How to Get Baseball Autographs Through the Mail

Video Transcript

"My name is Walt Case. I own Card Traders of Austin in Austin, Texas. We've been in business for approximately fourteen years and sell a variety of sports cards as well as autographed sports memorabilia. One of the questions that comes up frequently is how do I get cards or items autographed, baseballs especially, through the mail? One of the ways to do that is to send an item, usually to the club that the player is playing for. If you want the autograph of an Atlanta Brave, you would mail it to the Atlanta Brave Organization. They in turn will get that item to the player who will autograph it, or sometimes they do not autograph it and then they will mail it back to you. This process can take anywhere from a couple or three weeks to two or three months, depending on when you do it and also how busy the individual might be and how easy that individual might be to reach from the club, especially if it's out of season. I would never recommend sending anything in the mail to get autographed that is very expensive. Probably the best thing to send would be an eight by ten photograph or possibly a baseball card. Those are the easiest for the players and the team to handle and the probability of getting those items back is probably a little bit higher than say if you sent a baseball or some other item that's a little bulkier. It's very difficult to know what you're going to get back and if you're going to get it back because the players are very busy. Some players are very, very good about signing through the mail. Others are not good at all. I find that the older players or retired players, if you can get them contacted through the club, are usually pretty good about signing autographs and sending them back to you. It's a very interesting process and sometimes that leads to a little disappointment because you don't get back what you sent so that's the reason I recommend not sending anything terribly expensive."