Prime Time

2003 Fleer EX Deion Sanders Jersey/Autograph 

The best autograph of a football player in my collection.  Deion Sanders was a very talented athlete in his prime, but was clearly a much better football player than a baseball player.  I am not saying that Deion was bad at baseball, but almost exclusively a one tool baseball player.  Speed.  His early years in Atlanta were probably his best time spent in baseball.  I would specifically point out his 1992 season where he helped the Atlanta Braves win the National League pennant.  During that season "Prime Time" lead the National League in triples, posted more than 20 steals, and registered an OPS+ of 130.  

During the mid 90s Deion focused more on football, but always seemed to show up somewhere every summer during the baseball season.  My best memories of Sanders after his time with the Braves was a Red.  He did a cool Jackie Robinson tribute with his uniform in 1997.  I remember seeing him hit a home run off of Matt Morris, run really slowly around the bases with huge turns, and then get booed.  Somewhere Carlton Fisk was irked.  

While this does not crack the list of great cards in my collection it's certainly a very interesting card and I am happy to add it.  Topps has actually started producing autographs of Deion which feature him as a Brave.  Pretty nice on card autographs in good products.  Deion has also popped in a few Panini products.  One of them features him as a Yankee, which is fine, but another has him as a logoless Giant.  Not cool.  Given the increase in signed Deion cards, I would guess his value will come down a bit in the coming years.  Great autograph to pick up if you watched baseball during the 90s.