L"O"ngoria

It has been a month or two since I have added a new Longoria card.  He is one of my favorite former Durham Bulls players that I have followed in the Majors and spent a lot of time and money on his cards.  My latest Longoria card is cool for many reasons beyond the fact that it an autographed card of the Rays third baseman.  Here's a look at the card..... 

This autograph actually comes from the SP Authentic By The Letter set.  Back in the day when Upper Deck made baseball cards this was always one of the best products around every year.  The base cards were about what you would expect out of a 90 card set from Upper Deck, but these autographs were also cool to pull out of packs.  They are always something that would I look for in trades and on the cheap on sites like Ebay and COMC.

This is the first time I have been able to put my hands on a copy of the Longoria card.  I picked this up in a trade with local card guy Jimmy, or Big D.  The card is serial numbered 1/5 which makes this card a really sweet find.

2007 SP Authentic By The Letter Troy Tulowitzki Autograph

2007 SP Authentic Troy Tulowitzki Autograph 

A nice card to start off my Sunday morning.  I picked up this Tulowitzki By The Letter Autograph early last week and what's not to love about this card?

First, the card itself is awesome.  This is one of my favorite autograph sets out there.  Sure the letter patches are all manufactured, but it's still a really cool design.  Bonus if you can find a sharp autograph on one of the letters like this card has.  The By The Letter Autographs do not fade or wear like the Sweet Spot autographs, but signing a small letter with a paint pen certainly has yielded some interesting looking cards out of this product over the years.

Second, Tulowitzki is one of the better players in the league when he is healthy and quite possibly the best shortstop in the game.  The top three comparable batters on his Baseball Reference page are all Hall of Famers and if he stays healthy, should have another good five plus years of good numbers to add to his resume before he starts to slide.  I like that he's not only a great offensive player, but also is an above average fielder at a premium position.  He's not Ozzie Smith, but he's no slouch either.

Off to work on my other job.

30 Year Top 50: 1999 SP Signature Edition

#35-This release represented Upper Deck's first venture into the world of a huge autograph focused set.  By the time 1999 rolled around, the hobby had already seen the release of the 1996 Leaf Signature Series and the 1997 and 1998 releases of the Donruss Signature Series.  Since Donruss was bankrupt by the end of 1998 I am guessing that Upper Deck was trying to fill the void.

The packs for the 1999 SP Signature Edition were $20 and only available at Hobby Shops.  Each contained three cards.  Two base cards and one autographed card.  Now, there were some really nice cards in this set that are really cool and worth owning.  However, in a mega-autograph set there are also plenty of cards that are painful to see inside a pack of $20 cards.

One of my big pluses in owning cards from this set is the design.  The autographs are all on card and the card themselves feature a white background which showed the blue ink autographs very well.  As far as the autographs go I break them into three categories.  Lets take a look at a few cards from the set using a few Orioles.  Just picked a team.

1999 SP Signature Edition Ivan Coffie

1. Common Cards- Every mega-autograph set has tons of filler cards like this Ivan Coffie.  It stinks to buy a per pack autograph, spend good money, and pull a card that sells on Ebay for $2 on a really good day.  I often look at the common cards in mega-autograph sets from this perspective:  Collect your favorite team and fill in your autograph collection.  For example, one of my favorite Cardinals teams was the 1996 National League Central Champions.  It was LaRussa's first year, Ray Lankford and several other personal favorites were on the team, and they came within a game of the World Series.  It was also the same year the Leaf Signature set was released and I was able to get a lot of the team in the set with a certified autograph.  They won't all fit in the picture, but here's a sampling.  

1996 Leaf Signature Cardinals Autographs: John Mabry, Tom Pagnozzi, Mike Gallego, and Gary Gaetti

Love the Gary Gaetti card the most out of this lot.  

1999 SP Signature Edition Albert Belle Autograph

2.  Current Stars- In 1999 Albert Belle was fading at the end of his career.  His cards were still pretty desirable and held their value pretty well at the time.  Even to this day his cards have a bit of following and are never super cheap.  If you scour the internet and local card shops you will find that Albert Belle has a few autographs floating around out there.  Especially recent autographs.  At the time of this product release however there were very few floating around.  If you wanted an Albert Belle autograph, this was your best bet.  Most mega-autograph sets have a few cards like this.  Ron Gant is another big one from this set with a similar story.  

1999 SP Signature Edition Frank Robinson Autograph

3.  Hall of Famers-My third category is what most people want to find in their one per autograph packs, but the odds are always difficult on these cards.  Looking at my Frank Robinson, it is probably one of the cheaper Hall of Fame autographs in this set.  In fact, some people would argue that a card like Frank barely covers the cost of the pack on a good day on Ebay.  I disagree.  While it is probably just in the $20 range, covering the pack cost, the cards in the 1999 SP Signature Edition are on card.  For my collection I would much rather own a slightly less expensive on card autograph then a limited print number, high end, sticker autograph.   

