Wednesday, May 23, 2007
PRESIDENT BUBBA (NOT CLINTON)
My collection of presidential autographs has doubled.
Okay, so now I have two.
About four years ago I won an ebay auction and now Franklin Pierce's alcohol-driven John Hancock decorates a land grant, nicely framed in an airtight frame on my office wall. Great conversation piece. Cost me about $70. The FRAME cost more than that.
And this morning, for $9.50 I got president number two for my collection: an autographed picture of Jimmy Carter.
That's all he's worth alive; $9.50. And since he writes and autographs books aplenty, when he dies I don't imagine his value will go up that much.
When it comes to DEAD presidents, you really have your work cut out for you.
My policy is, if the bidding goes over $80, I stop.
Currently, I'm awaiting a very reasonable bid price on Herbert Hoover.
Herbert Hoover is the Bubba Morton of presidential autographs.
Bubba who, you ask?
When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards. Lots of them, and I could readily depend on about 98% of the cards I bought each summer to be Bubba Morton cards.
Bubba was a joke with us kids. We used to say that if you didn't have at least 15 Bubba Morton cards, you weren't trying.
(EXHIBIT A: The 1967 Topps Bubba Morton card. I had THOUSANDS of these.)
It was cards like Bubba Morton's that convinced all of us that Topps stacked the deck each year. They'd only print a couple hundred Mickey Mantles or Willie Mayses, but they'd happily replicate no-nothing players like Bubba Morton by the thousands.
Herbert Hoover is like that. Apparently, after leaving the oval office, he spent the last 30 years of his life signing things. Everything. Books (He wrote a book about fishing and if you only knew about him from ebay, you'd think he signed every copy), documents, letters. Hoover wrote hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of letters.
So it's very easy to find Hoover stuff. But the bidding usually starts small on those things, then quickly jumps way above what I'd pay for a guy who nearly ruined the country with his inability to do anything about the Depression.
But anyway, if nobody outbids me in the next four days I may just have a Hoover for under $40.
Oh, and just so you know, I don't aspire to collect ALL of the presidents. James K. Polk alone can set you back $12,000 easy.
I'm not THAT crazy, even if we do share birthdays.
TT
My collection of presidential autographs has doubled.
Okay, so now I have two.
About four years ago I won an ebay auction and now Franklin Pierce's alcohol-driven John Hancock decorates a land grant, nicely framed in an airtight frame on my office wall. Great conversation piece. Cost me about $70. The FRAME cost more than that.
And this morning, for $9.50 I got president number two for my collection: an autographed picture of Jimmy Carter.
That's all he's worth alive; $9.50. And since he writes and autographs books aplenty, when he dies I don't imagine his value will go up that much.
When it comes to DEAD presidents, you really have your work cut out for you.
My policy is, if the bidding goes over $80, I stop.
Currently, I'm awaiting a very reasonable bid price on Herbert Hoover.
Herbert Hoover is the Bubba Morton of presidential autographs.
Bubba who, you ask?
When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards. Lots of them, and I could readily depend on about 98% of the cards I bought each summer to be Bubba Morton cards.
Bubba was a joke with us kids. We used to say that if you didn't have at least 15 Bubba Morton cards, you weren't trying.
(EXHIBIT A: The 1967 Topps Bubba Morton card. I had THOUSANDS of these.)
It was cards like Bubba Morton's that convinced all of us that Topps stacked the deck each year. They'd only print a couple hundred Mickey Mantles or Willie Mayses, but they'd happily replicate no-nothing players like Bubba Morton by the thousands.
Herbert Hoover is like that. Apparently, after leaving the oval office, he spent the last 30 years of his life signing things. Everything. Books (He wrote a book about fishing and if you only knew about him from ebay, you'd think he signed every copy), documents, letters. Hoover wrote hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of letters.
So it's very easy to find Hoover stuff. But the bidding usually starts small on those things, then quickly jumps way above what I'd pay for a guy who nearly ruined the country with his inability to do anything about the Depression.
But anyway, if nobody outbids me in the next four days I may just have a Hoover for under $40.
Oh, and just so you know, I don't aspire to collect ALL of the presidents. James K. Polk alone can set you back $12,000 easy.
I'm not THAT crazy, even if we do share birthdays.
TT
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