Autographs: Musicians

  • November 24, 2023

In compiling these entries, I’ve often thought about whether there are any other autographs I’d like to own. It’s an interesting question, because while I consider them novelties I have far less attachment to our autographs than many of our other possessions. Would I value another any more?

Assuming I did, my first choice would be original art, such as a signed work from Frazetta or a mangaka. Theres also certain musicians like David Bowie or Nick Cave that I wouldn’t mind owning an autograph of, especially if it was on one of my favourite records.

Todays entry showcases our autographs of goths and pop stars and ‘genderbenders’ and alternative icons: Musicians. Not one of these did we obtain ourselves, but we’re fairly sure they are all authentic, and a few have somewhat unusual provenance.

This is Dreamscapes, a multi-CD box set released by Alphaville many years ago. As you can see I have one of the earliest, autographed, versions. The signatures are of Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd, the two most important members of the band. Interestingly this CD set is very rare and expensive these days. I’ll never sell mine.

Many years ago, shortly after I moved to the USA, we stopped in an unremarkable record shop (remember those?) in Utica, NY and we’re astonished to find two autographed Fields Of The Nephilim albums just sitting in the racks. They weren’t expensive at all, and we snapped them up quickly. Both are promos, and are autographed by four of the five members around the time of the release of these records. Here’s a detail of Carl McCoy’s autograph:

As you can see they were done in a non-permanent marker (although it’s long since permanent) and smudged a bit. Compared to other examples from the era I’ve seen online I’m fairly sure these are authentic, but it’s a real curiosity how they ended up there and how the shop didn’t even seem to know what they had. Given FoTN is the band that caused Kristin and I to meet, this was quite a find!

Speaking of autographed records, here’s a fully autographed copy of Black Celebration by Depeche Mode. This was Kristin’s since she was a teen, and was obtained for her by a friend in England (who bought it at a record shop after the band made an appearance). The autographs on it are spectacular and a quick search online suggests this could be a fairly valuable item.

Speaking of this record, here’s a photo of the back:

Now you know where the line at the top of my blog comes from!

The above is Pete Burns autograph, again obtained for Kristin by her British friend. This one was obtained in person, and cleverly it’s on the back of a Pete Burns postcard! If you don’t know he was the lead singer of Dead or Alive, and passed away some years ago.

Lastly, here is another contender for our most famous autograph: Boy George! A big, beautiful signature worthy of the artist in his prime, this one was also obtained in person by Kristin’s friend (the mind boggles what his personal collection was like), and is on a page torn from Smash Hits magazine!

There’s also another celebrity autograph somewhere in this house, although try as I could I wasn’t able to find it. The signer in question is Green Gartside (aka Scritti Politti), and KLS obtained the autograph herself on an airplane napkin when she flew from England back to the USA 1985. She had spotted him boarding the plane, and wandered up to first class to ask for his autograph!

And thus ends this five day showcase of our autograph ‘collection’. It was a lot of fun to compile these, and we learned that we had many more autographs than we thought. But in addition to the few I mentioned this week, I still think there may be others forgotten and hidden away somewhere in this house. If I ever unearth any, you can expect an addendum followup one day 🙂

Autographs: Actors

  • November 23, 2023

In 1930 a signature machine called an ‘autopen’ was invented. This device can reproduce signatures automatically, and while intentionally designed for government (so an official could quickly ‘sign’ many copies of the same document) in time it became used by celebrities. Famously Queen Elizabeth started using autopens exclusively from 1959 which makes any of her signatures since then reproductions.

Autopens are often used to ‘sign’ collectible items – such as books – and very rarely is their use disclosed. It’s possible that some of the books or cards I’ve shown already have autopen signatures on them, so there’s an element of faith involved in buying a signed item. To avoid this, autograph collectors tend to prefer personalized or inscribed items since they show the signature is authentic.

Today I will show our autographs of actors, many of which are personalized and most of which were obtained from the signer in-person. There’s some famous autographs here today!

Lots of Doctor Who to start: Here’s two separate signed photos from Peter Davison (the 5th Doctor), both personalized. I got the one on the left myself at NYCC, and Adam got us the one on the right.

And here’s the 8th Doctor, Colin Baker. He was friendly and gracious when we met him also at NYCC, and I recall he was just sitting there mostly ignored by the crowd. This was years before the Who revival and I imagine he was nearly unknown to the average American convention-goer.

Here’s the 8th Doctor, Paul McGann. Adam got this for us as well, and it’s my favourite Who autograph. I hope the rumours of him getting his own series on Disney+ are true!

Even more Who, and once again thanks to Adam for all of them. I can only imagine how many Who autographs he has in his own collection!

This last Who item is a bit different; it’s the autograph of Nicholas Briggs, who has worn many hats in the history of the series but I’m calling him an actor today since he’s done most of the Dalek voices since the revival. I got this myself from him when he was at NYCC.

Moving on from Dr Who, the above is the autograph of none other than Warwick Davis! He’s been a lot of characters in a lot of shows (not to mention played himself in several), but he’s perhaps best known for playing Wicket the Ewok in The Empire Strikes Back. He’s a very well-known actor, and this is another contender for the most famous autograph we own.

And keeping with Star Wars, we’ll end today with the autograph of none other than George Lucas’s son Jett. I got this in 2017 one from a $60 (yes sixty dollar) pack of Star Wars cards. Every pack had an autograph but only a few of the signers were famous people. As you can see, mine wasn’t 🙂

As an addendum, let me once again recall the day I met Q (to get an autograph), which was still a surreal experience even all these years later.

Only one more day of autographs to go. What will the category be? Will there be anyone very famous? Wait and see…

Autographs: Wrestlers

  • November 22, 2023

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!