Originally Posted by MooseDog
Craig -
In case you haven't figured it out by now, autograph collectors are, to put it kindly, a little "different" than most collectors. I'll certainly put myself in this category.
Honestly I don't know why, but it is true. We take on projects we can never complete - like complete runs of signed trading cards, or everyone whoever played for a team or sport, knowing full well that there are no known examples of some autographs and such projects will never be completed. We argue over authenticity and who signs/who doesn't.
It was a very tight-knit community once, maybe back in the 1980s and before, we were shunned by the card collectors, despised by the memorabilia collectors but we got our kicks hanging out all day at ballparks and hotels and trading envelopes full of duplicates through the mail to people we never met. Yeah, we bought and sold too, ten cents a pop for commons and a Maris might run you $3.00.
I think there is also a bit of bitterness in us hard-core graphers. We all hate, absolutely hate the passing off of forgeries. For me, it was attending and selling at shows in the early 1990s, when guys I'd never seen at the ballparks or hotels suddenly had binders full of all the big names - Mantle, Dimaggio, Williams, Jordan, and bit nice looking sharpie signed pieces. Every card shop had signed stuff with COAs (from now discredited TPAs).
I could tell they were bad, but people kept buying them because they looked nice. At the time I didn't offer COA's and didn't think I needed to since I got nearly everything in person or from someone else who did.
Then the card shops started sending armies of kids out to the hotels and ballparks and ruined it for everyone.
And now, you have players charging upwards of $100 a signature and getting it.
I was priced out of the hobby long ago, I limit my collecting to the few (and new) A's, Seals and Sharks.
But I remember the older guys in the hobby who were always nice to me - Dick Dobbins, Stan Marks, Will Davis, Steve Brunner, Bill Zekus, Mike Wheat, Bill Corcoran, Ron Gordon, Doug McWilliams and Hall of Famer Nick Peters just to name a few...and I always feel a responsibility to follow their example and help out when I can.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is don't let the drama put you off, hard as that may be. Some of this stuff is like a soap opera, you hate yourself for watching/reading, but you want to see how it turns out.
Maybe some of us old-timers who are a little too quiet here should post about some of our experiences. I'm a little reluctant as Jim Stinson's stories and writing ability put mine to shame, but I'll have a go at it, assuming anyone want to hear about the "good old days".
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