Like the 1999 SP Signature Edition?  Not in my 30 Year Top 50 is the By The Letter insert in SP Authentic sets.  If you have been following my countdown you'll notice that the Not in the Top 50 and the in the Top 50 set are often tied together somehow.  Today, I am straying a little bit.  Upper Deck has released some other uber-autograph sets, but this thread is supposed to be about the highlights.  

I could have easily focused this section on one of the Ultimate Signature sets, but the By The Letter Autographs deserve a little bit of love.  I miss them so very much and while Topps has duplicated them into their own creation:

2010 Topps Finest Buster Posey Letter Patch Autograph

They aren't quite the same as the original Upper Deck product.  The By The Letter Autograph concept started in the 2006 SP Authentic set.  The cards were an instant smash hit.  The concept of course was to collect all the letter patches of a player to spell out their name.  Here's how they started out:

2006 SP Authentic Matt Holliday By The Letter Autograph

Over the next several years the cards changed very little in concept and design, but still offered collectors a cool product to chase every year.  Whether you were collecting players from your favorite team:

2009 SP Authentic By The Letter David Freese Autograph

Or you just ran into a cool inexpensive card of an average player.  

2008 SP Authentic By The Letter Edwin Encarnacion Autograph 

The By The Letter Autographs are a set that I strongly considered bundling together and putting on my countdown. 

2008 SP Authentic By The Letter Matt Kemp Autograph

I try to keep a look out for good deals when I am trying to trade for cards.  Usually, I will ask about Rays or Cardinals, but sometimes I will venture away from my collection staples.  I especially find that collectors can capitalize on this when deal with stores, card show dealers, etc.  Stores and dealers often have a set market that is determined by their location and cliental and can often do little to change the types of products and cards that they can sell successfully.

For example, I used to regularly attend the Cardinals Winter Warm-up when I lived in Saint Louis.  The amount of cool Cardinals memorabilia and cards was staggering.  I would usually spend two or three months worth of my card budget at the event and walk away with a few nice pieces.  One of the last years I attended I went with a fellow collector and picked up on something pretty sharp that he did with the vendors.  He would approach a booth, peruse the Cardinals cards or memorabilia and then pick out something nice that was a non-Cardinal.  The conversation would usually bring out the amount of time the dealer had been stuck with the item and how there was no market for player X in Saint Louis.  Then there was an offer.  It worked surprisingly well.  The next table I tried the approach and walked away with a 1995 Upper Deck Reggie Jackson Autograph for $20 in 1999.  Great price at the time.  

1995 Upper Deck Reggie Jackson Autograph

Recently I started working with a card shop owner in Iowa, whom I met through a friend in Saint Louis, and started working with him to trade him Cubs and Cardinals cards for his baseball section of his store.  I do not really value the Cubs cards, so I am happy to trade them.  However, I have found the principle I learned at the Cardinals Winter Warm-Up thirteen years ago still applies to the industry today despite all the changes.  My preference is to have as few Cubs cards as possible.  The store owner wins.  Since I met him through Saint Louis friends he understands that any Cardinals cards that I trade or sell him I could easily sell or trade other stores or collectors.  I win.  However, I can also help the store owner win and my card collection win by taking on valuable cards that do not have a market in their current location.  One day this Matt Kemp card is sitting on a card store shelf for three years in Iowa.  The next it is finding a spot in my house.    

Remember that when you go to a card show or your local card shop to take time to take the the owner and the store employees.  Talk to them about their business.  Look for cards that seem to be "stuck" in the store.  

Player Collection: Matt Holliday Autographs

I started my Matt Holliday autograph collection about two years ago after he re-signed with the Cardinals.  He seems like he has one or two new autographs out every year, so I have initially tried to work on finding one or two nice autographs of him every year.  Holliday can usually be found in either Tribute or Triple Threads releases.  I am going to eventually go back and fill in some autographs from his time with the Rockies, but his older autograph issues seem to be fairly easy to find with generous print runs.  Wouldn't mind adding an Athletics autograph since his only one is a Triple Threads.  However, half of the print is on Ebay as Buy It Nows over $100.  Ridiculous.  Enjoy the cards!  

2012 Topps Tribute Matt Holliday Autograph

2007 Bowman's Best Matt Holliday Autograph

2007 Upper Deck Elements Clear-Cut Autographs

2006 SP Authentic By The Letter Matt Holliday Autograph 

2008 Topps Stadium Club Triumvirate Matt Holliday Autograph/Jersey

2010 Topps Tribute Matt Holliday Dual Bat/Autograph 

2010 Topps Triple Threads Matt Holliday Autograph

2011 Topps Triple Threads Matt Holliday Autograph