The autograph sector of the hobby has been a new emerging market that has been really popular starting back in 2022. Prior to that, it was a super peripheral thing that was discussed and collected, but not as talked about as it is now in the year 2023. The Baltimore Regional Championship event was the first stateside event in the United States to be held since Covid that generated a lot of excitement and pent- up demand among fans who had been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to attend an artist event. Ever since then, this has been one of the sectors that is being discussed and growing more popular every day.
Collectors of autographs have different preferences when it comes to how they store and protect their signed autos. Some prefer to grade their autographs with a company such as PSA to ensure their authenticity and condition, while others prefer to keep their autos in a binder to easily view and show them to others and take it out of their sleeve at their leisure.
Ultimately, whether a collector chooses to grade their auto or keep them in binders is a personal preference that depends on their priorities and goals. My goal with this thread was to not only ask why you pick one of these options over the other with your own autos, but to list them and explain a story maybe about some of your signed treasurers that none of us know for history purposes to one day come back and reflect.
For me, art has always been very subjective and it should always be in the form of a question. It should never have an answer. On a podcast that I did with Radar years ago, we discussed whether fine art and Pokemon mix. While fine art has generally always been defined as creative works that are primarily produced for their value and aesthetic to be displayed in galleries; in my opinion sketches from your favorite artists are not too far away from that sector in the art world one day.
Everything has a story behind it, and this is a great place to reflect.
Your collection’s lovely! And a really wonderful mix of sketches.
Here are two of mine. It’s neat to see how artists’ signatures evolve over time. In my case, it seems that Sugimori signed in lower case in his earlier years, and moved to upper case English text + kanji toward the end of his signing days.
In general, I think it’s a form of artist appreciation and/or ties a story to the card. Up to the individual collector whether they care for that form of artist appreciation or the story. I’m still wondering whether to sell my own but it’s mostly because I’ve got a kid on the way and that trumps most sentimentality for now.
Edit: My story - As a 9-10 year old, I qualified for a Super Trainer Showdown tournament (the then–“Nationals” of the first year of official card battling) back in 2000-2001 ish. Ken Sugimori was signing cards for a short time window during the event. My brother and I had traveled for the event and only brought our battling decks (so we had nothing specific for him to sign), but you could earn a pack or two of Team Rocket cards by battling the staff members at the tournament. 1 if you lost, 2 if you won. We were desperately battling staff members in between the actual tournament matches to try to earn enough cards from the Rocket packs to find something fun (that he illustrated) for him to sign, and these two were the first two we got. It’s a reminder of a fun, packed day and in part the 1-2 years of my life I truly went all-in on Pokemon, including everything that led up to actually qualifying for and attending the tournament.
Actual pics of Sugimori signing the two cards (forgive the horrendous lighting, but this is literally a shot of four film photos taken in a very dark convention center):
I had my autos slabbed. I feel that the slab would offer better protection for my cards then having them in binders/toploaders/Card savers.
Also didn’t help that one of my cards signed was a box topper, which makes it hard to store in a binder LOL!
Now how I acquired my signed cards…
My 3 gold stars that were signed by Fukuda were sent to the Dallas regionals with a friend that was judging the event. The judges gave their cards to a proxy since they had to judge the event, and that proxy got the cards signed for them. Only problem is, the proxy had Fukuda sign every card personalized to him.
I was able to meet Arita just a few days prior to the world shutting down in March of 2020. He had just arrived in America to do a “tour”, and New Orleans was his first stop. I don’t know how I ended up finding out about it (it was also the day of the event), but he was doing the signing at Loyola University, about 3 blocks from my home at the time. I called the organizer of the event asking if non-students are allowed to join the event, and they said of course! So I go to the session, Arita does about an hour presentation that was absolutely incredible, and then did a signing afterwards.
That was on a Tuesday, and then that weekend he had to cancel the rest of his tour due to the COVID outbreak.
It’s a mix of both binder and graded autos for me. When I first got into autos with the hype wave at the Mitsuhiro Arita signing in Toronto 2023 I only wanted slabbed autographs to preserve and authenticate them for display.
But that changed a bit later when I attended the Harada signing in Orlando and then the Himeno signing in Charlotte. I started placing them into a binder and completed an entire page that is thematic - Harada’s Aquapolis forest set. Aesthetically it was more pleasing to look at and easier than taking out a case of slabs to sift through. So now my plan is keep everything new I personally get signed in a binder.
I prefer graded. I find the grade of the auto pretty worthless from a personal value perspective and I like having the card grade even if it’s not a great number. I also think the “authenticity” promised by the PSA label is pretty worthless.
Primarily, I like grading because of the framing and the protection from the auto rubbing against a surface.
Here is one card with a story. I commissioned a painting from Midori Harada back in 2019.
She only charged $60 at the time. I think I gave her extra because I felt bad. At the time she was VERY suspicious of Pokemon collectors (and still is to some degree today). I made it clear I did not want a Pokemon drawing at all so I think that gave her enough confidence to do the painting. I asked her for a rabbit with wings in her Fuwa Fuwa polar bear style. I also asked for a landscape background, she said she would do her best but obviously was limited by the medium vs her digital backgrounds.
My impression was she basically hated Pokemon fans at the time. Or at the very least didn’t trust them by default. She has definitely come around a lot more since then by still makes tweets like this (today).
Anyway, I mention all this because I felt super lucky for being able to actually get a commission done. I ended up recommending the opportunity to another one of my friends and she ended up blocking him because he gave her “bad vibes” for having a super brief discussion about how she felt about Pokemon fans
After all this, I did end up receiving my commission in the mail. She also included a Metang:
I was kind of shocked given the context I described. I didn’t ask for a signed card and didn’t expect one, so it was a really nice surprise. I also though the choice of a HP Metang is kind of hilarious. It was one of my first autos and one of my favourites because of this story that goes with it. I originally graded it with CGC for fun, just to put it in a slab and see if I liked the label. Obviously it lives in a PSA case now (labelled “,IDORI HARADA” so that’s cool).
When I met her in Orlando, I showed her the rabbit painting from my phone and she was very happy to see it and she shook my hand haha! I showed her the card too, she seemed less enthused. I found out after she hates grading! So I felt a little bad, but at least I know for next time.
Hey guys I go by pokestory87 on IG. I got these two when I participated in the supertrainer showdown. Actually my mom and my bro hot on the line while I battled . they came up to me and said “we need two cards drawn by ken sugimori” So these two were spares I had. I noticed in that event alot of people didnt sign holo’s. They probably felt it would devalue their cards if they got written on. But anyways fast forward my mom actually stored my collection. And in that storage Not only did she retrieve all my binders and complete sets but she found my auto cards as well. She is the real mvp. After the battle I ran to meet them at the line they were talking with sugimori it was crazy. I have many autos … but these two signify to me the beginning. The memories I get looking at these is what makes these cards so valuable.
