i've seen several certified autograph cards over the years with signatures in odd places - on the back of the card or sideways along the border or crammed in to fit a small space due to poor photo selection or bad card design. even a card signed on the front and the back! with 2026 topps tribute, i was happy to see steve garvey listed as part of the "crest calligraphy" autograph checklist because topps created a large signature space over the teams' logo. this nolan ryan card
was provided as an example of these cards on the sell sheet. pretty sweet.
when the set was released, garvey autos started popping up in my saved searches, and while i waited a while to pull the trigger, i wound up buying a couple. here's the blue parallel edition, numbered to 150
garvey's signature is still pretty fluid, but this is not the best example. of course, there are hundreds of cards that he had to sign for this set so i am not expecting harmon killebrew levels of effort.
here's the back
so that's nice, right? a bold signature across the dodgers' flying ball logo.
with multiple levels of parallels, i have seriously curtailed my efforts to collect them all, but i had to add one of the "base" (#'d to 199) autographs from this set
tony oliva once told me that he doesn't sign across faces as that is disrespectful, but i doubt garvey was worried about defacing the dodger logo, especially since he seems to have corrected himself at some point. maybe it's just because cards are usually signed near the bottom?
case in point, here are a couple of other recent garvey auto pickups - 2025 panini impeccable mvp auto / 74
the design left a clear space, and there is actual text on the back!
this is a one and done version of the card - numbered to his mvp year with no parallels.
now here's a 2025 topps diamond icons white polychromatink autograph
again, the signature location is pretty obvious in the design. here's the back
which does not note that this is the red ink variation of the legion of cards garvey had to sign for the set.
i recently saw a clip of garvey saying that he had just signed a thousand more cards for topps - i am hoping that those might be 2027 topps heritage cards. there's plenty of room to sign on that 1978 topps design!
Topps should send athletes a sample card of where they want them to sign. Glad Garvey figured out where to sign. I wonder if his wife or a friend pointed to the card and said "Steve... pretty sure you're supposed to sign here".
ReplyDeleteI think they do, as sometimes I've seen cards on a blog where the "autograph" simply says "sign here". See https://www.radicards.com/baseball/apparently-sign-here-qualifies-as-an-autograph/ for examples.
DeleteIt's a little weird seeing ones here where the autos are on the top. Nothing wrong with it, it's just unusual.
I would imagine it's pretty annoying to have sign a ton of autographs across multiple sets where the signature is expected to be in a different place (or at some weird angle) each time.
ReplyDeleteBert Blyleven has shared on facebook several times some of the cards he has signed for Topps. I have commented that he should do something unique with one, but as far as I know, he has not. it makes it interesting when someone goes off book and does something creative. I have one of those "sign here" cards in my watchlist, but it's too much $ for what is essentially a modified base card and the seller has never lowered the price or added the option to make offers. Sellers like that can keep their overpriced inventory though if they can't modernize their approach even slightly. I can even picture in my head the kind of guy he probably is as I wrote this, sitting at a show with Beckett stickers from the 90s on his yellowed cases, scowling as the "comp bros" with their graded card suitcases in hand pass by his table.
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