Toughest signed cards possible

[912Shooter]

Since its' okay to cover other sports, I can throw out the near Holy Grail of signed MLS cards. From the 1999 Upper Deck MLS set, Jefferson Gottardi. He is pictured as a member of the Tampa Bay Mutiny, he was only with the club for a portion of the season and I think just made over ten actual appearances in the US. Injury problems kept him out a lot in Tampa. The MLS card set came out mid to late in the season, I was doing in-person auto collecting in the Tampa Bay area and he was long gone from the club by the time the cards came out.

He played sporadically a couple more seasons for South American clubs and then tragically developed ALS at a very young age and passed away (with medical treatment in Cuba, not exactly an easy place to have caught up with him either). I have never met anyone working on that set with a signed card from him. I recall one on Ebay going for a wild sum and it wasn't a particularly pretty signature.