While documents featuring the signatures of famous politicians have sold for millions, the value is more in the document itself than in the autograph. Take George Washington for example: a document he signed sold for $9.8 million in recent years but his autograph alone can be had for only thousands.
In terms of true value, it seems the holy grail is William Shakespeare. Only eleven of his signatures are known to exist, and five of those are in museums and will likely never be publicly sold. The last time one of the other six sold it surpassed $5 million and experts speculate that the next time one goes for sale it may set a record and exceed $10 million.
These numbers are stratospheric and, but perhaps even more mind-boggling is that the autographs of some living people aren’t too far off. Since 2000, ten sports cards have sold at auction for over $2.5 million, and five of those were autographed. In 2021 a card autographed by an NBA player named Steph Curry sold for $5.9 million! Imagine being the guy that pulled that out of one of the ($500!) packs.
Todays entry showcases sports autographs as well, specifically wrestlers! For a few years Kristin bought a special trading card set that guaranteed several autographs in each box. The list of signers was long, but it was always exciting to open a pack and find an autograph. Here’s all of them:
That’s a lot! Too many to put in this post, so I’ll show detail of some of the more famous ones and leave you to squint at the above pic to appreciate the signature of such sports entertainers as Liv Morgan, Randy Orton or Sid Vicious. (Also we have so many that some are double-stacked in the curio, but the guys you can’t see are rookies that didn’t become famous!)
Kurt Angle was a favourite of both of us for many years, and it was great when he returned to the WWE after years in other promotions.
Roman Reigns is probably the biggest star the WWE has right now, and while I found him irritating at first he grew on me and I can’t deny he has earned the respect of the fans.
Ric Flair is probably the most famous wrestler autograph we have, and possibly the most famous autograph we have of any person. He’s a household name that has been wrestling for over 50 years!
If you’d like a clear pic of any of the other cards let me know and I’ll send you one. But for now I’ll end todays post with this last, very unusual autograph:
I bought this at Albany Comic Con from Fred Ottman. He wrestled under several names during his long career and was perhaps most successful as ‘Tugboat’ but most remembered for the ill-fated and unintentionally hilarious live-on-TV introduction of his ludicrous ‘Shockmaster’ character (yes that’s a bedazzled Stormtrooper helmet). If you haven’t seen it you can watch it here. When you do, don’t miss Ric Flair’s insane tan!
Lastly, this is perhaps the category that we could have populated the most had we been inclined. For many years we attended New York Comic Con, and almost every year there were several wrestlers signing autographs, and it seems every few months there’s one doing signings at our local mall. In addition signed cards can be purchased for surprisingly low amounts (just a few dollars in some cases), and I imagine there are wrestling fans out there with hundreds of autographs. I think that’s wonderful!
While I interviewed a few WWE wrestlers during my time in magazines, I never asked any for an autograph. That wouldn’t have been cool. However, I do own a nice signed photo of Emma (Australia’s Tenille Dashwood), which I believe I got from DL. And a fake auto of Hulk Hogan that looks real but is actually printed onto the paper. Oh, and I *had* a signed WWE trading card like the ones in your pics above, except I gave it away. Was a lady rassler who never became that popular. Name escapes me.