MrMopar's New Dodgers Autograph Thread (and other interesting items on a slow mailday)

[mrmopar]

Alston Morrell

1981 Banquet Program. This has a few assorted autos, but Garvey was what made me find it. Garvey, Lasorda, Garagioia, Hugh Green, Jaworski, Dave Logan. Features an early Dan Marino appearance, unfortunately no Dan Marino auto. Would have made it unaffordable though.

 

[mrmopar]

The only time you know for certain what someone bidding on ebay is willing to pay is when you are the winning bidder. Not only do you know what you were willing to pay, you know what the runner up was willing to pay.

On the flip side, I often feel like I end up paying my max more often than I'd like. How do I know this? Well, I am the winning bidder and someone has bid me up to my max. Now, more often than that, I am 2nd high bidder and that is frustrating as well. I often wonder just how high the winner was willing to go. Did they steal it from me because I didn't raise my bid by a buck or two, did i do the same thing to them and max them out OR am I just a small irritating speck on their road to victory, with a runner up bid that was only a fraction of their max bid?

Lately it feels like I either end up as runner up or I am paying my full snipe bid and it can be frustrating at the same time rewarding, because you won. Here are a couple great exceptions to that rule (besides the Garvey).

Starting off is a new variation of the Select Garvey card that I must have about 10 different now. This is blue /199. It was cheap and whatever I paid was fine and expected. The next two surprised me pleasantly.

First win was this Jim "Junior" Gilliam autographed postcard. it's ugly thanks to someone folding it up, but it's still a mostly clean signature. The postage was close to $6, which sucked because I would have been willing to risk this one in a standard trading card package, despite my great opposition to this method lately for anything that I deem special or irreplaceable.

The auction price for this signature was $1!


I have numerous Jim Gilliam autographs. He seemed to be a very gracious signer. Several come from multi-player items, like programs, yearbooks, etc. He died of a heart attach in 1978 and a pretty young age, but luckily his signature is fairly common for someone who died then.

This last item really makes me appreciate the occasional steal you can still get on ebay every now and again. I was a little concerned at first, because after i won this and immediately paid, it was assigned a tracking number right away and then sat. A week passed without any updates before I finally reached out to the seller to ask when it was actually going to ship out. I can't know for sure, but I have my suspicions. They claimed it was left at the PO, but a day or so after my inquiry, the tracking finally updated. I think they finally handed it over to the PO after I asked.

It arrived today. Part of me thought...it's going to be the wrong item or a piece of wood or something else, but not the item I won. I was still in disbelief that I had won it for so little $. Well, happy to report that the item was as described and now resides in my Dodger autograph collection. The item is actually many items, a lot of 1985 Coke postcards, all signed! Now these particular postcards aren't anywhere as common as the older Mitock or Dexter Press team issued cards from the 70s/80s, but all being signed was a huge bonus.

The highlights include now deceased players or coaches Tommy Lasorda, Fernando Valenzuela (still weird to say that), Jay Johnstone, Ron Perranoski, Carlos Diaz, Bob Welch, Bobby Castillo, Ken Howell, Monty Basgall and Steve Howe. Crazy to think that many have already died from a mid 1980s team. Among the living highlights include Orel Hershiser, Steve Sax, Al Oliver., Mike Scioscia, Pedro Guerrero and maybe another 15 more.

The final hammer was $22.72 plus tax and shipping! I am a very happy Dodger fan right now. I need to check, but this may be a complete setas well.

 

[BucCollector]

Insane bargain. Congratulations!

 

[mrmopar]

I don't think I had this one yet, Red and blue. This one has a refractor finish.

 

[mrmopar]

Garvey/Cey/Baker /6

Garvey /5. I don't love the pink. Just about any of the other colors would be better. I especially like Blue and green.

Garvey/Freeman /75


Grove /199

Billy Cox 1974 TCMA Boys of Summer. He only had a few years to sign these, as he died in early 1978 at age 58. His signature seems to have varied quite a bit from examples I have seen. Earlier signatures seem to have more flair. Assuming this is in fact legit, this would be a near end of life signature.

 

[mrmopar]

Pretty sure I didn't already have this one, /50. It's pretty nice and from a set I like to collect too.

 

[mrmopar]

Garvey /5. Despite no logos, Flawless does look pretty good and the green foil is nice contrast to the Dodger blue.


Garvey/Jackson /4


This one was a weird deal that can still not really be explained fully. Purchased on ebay. Tracking never updated. I reached out to the seller to advise it had been a bit and that card was not here, nor did tracking show movement. Then, within a couple of days someone called my house and left me a voice message. Said they received a card that was supposed to be mailed to me??? How did this person get my number (assuming it was on the paperwork)? I called them back and we spoke. I thought maybe this person got my card and I was going to get theirs, as has happened too many times to even joke about!

I let seller know that someone else got the card somehow, while the tracking still never showed updated. I never got any sort of explanation, apology or anything. At that point, I wanted the seller to either accept a return and then resend to me or just pay for the postage to get it to me. That way neither me or the mystery recipient would have to pay anything out of pocket to finish this weird deal. I also offered them to just refund me the purchase price and we could all forget it. They chose the latter and refunded me.

I was made whole on this, but I knew that my card was sitting in Chicago with someone who clearly didn't want it and was honest enough to reach out to me about it. Even though it was a cheap buy and I had another one already (2, in fact), I decided to offer to pay this mystery person the postage to ship me the card, even though I'd been refunded. They agreed and sent the card. It arrived yesterday, but they have yet to respond to give me an amount to pay them.

Just really weird. I am either getting this card for the cost of postage or free. I'd normally reach back out to the seller and offer to repay for the item since i did get it finally, but they were not exactly helpful and on a $5 card I guess they just figured the hassle of returns and extra postage wasn't worth it to them, so i am also not going to make the effort to follow up either.

By the way, that tracking snip is from today. i still have no idea what that number corresponds to, as the card was delivered to the wrong address??? Like I said, very weird.

 

[mrmopar]

Forgot to add this after the Lux drama

1943 Dodgers Photo Pack.

The big flaw is that all of them have some writing on back. Some are just a position in the field, a few look to have some sort of stats. The photos themselves look great from the front. No Reese (maybe pulled?), but HOFs all of which you don't associate with the Dodger normally, Joe Medwick, Paul Waner and Arky Vaughan, were included. Billy Herman and Leo Durocher were two more HOFer included as well.

 

[mrmopar]

Garvey /25

Randolph /8. Now that i finally have a couple Dodger autos, they seem much easier to win at better prices. Of course, many of the early ones were 1/1s too.


An older Dodger crossed off the list finally. As usual, this season they are killing me with a steady stream of unknown pitchers, many of who continue in the latest tradition and don't have any pack issued auto'd cards that I can find, short careers and/or are foreign born.

Martin seems especially elusive, not that most of these others aren't as well. I don't even know if this is legit, but I will believe it is for now.

Here is a list of the Dodgers autos I currently need, for the fun of it. Seriously, who the hell are most of these guys? A couple are not hard to find, but pricy. Ohtani is pretty much likely impossible for my budget:

Darien Nunez
Tyler Cyr
Nick Robertson
Ryan Brasier
Shohei Ohtani
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Nabil Crismatt
Elieser Hernandez
Eduardo Salazar
Michael Petersen
Hunter Feduccia
Zach Logue
Edgardo Henriquez
Roki Sasaki
Jack Dreyer
Luis Garcia
Noah Davis
Lou Trivino
Hyeseong Kim