40 Man Roster
 

Just sitting here thinking and a disturbing thought jumped up at me... Do all the players on a 40 man roster have baseball cards or is it only the active roster players who have cards out there? I am thinking if the inactive players on the roster also have a card then I probably have a lot of dumpster material piled up in my closet.. :D

Well after thinking about this issue of who has a card and searching the forum I come to the conclusion that only active roster players would have a card out there for any particular year..

Now I need to figure out what constitutes a common... For instance take a local home town boy like Andy Van Slyke.. In my area he is a desired collectible card but on the other side of the country in your area he is just a so so player and is probably not as desirable a card as he is here... Is his card a common or is it a common only in your area? Hmmmm ......

Not all players on the 25-man roster automatically get cards each year either. The checklist is determined by the card company, who has the discretion to never make a card of a person they don't want to (or have under contract). Matt Wieters never signed a contract with Topps so he doesn't have cards with them. If he was a league leader in something, I wonder what they'd do for that card? ;-)

In the case of van Slyke, a rookie card or autograph might have a premium, but other than that, he's a common.

OK on Andy being considered common (he won't like that) :D ..

On the subject of an autograph making him a bit more of a collectible are the cards that come in the packs that have a printed signature considered autographed or does it have to be a card he actually put a pen to?

Van Slyke would have had to sign the card in person, either as a special insert in a pack or at a game or show signing.

Printed signatures have no increase in the value of a card, unless the signature is a limited print issue like this:
http://img.comc.com/i/Baseball/1994/...&size=original
1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Gold Signature #340 - Ken Griffey Jr.
Courtesy of COMC.com

The normal version of the card might be 50 cents, but these versions have sold for $10 for this Griffey Jr card.

Autographed cards in packs come in two flavors: on card autograph and sticker autograph. There is a premium for having a signed card compared to a sticker. Sticker sheets are mailed to players and they can sign 10,000 in a row; then the manufacturer (Topps, UD, whatever) can apply the sticker to all upcoming cards of said player. Topps recently included sticker autos of both Tony Gwynn and Oscar Taveras after their deaths, since they still had them available.

Cards hand-signed were actually touched by that player, so they are worth more to collectors.

I believe Topps attempted to represent everyone when they put out Topps Total and even 40-Man sets in the early 2000's, but it must not have sold enough.

That effort did produce a few curiosities such as the 2004 Topps Total Russell Branyan card in a Braves uniform. He was traded 10 weeks after being signed after hitting .179 in 11 AAA games, but never played for Atlanta.

Now that would probably be a cool addition to collections - cards of players in uniforms for teams they never played for (albeit at the major league level)
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It may be a printed signature but I took it as real as it looks like it was done with a sharpie.. I was going to list it on my site or Ebay as a signed card but I guess I need to do a little research on that particular card.. I was going to try and upload them but they are stored on my computer not on the web so I will try and attach them to this message and see how that works... Hmmmm worked just great.......

Thanks for the info guys... It's great to be able to tap into the vast pool of knowledge here....

Topps cards that year did not have a printed signature. That is very likely to be real, because who would fake an Andy Van Slyke autograph? ;-)

Hey Swarmee thanks for the input on no printed signatures in that year...

You got to be careful though, you never know what those kids with sharpies from Utica might do to advance an interest in their home town boy. :eek:

I just checked your van Slyke sig up to some samples on google images, it looks good to me.

Thanks to everyone who has responded. It's good to know one can come here looking for information and find folks who step up to help you...