I sent this back out in June. It looks like he's catching up on his mail. Thank you, Mr. Rasmussen.

430/792

I am at 252/792, although I don't have a laser focus on 87 Topps. Casting a wider net. It has been a quiet summer. Here's my most recent 87T TTM:

That's a great card of Plunk. I played softwall with a guy they caught him in the minors, and he said that Plunk was one nasty SOB. Took his name to heart, and would plunk anyone at anytime. LOL

Thanks. And fun story!

Always elusive to me when I was trying to put this set together. Keith Hernandez is now with PastPros!!

I am just making an educated guess here, but I have several Wright items on team themed things. Ball, paper sheet. I have his 83 Fleer as well and it was nowhere near $200, maybe not even 1/10th of that. I think he signed OK when he played or at least the early years. In fact, I just won a lot of singled hotel postcards with mostly Dodgers from around 1982 and one was his and they averaged $1 each ($20 delivered for 20 signed postcards) and also included Welch, Howe, Lasorda, Belanger, Garvey and others. They all look spot on and I am sure it was just someone hitting up players at the hotel they likely stayed at on road trips (Dodgers and Padres + Tony Pena), or maybe one of several on the rotation. These were Pittsburgh Hilton PCs.

I believe that he may have stopped signing in general and that lead everyone to believe that ALL of his signatures are worth a fortune, but that is not the case.

Prior to the 1987 spring training Ricky Wright was trying to catch on with the minor league Tigers and, with another friend from California we went to FL for the 1987 spring training. Both of us were working on signed sets and the Topps set was among them. Together we went to the Tigers camp the day before the major league players were scheduled to arrive and both of us were fortunate to see Ricky and we spoke with him for about an hour on the pretty much empty field. Ricky had decided to not sign card 202 as that card was to be signed and then auctioned for funds for his high school team to be able to build their own baseball field. In short time, however, the high school workouts merged with the jr college workout field and the need to auction for card was no longer necesarry and Ricky simply shelved the idea and his family pushed him to not sign that particular card, possibly ever, even though Ricky had promised the eventual gift of the signed Topps card to my friend and to myself. Both of us need only that one card to complete our signed sets. And yes, we do have the Ranger team card signed which pictures Wright on the mound with the manager there as well. Rumors that say Wright does not sign any other cards is not true although the family limits the fan mail reaching him.

His "family" sounds like a piece of work.

No reason to hold out on something so long. If it was meant to create a great demand, you'd think they would have pulled the trigger by now on cashing in.

UNLESS, he signed a bunch and they are just waiting in limbo, maybe until he dies? I imagine if such a rare and desired card was released in small quantities after he had died, the demand would probably be the greatest then.

Here are some ones I've gotten through the PastPros submissions.

432/792

Nothing terribly exciting but I got a nice return from Gene Nelson which gets me to ... 255. Edited to add my other recent additions since Plunk last summer: Youmans and Schroeder.