Making It Happen

 Okay I'll admit it, I am an autograph hound. Not the kind that actively chases celebrities down at the airport to get 8x10 photographs signed, but more like if I see an appropriate opportunity to get an autograph of someone on a trading card, I'm very likely to explore it.

Especially when the trading card in question matters. Most people tend to get stuff that's typical like base cards or rookie cards signed. Occasionally you have some people with items or pictures of events that are very personal to them (those stories always gold btw, love hearing them). But on the whole you usually expect a bunch of cards everyone's seen over and over. I've gotten those cards signed too in moments where they were the only options available, but if I have a plethora of options to choose from I'm going to go for more unique choices. My first paid mail-in signing of 2021 will attest to this I think.

That is a Golden Moments die-cut from 2012 Topps. It wasn't distributed in packs but instead you redeemed them online using codes in what was then called the "Golden Giveaway". A much lesser version of the Diamond Giveaway that Topps had done just a year earlier. Although it's worth noting that Topps hasn't done anything similar to either in the years since as they shifted their online presence more towards the Topps Now model they have now.

Anyway sometime in January I saw that Steve Carlton was doing a paid mail-in signing with the same company that organizes my local card shows. I didn't think much of it at first until I was looking for a certain card to gift a friend in Japan. That card in question was another Diamond Giveaway die-cut of another player. When I found that card on eBay, my brain suddenly had a moment where I wanted to see if the seller who had the cheapest listing also had a Steve Carlton die-cut. By some miracle they did. "I want to buy this, and get this signed", was the first thought in my brain. I picked up one other DGDC I wanted and eight days later the three die-cuts were at my door. Then within 24 hours of that the Carlton and a check for the signing and shipping fees were shipped out.

Fast forward to the sixth of February and I was now the owner of a signed 2012 Topps GMDC of baseball hall of famer Steve Carlton.

A quick Google and eBay search reveals that this might be one of the few actually signed die-cuts in the world. These GMDC cards did have some autographed variations, but they are rare and few and far between. Adding to that, they aren't exactly people's first choice to get signed since they're not rookie cards and weren't even widely distributed enough to be someone's first option.

I'm not entirely sure why but I am slowly but surely starting to become very happy getting as many different cards from as many different sets as I can signed. My friend Ryan G over at This Card Is Cool has something called a type collection where he collects at least one card from every set and subset ever. A daunting undertaking for sure but one that is very unique and may have inspired something in me.

I'm not ever going to go as far as he does, and even more importantly I'm not gonna try and get every unique card I do obtain signed either. But if the stars align just right and things fall into place as well as they did for this, I'll certainly have no qualms about exploring it. While it remains to be seen how much more will get added to that list of oddballs, I'll at least appreciate that they're some of the few that exist in the world because I was dumb enough to see it through.

Also damn, this card is fucking pretty. Topps should've just distributed these cards normally as special inserts or something, the refractory shinyness on this thing is nice and I love the way it helps the signature just absolutely pop.

And for anyone who does own a GMDC and is curious, yes I removed the film. Before I sent it off I brushed it up with the old "rub with an eraser" trick. No issues so far but we'll see how the ink holds up in the coming years I suppose.

Man, what a return. What a card.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.