A theory on the origin of sticker autographs (not the same old...)

This came to my mind a number of times over the years but I never ended up posting it... I'd love for someone in the know to tell me if it's in fact correct.

I know there's been a lot of talk about what people like about sticker autographs. I know one of the things people don't care for is the fact that players sign sheets of stickers and have no connection to the card itself. I remember back to the beginning of sticker autographs and it occurred to me that I do think that this was the function of the sticker autograph initially. I may be wrong, but based on the early sticker cards I think that the companies actually affixed them to the cards before they were signed and sent them to the players with the stickers on the card. The purpose (I believe was to give the signers a clear place to sign on the cards. In the late 90's we had such classic examples as this Gibson below where he signed on the back of the card instead of the front. My belief is that they only later realized that they could have the players first sign the stickers and then apply them.

I'm basing this on a few factors:
1. Back in the day the stickers always seem to be affixed straight, something that changed over time. My assumption is that before the stickers were signed, QC would just toss any misaligned stickers, something they could not do once they were signed in advance.
2. This is not much of an argument, but I simply don't recall the idea of sheets of stickers existing until a couple of years after we started seeing stickers on cards.
3. Cards like the Snider below seem to prove that Snider had the card with the sticker already affixed. If I can recreate history it seems like he signed his nickname and then realized he was also supposed to sign his name, so he added it on the card itself.

Anyways, it's all speculation, but I thought it was interesting and hoped someone might know more...

I can't see the Snider photo, but now I am curious.

I have a few of those and it really sucks that they don't go with the rest of the set, signed on front. Gibson has been signing cards for years, presumably. I doubt he signed the back because of confusion, but we'll never know unless he tells why!

That's something I've never thought about but I doubt it started that way and then the light bulb went off.

I bet it was a situation where Ripken or someone was XXXXXing about physically signing stacks or cards and said off the top of his head "Just send me a sheet of stickers, let me sign those and put on whatever the hell you want" lol

It's an interesting topic. Curious if anyone has hard facts with this.


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My 02 TT is a sticker auto that has a little Donruss logo embossed at the top of it and on the card. I don't think they would risk messing up a sticker that was already signed with the stamp. I always assumed they put sticker on, stamped, then Rickey signed.

This notice is required by law.

I've heard the companies say that it is easier to get a bunch of them signed at once, by having a rep travel with the stickers instead of the cards, which makes sense.
The other thing is a lot of the autos weren't getting signed in time for the release date for the product, so they used stickers then for the redemption cards, and I'm guessing they just stayed with that process due to the cost.

My theories in order of favorite:

1) Bigger risk/reward for a card manuf to have AA or AAA minor league level players ink sheets of stickers for $5 per auto, rather than wait when they hit it big and have to pay them $75+ or hundreds of dollars per auto.

2) Not everyone lives forever, so if you can get some of the older or known dying athletes to sign stickers, you should be able to have some quantity to put on cards after they have passed. I'm glad Gary Carter inked a bunch of stickers so I could have his auto, but I hope he wasn't labored too much doing it when he was very sick unless it was a good diversion for him while in the waiting room during doctor appointments.

3) not many brands have a year lead-time to try to get hard-signed cards, so you can shorten the production cycle bigtime by having sticker autos in-house and ready to slap on cards.

Whether it was the original intent, having the flexibility to use those stickers on anything they want and at any time is certainly reason enough. Musial is dead you say? Sorry to hear, BUT we can still use him in our 2018 issues (assuming they stockpiled enough stickers).

Honestly, I never really paid that close attention to them until people started complaining. A well placed sticker is not always that noticeable unless you are specifically looking for it, although an on-card signature is almost always going to be more attractive.

Not sure why the Snider picture was not showing, but I copied it and reposted it. Sorry for the size, it's the best I could find.

rsmath said:

My theories in order of favorite:

1) Bigger risk/reward for a card manuf to have AA or AAA minor league level players ink sheets of stickers for $5 per auto, rather than wait when they hit it big and have to pay them $75+ or hundreds of dollars per auto.

2) Not everyone lives forever, so if you can get some of the older or known dying athletes to sign stickers, you should be able to have some quantity to put on cards after they have passed. I'm glad Gary Carter inked a bunch of stickers so I could have his auto, but I hope he wasn't labored too much doing it when he was very sick unless it was a good diversion for him while in the waiting room during doctor appointments.

3) not many brands have a year lead-time to try to get hard-signed cards, so you can shorten the production cycle bigtime by having sticker autos in-house and ready to slap on cards.

Click to expand...

I think these are all possibilities, but I don't believe any were the initial impetus. I could be wrong of course...

Tromp said:

I've heard the companies say that it is easier to get a bunch of them signed at once, by having a rep travel with the stickers instead of the cards, which makes sense.
The other thing is a lot of the autos weren't getting signed in time for the release date for the product, so they used stickers then for the redemption cards, and I'm guessing they just stayed with that process due to the cost.

Click to expand...

correct, when I've done signings for UD and Panini, I receive a bunch of stickers for the players to sign (along with anything like Letters for "letterman cards" etc), and then mail those back.

If I remember correctly, Donruss was the first to use sticker autos with those foil stickers in the late-90's. I believe they were signed, stuck on, and then embossed on an edge to prevent tampering (like switching stickers). At least now the stickers used are generally less gawdy than those foil ones.

- Rodrick

Outside of maybe a few isolated incidents I think the stickers have always been signed on a sheet then later affixed to the card. Some of the earliest stickers were from Fleer in the late 90's and this one seems to prove that they were not on the card yet when they were signed:



Also I think it's obvious that DLP's famous silver stickers were signed on sheets, stuck to the card, then embossed. Companies were embossing on-card autos prior to stickers and it didn't mess up the signature.



That's not to say that there haven't been some cards that you would assume were signed prior to being "completed" that were actually signed after the card was all put together: