Two (Too) Many Ginters

I did a whole series of posts the last two weeks on all of the Ginter cards including the non-sport Ginters.  My main focus is always the baseball cards, but chasing down some of the non-sport cards inserted into baseball cards can fun sometimes too.  My recent pull of a Henry Rollins autograph out of a pack of Ginter has to rank as my greatest non-sport autograph ripped out of a pack.  Little did I count on running into a second copy a few weeks later.  No packs this time.  

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph 

As a collector, there are times when you come across a person who is willing to sell, or trade, a card out of the sheer fact that they do not like the player, team, or in this case, person depicted on the card.  I have talked about this in several posts, but am always amazed when I run across these collectors.  They might sound like this (using Jim Edmonds as an example): 

"I was opening a box of cards and my autograph was Jim Edmonds.  I really cannot stand him and his half t-shirt warmups he wears during batting practice.  This card is going up on Ebay or I am going to trade it as soon as a get a decent offer"  

Leverage gone.  Price down.  Have a good time paying your Ebay fees my friend.  So, this Rollins card came from a local source who pulled it and immediately started complaining about how terrible all of the Rollins spoken word albums are and how his music went down hill after the mid 90s.  Replace with half t-shirt in the rant above with his Weight album and throw in something about the Grammy's, Bibles, and you get the picture...  I was happy to swoop in with a few local ACC baseball products, and a Seth Maness, to pull off my second Rollins card from this year's Ginter set.  

I believe that this card is going to be stashed away for a raining day, but will cash it in for some really nice Cardinals or Rays card.  Perhaps Topps will get a Cardinals player not named Allen Craig, Jon Jay, Matt Adams, or Shelby Miller to sign for one of their later releases.  

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph

I do not do many non-baseball autographs and I cannot think of a single non-sport autograph in my entire collection.  I have pulled a few things out of different products over the years.  I got a Tina Carrere and Jesse Ventura autographs a few years ago out of a Donruss product while they were printing the fans of the game cards.  However, I quickly sold both cards and moved the money onto other cards.

Topps released its fantastic Allen & Ginter product this week which is always full of non-sport autographs.  The product is one of my annual pack busting experiences, but I have never pulled a non-sport autograph out of a Ginter pack.  In fact, I usually hope to just avoid the non-sport autographs all together and land my nice baseball related autograph.

Well, my streak of all baseball autographs out of Ginter ended this year when I was opening my box and landed an autograph of musician/spoken word artist/actor Henry Rollins.

2013 Topps Allen & Ginter Henry Rollins Autograph 

If you are not familiar with the work of Henry Rollins there is much to share, so I would point you in the direction of my favorite Rollins Band disc, but you also can't go wrong with his work in Black Flag.  I am not a consumer of spoken word material, so I am not going to tell you it's great, but people seem to enjoy it.  

Rollins has also appeared in several television series and movies.  I think the first movie I remember him being in was the mid 90s Al Pacino/Robert Diniro movie Heat.  Really, there is a lot the guy has done during his career.  Back to the card.

The one intriguing feature of this card that caught my eye was the signature.  Usually Topps provides signers with pens to sign their autographs which Rollins obviously did not use.  I am going with a Blue Bic pen on this card.  Pens on cards are a rarity.  In fact, after pulling this card I went back through my autographs, all 4,000, and tried to find another card signed with an ink pen.

I found no certified autographs in pen, but.....

I did find three cards that I did own, non-certified, that were signed in pen.  Whitey Herzog I got at an event in St. Louis and he was not putting down his pen.  Everyone got an autograph signed in pen.  In retrospect I should have brought a baseball to the event.  The Lenny Harris was from my brief period of TTM signatures.  The Donruss card is a pretty bad signature, but I have always really liked the Upper Deck.

The Rollins autograph is a really good signature in spite of the fact that Henry used a Bic pen.  Have not quite decided if he's going to stay in my collection or not, but I will enjoy the card while it's sitting here.