18 to 25 cents a card and I only send 2-3 cards because I think the players get upset when one sends in over 5 or 6. So is this even worth it anymore?? I would rather get a certified autograph card but not all players have one so the through the mail route is the only way to get that autograph. There are some players that do shows but again there is a fee and depending on the players overall performance as a superstar the price can be several hundred dollars.
I sent this baseball card to Bernie Carbo a couple of years ago and as you can see Bernie kindly signed it and it was back to me withing a week or two.
Before I end this post, I thought I would throw in a little trivia. See if you can name this Baseball player and the team he played for on this card and the set designation. I bought this card back in 1982 and I bought a second one in 1983. Sure, wish I still had them. Thanks for the visit and if you like this blog please FOLLOW and leave a comment below about today's content or what you would like to see.
Happy Collecting and Stay Safe.
From what I've been able to gather, a lot of players/former players are getting much more requests sent to them since the Rona/card boom started, and I would imagine that a lot of them don't enjoy spending their days doing nothing but signing cards. And of course there seems to be even more people who are sending things to be signed, only so that they can then turn around and sell it on eBay. And by all accounts, that is something that irks a lot of athletes, enough so that quite a few have stopped signing because of that. I haven't sent out any requests for a few years, but have recently been thinking about doing so again. The only thing that's stopping me is that I hate the thought of adding yet another card to these guys' mail piles.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I've got no clues on the old card.