Anyone here collect Gartland figures?

[Belfast1933]

I have come across a small collection of about 30-40 baseball, football, hockey Gartland figurines and wonder if anyone here collects or knows much about them - seems like they were produced during the junk wax era but also looks like some may have retained some value based on ebay sold prices that I was able to find.

Assume the autographs on the figures are facsimile, right? Any important considerations when determining the collectibility and/or value of these?

Here are a few photos - FYI.

Thx for any info

[perezfan]

I don't collect them.... But the sigs are REAL!

[Steve D]

The one's where the signature is on a thick poster-board-like material (like the Yaz and Kareem), are hand-signed by the player.

Others (like the Magic Johnson), are facsimile signatures.

I was heavily into the large Gartlan figurines when they first came out. Later though, Goldin bought out Gartlan, and dumped them on Shop at Home and QVC, which tanked the values. Some of them have rebounded value-wise, but others are still only worth a fraction of their original selling price.

All of the figurines also came in a smaller, about 4-5" tall, facsimile-signed version; but all of the larger versions (except the yellow uniform Magic Johnson), were actually hand-signed by the player. The Magic and Kareem figurines also came in a purple-uniform version (I think limited to their uniform numbers), that were hand-signed by them. Magic only actually signed the purple-uniforms, while I believe Kareem signed all the large ones.

One other note on the Kareem statue is that it came with small plastic goggles that fit on his head.

Steve