Carlos May - Early 70's Topps

The return in my Informed Delivery email this morning turned out to be from Carlos May.

Mr. May was kind enough to sign his 1971, 1972 and 1973 Topps for me in just 12 days.

I already had two signed copies of the 1972 Topps.  

I bought one a long time ago, signed in ballpoint.  The signature doesn't match up with my others.  Either it's a rushed, in-person signature, or perhaps it's an older signature that has changed over time, or perhaps it's not authentic.  It definitely doesn't appear to be someone copying his signature though, because it's quite different.  I saw a couple like this on Ebay, but they weren't authenticated.

The other 1972 card I already had was signed at a mail-in signing in March of 2017.  It matches up very closely to the ones I received today.

Mr. May only has 17 successes posted on sportscollectors.net (SCN) with 38 attempts dating back to 2002. He started signing about a year ago with a few quick responses, but many taking six months or more.  My 12-day return is the quickest posted on the site so far, with another at 14 days.

Identifying signing habits like these are what make SCN so valuable.  I can list the set I am working on, which I've marked to indicate which cards I still need signed, then order it by the most recent return.  This list can help identify players that don't sign much, but have started to recently for some reason.  I have tracked over 3,400 requests on the site.

If you're collecting autographs through the mail, you definitely need to use SCN.  It costs $14.99/year, which is what it cost when I started using it in 2003!