General Forum

Hey, Probably a stupid or silly question. 

If you have a card to be autographed...Do you have the signee autograph the card itself? or the sleeve or toploader that it's in?

BTW, thanks to everybody that sent Jeff Torborg cards for my son. Appreciated.

~BOB~

Card itself, otherwise, I could have sent you a crap-ton of sleeves to have him sign. 

And what about front or back of card?  My preference is back of card, like the 1992 Pro Line Portrait Autographs.  And I would also request a clear, readable signature.  I can't stand scribbles on a card.

I'm going to ignore the other replies here for now. I only want to post my thoughts. This actually wasn't a stupid or silly question! If you hadn't posted it the way you did, I would have ridiculed everyone who said anything against on-card autograph. That would be my preference in ANY situation, UNTIL you added toploader into question. That is an interesting idea! If I am going for an IP AU, I would want it to be on-card and never would have thought of getting one just on the toploader. The toploader is very interesting b/c it's not something that would be easy to sell for-profit on ebay (or similar sites). An athlete would be more likely to sign legibly for that than just a card, especially if it was a card they've already seen and signed hard-copies of or stickers for that release. If it was strictly for my collection, the toploader idea sounds good to me. I would want the AU to be well-placed on the area of the card though. So the toploader (or even a snap-tight or screwdown case) would be a nice place for a collection signature.

Plastic sleeves = Absolutely NOT (they move too much when touched in any way)

I'm sorry that I'm a week late on the reply to this thread, but you know that this is holiday/vacation time for most of the hobby world!

Something I didn't think of until reading Adam's reply- if you find a card you like better later, or hasn't even been released yet, perhaps- you could replace it in the toploader, insteading of trying to get to the athlete again.

I don't really like in-person autographs. I have sent off two requests in my life, only one of which came back. (Stanton Barrett)I just don't like seeing a bunch of ink over somebody's face, as it usually ends up being. I don't even like the phony autographs Topps put on baseball cards for decades.

I DO like sets made specifically for autographs, though. My favorite auto set is probably 1999-00 Autographics, which spanned all the Fleer/Skybox sets.

I prefer directly on the front of the card. To go even further, I think it looks best in blue ink horizontally near the bottom of the photo, kind of like most pack-issued autographs come. I also try to select a card with a photo that provides a fairly light background, to make the signature really stand out.