CyberErik's Success Thread- just starting out, feedback and help welcome!

[lambeauleap87]

Rizzo is a fantastic get, I've heard nothing but bad things about him and signing autographs. It seems like the Cubs on the whole, for as many stars as they have, give a pretty good chance to get at least one of the big guys on any given day. That Herrera is awesome as well; he's horribly underrated and has a beautiful signature.

[walker066]

Nice Rizzo. I got him in the minors on a team ball. Still mad to this day that I didn't have an extra ball. He was on the DL, but came out to talk to his family, so I got him then. Looks like his signature hasn't changed at all!

[cyberer]

@ Lambeau yeah I was real happy with the additions. You're right that the cubs are a slow signing team but when you get one it's usually a good one. Last year I put in a few afternoons but I got lester at least. This year same thing for Rizzo and Zobrist.

@ Walker that's funny- I hate the what-ifs when guys get big. I had a similar story with Puig only I didn't get him at all! I pulled my item back- no idea who he was. At least you got him!

Was out of town for the weekend but can finally post my phillies phestival wrapup post from last Thursday. This event is always a great time.

The way it works is, you pay $25 per admission, which gives you 2 random autograph number booth tickets. They don't tell you until the day of who is in what booth number. But people show up early and line up, so that allows ample time for buying/selling/trading of tickets. In the past my brother and I have hustled pretty hard. We typically make about $100-200 bucks profit AND get all the graphs that we need.

This year started slower- my 2 tickets that I drew were Jeanmar Gomez and Vince Velasquez. No one knew if VV would show because he got hurt the day before. So I had a lot of work to do, it would seem.

The thing you have to understand about the phestival is that it is a lot of non-grapher type people- random fans, kids, moms (looking to get their kids a graph for whatever arbitrary price), etc. So people do trades that are... interesting.

For instance, I traded a Jeanmar ticket for a Ruiz ticket early on. Ok, maybe understandable if you need our soon-to-be allstar closer. But the next trade... I don't even know what you would call it.

A guy traded me for the Ruiz I got above- and gave me a Maikel Franco, a Jeanmar Gomez and $60 in cash. I have no idea why he did that, but he did. I immediately sold the franco for another 60.

Somewhere along the lines I got another Maikel Franco and sold THAT for 65.

At the same time I am trading and selling my tickets, I usually just need young guys that nobody wants. I bought tickets for guys like Tommy Joseph, Eickoff, Goeddell, etc for $5 each using the profit from the above. So I ended up with everything I needed.

I also picked up one thing I really hoped I would be able to find- an 11x14 Rocky Phanatic print that was a stadium giveaway at retro night. I paid $5



Right as the gates were opening, a lady told me she really needed Ben DAvis the announcer. I told him I had his ticket but I only needed franco from her list and told her I didn't expect her to do the deal straight up. I asked her if I could add 10 dollars cash to get it done and she said yes. So (although I didn't need Franco) I did the deal, but the gates were open so I didn't have time to turn around and sell/trade the Franco. Oh well.

I will say the Phestival this year was MUCH MUCH better than the past, probably because most of the last of the big jerks like Hamels were finally gone. The signing sessions were longer, the players were (except for the biggest of the big guys) doing multiples, and the lines pretty much all opened for $10 donations at the end with plenty of time to get the guys (in years past that was hit and miss or it would only happen for a very short window of time).

So I was able to get through the Eickoff, Jeanmar, Franco, Goeddell, Tommy Joseph lines on a variety of photos and baseballs (Mackanin, Martin and Paredes were also in some of the lines, I got them on team-issued cards that were free at the event). I also got both Eickoff and Colton Murray (who was in the booth with Jeanmar) on a pretty cool vintagey dual RC.

Then the cash lines opened. I went to the Franco line and got through it quickly. I got him on 2 ROMLBs for $10 each.

I somehow still had time left, so I got into the longest cash line: Aaron Nola. That was by far the hottest graph/ticket that day to get. I heard horror stories about him at the phestival- that he was side paneling, or refusing to sign in blue ink, etc.

So when I got to the front I had a decision to make: spend $10 and get him on the 8x10 or spend $20 and get him on the photo AND a ball, with the risk that he ruins it.

Well the good news is he took my blue pen; the bad news is he sent the side panel monster to get me and paneled my ball. Oh well. I actually already have him on a SS ball- he did a free signing at the ballpark before the start of the season and he SS everything. I have no idea why he chose a charity event to be a jerk.

