There were a bunch of Cardinals autographs in Leaf Signature and Donruss Signature, but I bought all of them as single cards, either from card shops or off of Ebay. The first Cardinals autograph that I ever pulled out of a pack?
Just my favorite 1990s Cardinals player.
I bought a box of Upper Deck SP Authentic from 1,000,000 Baseball Cards in Ballwin, Missouri. Upper Deck had rebranded the product that year, it had just been SP for years, so I was not sure quite what I was going to get. The base cards are nice.
Pretty standard Upper Deck baseball card product.
Now, the autograph checklist in the 1998 set is really deep, lots of really good names. It's 1990s Upper Deck, so there is a Griffey. There is also a Tony Gwynn, ARod, Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones, Sheffield, Ivan Rodriguez, Roger Clemens, Scott Rolen, Vlad, Nomar, Roberto Alomar, Mike Mussina, and others.
Those all would have been great cards to pull out of a pack, but there is no better feeling than opening a pack of cards, and seeing a great card of a player you collect. Like many autographed cards, my first view of my first pack pulled Ray Lankford autographed card was the back.
That Richard McWilliam signature on the back of the card brought a lot of joy back in the day. I had to pause for a moment when I saw that the autograph was a Ray Lankford. Best feeling while opening a pack of baseball cards.
The front.
Really sweet card. Lankford does not have many autographed cards, but this has long been my favorite simply because I pulled it out of a pack of cards myself.
I've never seen an autograph from this set before, it reminds me a little bit of the Fleer Greats that would come a few years later, except shinier.
ReplyDeleteYes, similar to the 2001 Fleer GOTG. The large white borders, signatures at the bottom of the card, etc. They are both really nice looking products.
DeleteAs a guy who enjoys collecting autographs, I owe it all to the 90's. That decade really opened up the doors for autograph collectors. I'm not 100% certain... but I think I've pulled two Chirography autographs from this product. Mark Kotsay and Todd Helton.
ReplyDeleteYou are right the 1990s were huge for autograph collectors. I think I actually own a copy of the Helton card too, but I bought it off of Ebay a few years back. He should be in the Hall. Kotsay was a solid Major Leaguer.
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