Sign Here (and here and also here)

Despite being a double bullseye for my collection, here's one "Gavin Christmas Card" I will never own. Geez, that's a lot of cash! I was watching the auction for a while, but it quickly jumped up to too rich for my blood territory, before ultimately ending up in are you fucking kidding me?! territory. Gavin Lux has been bumped up to #2 overall on some recent MLB Prospect lists (behind Wander Franco), and he's been holding his own in his September call-up with LA as a 21-year old, so his cards are trending steeply upwards. At this point I've probably been priced out of adding any more nice Lux cards to my collection any time soon.

But at least I can feel smug in the knowing that while there are 25 copies of that above orange card, there's only one "sign here" variation of his 1st Bowman:

I showed off this oddity in the Gavin Lux PC retrospective post earlier this month the day he got called up. And it got me curious about other "sign here" cards for sale on eBay, and well, I ended up snagging a couple more for a few bucks each.

Ben Grieve 1999 Bowman's Best - Rookie of the Year "Sign Here" non-auto

Eric Chavez 1999 Bowman's Best - Rookie Locker Room "Sign Here" non-auto

Not sure what happened to the "S" on the Chavez, but perhaps there was a piece of paper or sticker partially covering the card.

These two were won from different sellers, but funny how they're both A's autos from 1999 Bowman's Best, and they seem to be "signed" by the same Topps representative. Perhaps this guy has sticky fingers and played a part in backdooring these cards onto the secondary market, while Topps' Quality Control protocol would surely call for them to be destroyed. But whatever.. I'm happy to have them, and may occasionally do a search to see if any other reasonably priced "sign here" cards pop up that I can add to this quirky little minicollection.