1993 Donruss, Tim Salmon

#176 Tim Salmon

Here is my first autograph on a glossy card. As you can see, it didn't go too well. I got this one signed through the mail around 1993. I was pretty shocked when it came back looking like this. I ended up sending a different card out to him the next season and it ended up looking much better. It is kind of weird how these cards loose their gloss over the years. I guess the Eric Wegde card got moved around enough throughout the years that it turned into a signable card.

Well, I am back from Texas. I had a great time at my cousin's wedding. I was also successful on the autograph front as I came home with 46 autographed cards. I saw most of an Indians/Astros game and attended the Astros fanfest. The Fanfest was pretty cool since it was going on at the ballpark while a game was being played. The Astros did some things better than the Royals and some things worse. The one thing that I didn't like was that they were charging money for the autographs. It cost $20 to get in an autograph line. In the line would be 2-4 players or coaches. So, assuming you actually had enough time to go and get all of these guys to sign, it would have cost $180 plus whatever price you paid for your ticket to get in. At the Royals Fanfest, they charged about $10 for a ticket, but all of the autographs were free. The Astros did have about ten alumni that signed for free throughout the game, though. Those were the guys that I got to sign and all of them were willing to sign more than one card.

The thing I did like about the 'Stros Fanfest was that it was more geared to adults than the Royals one was. They had a silent auction, last years left over promotional give-aways were being sold for cheap, and they had a card show. It wasn't the largest card show ever, but I didn't care. I hadn't been to a show in fifteen years, so I loved it. I just wish that I would have actually had more time to browse through it. I got about half way through the tables when I noticed that the Indians had taken the field for batting practice. Technicly, it was a day game on a get-away day so I wasn't expecting them to take BP. So, I ran through the rest of the tables and then headed down by the dugouts. But, I did grab about twelve packs of Topps and Bowman Heritage from years that I was out of the card collecting game. I also picked up some Tri-Star blasters for cheap. They sponsored the show and had a little booth set up. They were selling blasters of their '08 and '09 minor league packs for $10 a pop and they each had six packs and you were guarenteed an autograph. That sounded like a great deal, so I picked up a couple of them as well. They even had the 1869 Red Stocking team card there to see. That was pretty cool.

Overall, I had a great time. I may try to make it a habit of going to one extra Fanfest each year. I will start showing the older cards that I got signed after I get through my 1993 cards.