General Forum

Is anyone else tired of the so called autographs they are receiving / chasing????  It seems these multi millionaire athletes missed every chance in school to learn a proper signature. I'm not sure how it is in other sports (I am a proud Chicago Bears / Football collector) but these so called autographs that are inserted as certified autos are quite frankly crap.  They are just initials or a few scribbly lines...... i remember back in the day that when an athlete signed a card/football/portrait, it was a true signature...... now they are crap.  I have notice baseball players always had the nicest autographs (except for Dick Butkus and Walter Payton).  Not sure about other sports.  Wonder if there was any way to reach out to manufacturers and tell them that their certified autos are junk............

Most schools/States have stopped teaching cursive writing for a good 20 years.

I have to sadly admit I agree with you about the sigs. Some of them seem like they were signed by either slow 12 year olds or lazy 20 year olds (hope I did not offend anyone). When I get a lousy autograph as my hit in a box I am bummed. I love it when I get a really nice looking auto, star or not. It is too bad that autos are a dime a dozen now. In the 90s when getting autos from packs was newer and rarer. I love those Upperdeck 500 homerun cards. I love Patrick Bailey the Giants young catcher and hope he becomes a star, I am a SF Giants fan, but his signature is awful, barely a P B. Willie Mays did not have a great signature but at least it was consistent and special. I prefer Willie McCoveys autograph. Anyway I wish the current sigs were better.  

It’s not on the athletes. I did some quick math when an AU card came up at the RCOTD not long ago.

https://www.tcdb.com/CardoftheDay2.cfm/ID/5874#280456

Short answer - card companies ask for a lot of signatures. That’s not fair to the athlete. I’ll stop taking this stance when card companies stop producing thousands of autographed cards of athletes. 

And I'll further this. My own sig looks like crap. Years and years of signing docs has reduced mine down to a scribble too. And people wonder why some athletes in the past have relied upon the autopen.

jasongerman9 wrote:

It’s not on the athletes. I did some quick math when an AU card came up at the RCOTD not long ago.

https://www.tcdb.com/CardoftheDay2.cfm/ID/5874#280456

Short answer - card companies ask for a lot of signatures. That’s not fair to the athlete. I’ll stop taking this stance when card companies stop producing thousands of autographed cards of athletes. 

well, they also sign like 100 of these stickers that get slapped onto cards at a time 

Most people's signatures (regardless of the age of the signer) are messy and especially if they are signing a lot of items at the same time. Think about how your signature looks when you sign electronically on a card reader. If I take my time when signing I have a very nice flowing signature but most times (in ink or electronic) I just scribble a signature which is usually illegible and call it good. I expect the same is true for these players. I do notice that if you want a really nice signature of a player you have a better chance with an inscription style or a personalized (in person) signature. Because when they are doing more then just signing an autograph they tend to take more time.

I signed 15 of these (and I did a couple ahead on the same card stock to ensure I had the feel for the sharpie on the paper), and that was not fun. Although, that IS pretty much what my signature looks like normally. And yes, I realize that you really can't distinguish anything there, but usually you can make out the D...l R H.t.. portion of my name - which I purposely came up with while in college because I was signing a lot of documents somewhere, and I had to come up with something that I could repeat, and easily. (And it's the ONLY time I ever use cursive.)

Autopen or have someone else sign.

Yet some don't seem to even try...

https://www.tcdb.com/ViewCard.cfm/sid/39778/cid/3930005/2005-Finest---Xfractors-NNO-Vernand-Morency