My five minute post: baseball autographed memorabilia

A couple weeks ago Daniel from It's Like Having My Own Card Shop experimented with something to help him get back into blogging after a bad month or more that included unexpectedly losing his mom:  writing a post in five minutes.  A blogger with my favorite URL--"betterthanbeckett.blogspot.com"--who also just impressively completed his awesome First Night Game at Wrigley autograph collection, Daniel came up with a fun and useful idea, especially for folks like me that enjoy the scanning, checklisting, and sometimes draft preparation of blog-writing but sometimes dread the actual writing part.  In my case I think I just demand too much of myself.

Anyway, I'm fortunate to be able to try such a post under better circumstances, and I happened to have an idea already in the pipeline that would work well:  my collection of baseball autographed memorabilia.  I posted on it here years ago, but many of my old posts have dead links to images, plus I like to have everything I scan cataloged in Google albums at this point.  So I took the opportunity to take some improved photos.  That was especially useful when it came to my baseballs signed by multiple players.  Now you can see every signature!

It's been a long time since I added to this collection since the shows I go to rarely have quality signers, if any, and some of their prices have gotten ridiculous.  That makes me appreciate what I do have even more, though I'll continue adding to it as I can.  You can always view this album under the "My personal collections" section to your right.

While this will probably put me over five minutes (as if I haven't run over yet--but at least this has gotten me writing!), I'll do a quick recap of how I acquired each item:

• In-person at a show:  
• Bob Feller hat, 8x10, HOF program, and ROMLB
• Fergie Jenkins HOF program
• Willie Stargell 8x10
• Matt Anderson/Gabe Kapler bat (combined signing)
• Willie Stargell/Fergie Jenkins/Warren Spahn/Gaylord Perry ROMLB (separate signings)
• Detroit Tigers baseball signed by Al Kaline, A.J. Sager, Rick Leach, Gabe Kapler, Matt Anderson, Willie Horton, Don Wert, "Paws", and Mickey Lolich (separate signings)
• Purchased:
• Bill Freehan 8x10
• Rich Hill ROMLB
• Traded to me:
• Barry Larkin 8x10 (Play at the Plate)
• Scott Rolen ROMLB (from a 1998 Skybox Dugout Axcess redemption)
• Gift:
• Bill Freehan photo  (my mom's former boss)
• Kirk Gibson helmet  (Christmas present from my brother)
• Sandy Koufax/Tommy Lasorda/Walt Alston ROMLB  (from my uncle via a friend of his who was a Spring Training bullpen catcher back in the day)

Thanks, Daniel, for the motivation to get posting a bit more (and helping me realize that there's plenty of value in brevity).  Good luck as you get back into the habit--it's great to have you back!