Saturday, November 08, 2008

Autographed Magazines

In my last post, I included an image of an old Sport Magazine signed by Duke Snider. I have about 20 signed magazines, mostly old Sport and Sports Illustrated. They aren't too expensive, if you shop around. I buy most of mine on eBay, but have found some reasonable deals at antique stores.












A lot of the old magazines still have the mailing label on them, and you'll pay extra for a clean copy without a label. I have had mixed success removing labels so don't count on being able to remove the label cleanly. You can see the remnants of the shipping label on the Sports Illustrated with Hank Bauer on the cover.


There are also some other publications that are great for signing, such as the old Baseball Digests and Baseball Magazine. Magazines are obviously tougher to get signed through the mail due to the size. I use padded envelopes and put a piece of cardboard in that is slightly larger than the magazine to try to avoid having the magazine get bent during shipping.


I also buy and save the current Twins publications when I go to a game because they often have great covers, such as the Mike Redmond cover shown here. I have publications with Bert Blyleven and Ron Gardenhire waiting to get signed at TwinsFest.


The tough part about collecting signed magazines is how to display or store them. I have been buying metal frames from AmericanFrames.com, which are really nice. It's tricky to measure and order them, especially if you order multiple franes at once that are similar in size.


I will probably have the framing shop at my place of work frame a couple to see how they turn out.


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