Were Sports Stars the First Stars to Autograph

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Posted By: peter chao

I'm not sure about this so I'm trying to find out what autograph hounds think. Was it baseball fans that obtained the first autographs? Or did movie fans beat us to the punch? Perhaps, the first autographs came from famous people in general? Let's go back further in time, who were the first celebrities to autograph?

Peter C.

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Posted By: Larry

Peter, autographs of the famous have been asked for and given since the invention of the pen.....hundreds of years ago.

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Posted By: peter chao

Okay let's make the topic more relevant. Who was the first sports star to give out autographs?

Peter C.

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Posted By: dennis

i always believed babe ruth popularized the autographed baseball. he might not have been the 1st to do so but he did it more than anyone because of his immense popularity.

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Posted By: ramram

I'd bet the fellas from the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, during the latter part of their consecutive winning streak, signed a few. Boy that would be a fun vintage find!

Rob M.

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

I believe I heard somewhere that it was in the 1880s that the first baseball was autographed by a professional player....don't ask me where I heard this I can't remember.

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Posted By: Larry

It would have been in the early 1700s by one of the first boxing champions. I believe there was a personalized James Figg autograph from around 1720 on the market some years back and it went for a huge sum.

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Posted By: Rhys

I once read from a former team mate that Mike Kelly had a hard time walking down the street to get to games sometimes because so many boys were waiting for him with their autograph books (Where those are all now is beyond me).

I also read once (I think in Christy Mathewson's biography) that Bugs Raymond kept a stash of batting practice balls at his hotel and he would go to Bars after hours and tell elaborate stories of his past no-hitter and then proudly produce the "No-Hitter" ball from his pocket and sign it and then offer to give it to someone who would buy him a drink. After his death it was reported that there were about 200 of Bugs Raymond no hitter balls at local Bars. To my knowledge though, none have surfaced.

Autograph aquiring has been around forever and Sports is no exception as I am sure the Gladiators even signed things for fans. People have been asking Baseball players for their signatures since before the days of professionalism, However it used to be a personal thing with no monetary value associated to it until right around the 1900 when upper class figures of historical significance could command a premium (There are records of Abe Lincoln and George Washington signatures being hawked on the open market). It remained that way in Sports Autographs until much later (With the exception of Babe Ruth). No sense of collecting signatures for the signatures themselves and not for the experience of having aquired it really occured before World War 2. This is why reclusive people like Tony Mullane who lived until 1944 were not discovered in autograph form until 2005.

Rhys

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Posted By: brian

until the fountain pen was invented around 1900, all there was for ink was the dip pen and no one would have taken a dip pen and ink bottle around town with them asking for autographs, so the instrument of choice would have been the pencil when out in public. But for sure, autograph requests have been obtained by mail for hundreds of years. I even read a letter signed by Andrew Jackson shortly before his death where he mailed a lock of his hair at a collector's request. Back in the old days, people would ask for a lock of hair by mail more than they would an autograph and in most cases the celebrities would comply.