Today was the Let’s Play Hockey Expo at the Xcel Energy Center. I have never been to the event before but I heard Bill Baker was there signing autographs for the Herb Brooks Foundation so I decided to attend. I asked my buddy Tony F is he and his kids wanted to go and they did so Cami and I and those three headed down. There was a ton of free stuff as well as the admission being free. You could really spend a lot of time there without spending much money. It was a great event. Since Tony is way more into hockey than I am, I let him get my two 1980 US Hockey Team Sports Illustrated magazines signed. Adding Bill made my total autograph number on each issue up to eight!
More Spring Training Stuff!
Today my man Paul C down in Ft Myers sent me four guys on baseballs I wanted for my collection. I received Joel Hanrahan, Ryan Doumit, Matt Barnes and Xander Bogaerts all signed on the sweetspot in blue ink. I could not be happier!
Spring Has Sprung!
One thing about being a member of so many collecting sites, I really have a lot of contacts in different parts of the country. One such person is Josh S (jslaw on SCN). Josh is going to school in Florida and this is the third spring I have sent consignments to him for Spring Training. He does an awesome job and gets really hard to get people. He treats my items as his own. Today I received the first package of items he got for me so far this spring. It included the following:
- Jose Bautista baseball
- Anthony Gose baseball
- Brandon Beachy baseball
- Craig Kimbrell baseball
- Mike Stanton ML Debut ticket
- Julio Teheran ML Debut ticket
- Anthony Gose ML Debut ticket
- Mike Matheny Sports Illustrated (completing the issue already signed by Mark Bellhorn)
- Roy Halladay Sports Illustrated (completing the issue already signed by Josh Johnson and Ubaldo Jimenez)
- Cole Hamels Sports Illustrated
- Ryan Howard Sports Illustrated
- Jon Jay Sports Illustrated
- Edwardo Nunez Sports Illustrated
That is a pretty good list of All Stars and others! Thanks Josh for the past, present and future consignments and caring for my items as if they were your own!
Two WS MVPs and the Terminator!
Today was a great day! Cami and I left the house around 8am and headed to Bloomington to meet up with Joel B (brad0112 on SCN) and his son Elliott. We then headed to Moundsview Square Mall where Tom Frantzen had Frank Viola, Jeff Reardon and Jack Morris appearing to sign autographs. There was heavy demand for Viola so we made sure we got up to get the tickets when they opened. We bought the tickets then headed to see Ted S. Ted has been pretty gracious with his sked doubles and let me go through all his sked doubles and take what I need. Today I traded his AL doubles that I went through and got a TON for the NL doubles. I will go through those over the next couple weeks. We then headed back and got in line for Viola and Reardon.
As usual, Frankie V was his happy, talkative self. It was really neat to see him. He signed a 1987 World Series ticket with “87 WS MVP”, the checklist card from the 1986 7-Eleven Twins team set and two home plates made out the the old Metrodome roof. He looked at the checklist card and said “That isn’t even me! Well, it has my face but that is my first roommate and best friend today!”. I asked him who it was and he had me guess. I asked for the first name and he said ‘Jack’. I said ‘Jack O’Conner’ and he looked at me with wide eyes and said ‘Yes!’ He said That’s Jack’s windup but my [Frank’s] face!” He signed it and we moved on to Jeff Reardon. Jeff signed a home plate of the Metrodome roof for Cami. Joel then took a photo of Jeff and Cami together. We are going to get that printed out and send it to Jeff to sign it for Cami.
After that we left to eat and when we were done we went back to the show for Jack Morris. Jack finished our two home plates with “91 W.S. MVP”. Both home plates turned out really cool with the two Twins World Series MVPs on them.
We left and headed to Dick Blick in Roseville and found some really cool frames for the home plates. After that we drove to where Joel’s car was parked and dropped him and Elliott off and headed home.
It was a long day but the four of us had a blast. It was cool that Joel and I could do this while our kids got to know each other and hung out. We cannot wait for the next autograph show where we can do this again!