Thursday, September 7, 2017

Five random autographs

I have been a little, or rather a lot, under the weather for close to a week now. And while it hasn't been the severest of maladies, I still haven't felt like pretending to be a blogger.

Some good has come from all my down time though, in that I have spent quite a bit of time going through my old photo/scan folders of mostly COMC purchases, and am happy to say that I have finally finished sorting out what will and won't be seen in future posts. I have been trying to finish doing that for months now, so it's very nice to finally be done.

With everything sorted now, I figure that if I can keep to a somewhat regular blogging schedule, I should be completely caught up with everything (which includes my recent non card acquisition's) by Christmas -- which will work out well, since that's about when my post-Black Friday COMC shipment usually arrives.

After all the sorting was completed, I found a quite a few autographs that still need to be gotten to. And although most of them were able to be grouped together (Golden Age, Heritage Real One, Star Trek, Dr. Who, and so forth), I did end up with some odds and ends, so in an effort to make things a little easier, I'm just gonna group them together as well and call it good.

2003-04 Upper Deck UD Legends Bill Walton Legendary Signatures
Had I not been away from collecting at the time, I would have made a serious attempt to collect this autograph set. Trying to do so now, would be considerably more difficult, as the passage of time has created a couple of very expensive cards -- most notably the Erving, Jordan, and Mikkan.

Even though I still need his auto from three other sets that I'm working on, at around $5, this one was just to cheap pass up.

2012-13 Panini Contenders Bobby Wanzer Historic Contenders Autographs #'d 72/99
This timing of this purchase ended up being very fortuitous, as I got it on sale (around $3) the day before he passed away last year. Bad timing on the seller's part, but it sure worked out well for me. I'm not usually big on sticker autos, but to my knowledge he didn't have any officially licensed on-card autographs, so I went with what I considered to be the most attractive of his sticker-graphs.

A member of both the basketball hall of fame and the college basketball hall of fame, Bobby played all of his eleven seasons in the NBA with the Rochester Royals. He was a key component during the team's 1950-51 championship season, which even after many a change in city and name (currently the Sacramento Kings), is still the only title in franchise history. He was five time All-Star, who also spent his last two seasons as a player-coach, before retiring and going on to coach the team full time for the next two years. In 1963 he signed on to coach at St. John Fisher College, a position he would hold for the next 24 years.

2006-07 Press Pass Legends Bernard King autograph
I have been slowly (very slowly!) working on this set for a couple of years now, as I'm a big fan of just the overall look of the cards. It is a set that is rife with variations (red ink, personalization, etc.), but I'm only really interested in the base autos. Other than a few hall of famers, there aren't too many big names to chase down, so I have found it to be one of the more affordable sets of on-card autographs to collect.


2005 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites Mike Norris autograph
To be completely honest, I knew almost next to nothing about Mike Norris before I saw and bought this card. I still don't know that much about him, other than he had a relatively short career, which contained a couple of very productive seasons -- 1980 being the best, when he went 22-9 with 24 complete games while posting a 2.53 ERA.

To my knowledge this Mr. Norris' only officially licensed autograph, which is part of the reason I found it so appealing, it's always fun to get signatures of players that aren't in every in single release year after year.

1997 Donruss Signature Series Mike Cameron autograph
I have been slowly working on this set as well, it's yet another one that I just really enjoy the look of. It's also another set in which most of the autographs are extremely affordable, as large portion of them can be had for $3 or less.

I was a big fan of Mike Cameron during his time with the Mariners, so I was happy to check this one off the needs list, and the under $2 price tag made it that much better.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

12 comments:

  1. I love that Mike Norris card! Great photo.

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  2. Those 80s A's uniforms are awesome. Can't go wrong with a Walton auto either.

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    1. I often find myself drawn to cards featuring old (60's-80's) A's uniforms, I really dig the colors. Being from Portland, I always feel like it's a bit of an obligation to buy any cheap/interesting Bill Walton cards that I happen to come across.

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  3. It great to have hand, especially when it's full of autos. Love the Walton.

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  4. Norris is a fan favorite among A's fans. Career was cut short due to drug problems. Last time I saw him at an A's reunion, he didn't look good. It was kinda sad.

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    1. According to his Wikipedia page, he was diagnosed with cervical myelopathy in 1999, so that might explain why he didn't look too good.

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  5. I remember watching a short feature about Mike Norris on ESPN (I think) when I was first getting into baseball. It mainly covered his descent into/recovery from drug problems, but I specifically remember the fact that Norris carried a copy of his '81 Topps card in his pocket to remind him how limber and flexible he was during the peak of his career (and life). That image has stuck with me ever since.

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    1. Sounds like he was carrying a wallet card before it was even a "thing"!

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  6. Hope you're feeling 100% again. Sometimes getting sick-but-not-too-sick can be a good way to get stuff done you wouldn't otherwise take the time for - like organizing your collection.

    I love picking up cheap autos like this on COMC. Walton and Norris are great, and Bobby Wanzer...I know nothing about the early days of the NBA so it's always need to see cards (esp. autos) of players from the 50's and 60's.

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    1. I hope to be, sometime sooner than later.

      I do too, and there's certainly no shortage of them on the site.

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