I’m not sure how many people are familiar with this program so I’ll talk about the program a little before I get to the meat and potatoes of this post. Leaf has stated the Executive Collection where you send them a piece of memorabilia and they turn it into a cut card. If you are the first person to have a card created of a certain person, you get a card marked 1/1. The item that you send in has to be authenticated by either PSA/DNA or JSA. When all is said and done the cards are pretty nice looking and there are some situations where having this done to an item makes sense.
Back in 1995 while I was in City Year, I got to volunteer at an event called CelticsFest. The event was a fundraiser for former Celtics who played before there was a pension plan of players. Many Celtics legends showed up for the event to help the cause. I can’t find any info about the event online and since I didn’t attend it as a fan, I’m not 100% sure about the logistics of the event. I think you paid one amount for admission which got you most of the autographs at the event. A couple of players were only taking pictures with the fans and then a few other players were charging an additional fee.
I spent part of the event running the shoot around on the parquet floor which was a dream come true to me. For at least an hour, I was grabbing rebounds and throwing passes to people waiting to take a shot on the legendary floor. One of my other responsibilities that day was running an autograph line. That’s when I acquired this:
This sheet of cardstock was available for people who didn’t have an item with them to get autographed. It would have been impressive with all of the autographs available that day on it. Since I was working, I wasn’t able to go around and collect autographs. I did get this Dennis Johnson autograph while running his line.
This piece isn’t really something that I would frame and hang up. The printing is uneven and the image looks a lot worse in person than it does in the thumbnail. Click to see a larger version for an idea of how it really looks.
The back had a schedule of what Celtics were signing, times there were signing and where you could find them. Check out that list of Celtics greats. You’ve got “Tiny” Archibald, Don Nelson, Tom Heinsohn, “Satch” Sanders, Jojo White, Dennis Johnson, Jerry Sichting, Gene Conley, Chris Ford, Bailey Howell, “Easy” Ed McCauley, Bill Sharman, Jim Loscutoff and Sam Jones. Havlicek and Russell were there for photos only and I thought that at least Larry Bird required an addition fee, but I could be wrong.
So, I’m thinking of using this piece as something to send to Leaf to have a cut made. Here’s what I think the card will look like when it comes back to me:
To me, that looks better than the original sheet of mostly blank, poorly printed cardstock with one lone autograph. Who do you, the readers, think?
It’s not as simple as deciding whether or not I want to do it though. There are a couple of fees that will come along with getting this card made.
- The autograph needs to be authenticated. PSA/DNA charges $30 to verify a Dennis Johnson autograph.
- $39.95 for the creation of the card + $8 insurance + $14 return shipping (for UPS Ground, other methods are available for more money) = $61.95
- That’s a grand total of $91.95 to get this card created. I’ve never spent that much on a card before, not even my Mike Piazza autographed card.
As much as I’d love to get this card made because I think the end result would look pretty cool, I think that the price tag on getting it done is going to prevent me from following through. It’s a shame too because I would have liked for this to be the first post in a series of review posts where I went through the process of getting this card made. Maybe I can get creative and try to find some way to display it that will make it look a little nicer. It is an important part of my Celtics Hall of Fame/Retired Numbers autograph collection no matter what form it ends up being in.
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