[Scott Garner]

Originally Posted by HexsHeroes

Just purchased my first Heilbroner survey card off of eBay (Tex Covington) from a seller well known to me for years. Have dealt with seller/collector (gregg57 - Gregg Borucki) off and on over the past 15 years or so. I remember regularly losing out when bidding against him on eBay :-) One notable loss was a single-signed Orlin Collier minor league baseball. I did have the pleasure to first meet face-to-face with Gregg on the floor of the 2007 National Show in Cleveland, at dealer Phillip Mark's booth. At that time, he indicated that he had nearly completed his set of 1950-date (2007) major league ballplayers autographs. He was beginning to work on expanding his autographs collection to include the prior years of 1901 – 1949 (Jim Stinson once stated there was a time when several collectors pursued obtaining the autographs of all players since the beginning of the 20th century, but that now there were very few of those collectors around). More recently, turns out that Gregg was the successful bidder on the Jack Smalling autograph collection lot, in Heritage’s May 2018 auction (his Heilbroner collection of cards were not included in the Smalling Collection purchase).

I am extremely pleased to have (finally) executed the first addition of 2019 to my vintage Detroit Tigers autograph collection. At a point in my journey where crossing off just one name on my autograph collection “wanted list” is reason for celebration. So this year, Tex Covington will have his name crossed off my list :-)

On a separate thought, not sure if this was covered in earlier Net54 Old Cardboard discussion threads or not. Probably was, but I am unable to locate that thread. Anyways, one observation I had while looking through the many Heilbroner survey cards Gregg has listed in his eBay Store are described as "signed", when the “signature” is actually the printed version of the ballplayer's name (presumably printed by the ballplayer himself). It dawned on me that I had never considered "signed" or "signature" to mean anything other than a self-written, cursive version of one's name. Forgotten were the stories of how a ballplayer might “sign” his Players Contract with a carefully printed version of his name, or possibly even “X” on the dotted line. Must admit I am a little ashamed at how narrow minded I have become over the years. But I am pleased that the Heilbroner survey card I purchased has the presence of a cursive version of the ballplayer’s signature. For that reason, plus a generous discount offered by the seller (Gregg), I was properly motivated to purchase this item.

Vincent,
Congrats on landing one of your White Whales!