Apparently he is taking his role of "replacing cole hamels" literally as related to autographs. Definitely something Cole would do. But, no big deal, the money spent in the cash lines was all profit from the hustling beforehand, so itsallgood.

I learned firsthand from the 2008 phils that it is REALLY HARD to get graphs of your favorite players on your home team AFTER they win stuff. So while the Phils have this good young rebuild crop, I am excited that I got them all before any big egos and wins they might have (except for possibly nola, apparently). Between the Phestival, the Odubel signing, and my getting Crawford and Williams on the farm, I feel pretty good about the next few years' roster in terms of having the guys.

So anyways, overall I made about 100 cash and got a bunch of sick autos (and that awesome phanatic print). What a great afternoon! Pics below.

[lizard-jd]

Nice "racking" from the phestival. Not too surprising to hear how Nola has changed in such a short time. It seems to be a pretty certain pattern they go through after about a year in the bigs if they do pretty well. I was lucky to get Nola TTM very early last year with a couple of my custom cards - he sent them back in less than a month. Below is one of them:

[cyberer]

Yeah, always a bummer when the guys go big league and become terrible. He seemed cranky at the free signing before the season anyway, so I guess it just got worse. Yours looks great though and I'm not sweating the side panel too much.

Thanks for the kudos on the rackfest- it was a great day.

[Eddie_2]

Nice Phestival recap Erik! I will say though that's very odd about Nola. My brother and one of my friends got him at the Phestival on a donation as well. He gave both of them a SS signature in blue. Although he told my brother that the blue wasn't working as well, and is that OK. I did see him side panel a couple different balls though. Seems like if you got multiples he side paneled if you didn't ask for the SS.

Either way it was nice to see the players stick around and sign up a storm. A lot different than the last couple of years. You could tell the players wanted to be there and had no problem hanging around to make sure the cash donation people had a shot.

[cyberer]

Agreed! The players attitudes were much better than years past. Which is how it should be given it's for charity.

On to more fun!

The best signings are free signings! And boy did I get some freebies this weekend.

Last night my wife and I drove down to the shore towards Barnegat for a Jason Groome free signing at an acme. For those of you that don't know, Groome is a local south jersey kid and top 2016 MLB draft prospect who many compared to Clayton Kershaw. People had the phillies taking him at 1 coming into the year but they passed due to character concerns and he ended up falling to 12 to Boston. But, either way, I figured why not let's get him.

I had heard bad things about him. I heard people that graphed his HIGH SCHOOL game had a bad experience- only running with a black sharpie, personalizing autos, giving people crap IN HIGH SCHOOL. Kind of ridiculous, so I wasn't sure what to expect.

The signing was from 6-8, we got there at 6:00 figuring it would be a chill in and out. What we found was this



We ended up waiting in line for about 60-80 minutes to get to the front. The good news was we got to people watch. Since this signing was in his hometown most ppl were not graphers and had no idea what they were doing. I saw people get old dirty (like from their garage or basement) yellow softballs signed. I saw people get little league baseballs signed in sharpie. I saw one guy literally get a gray landscaping company shirt signed... while he was still wearing it (i.e. groome signed his stomach). They didn't have any items up there for people to get done, so that was part of the reason, but either way it was pretty hilarious.

Right as I got to the front they showed up with a box of ROMLBs and started giving them out free to ppl that didn't have anything. But they had also said strict 1 per. So I figured if I asked him for a free ball I would only get one, but I had 2 of my own purchased balls in my hand to get done. So I opted to try for duplicates.

He did both of my baseballs, and both of my wife's 8x10s no problem. As he did, his handler yelled at him "only 1 per from now on! it has to be one per or we won't get everyone!" But who cares, we got him. Also got a pic of him signing.





So that signing was a success! My wife and I ended up having a little date night down at the shore so it ended up being a win/win for graphing and marriage. The common theme of this post will be (as you will see) that my wife is effing awesome!

So, today, I decided to go to Wilmington DE because I saw on the Philly Ink facebook group that JULIO JONES was doing a free signing at the mall for his underarmor brand. The ad said no outside items, but I decided to give it a go. Julio is one of my favorite football players dating back to his days at alabama, so I didn't care if it was a promo item.

So I got a few 8x10s printed (just in case he did outside items) and went down EARLY. I had tickets to the phillies game (3:05 start) and the signing started at 3, so I had to be almost first in line to make the game. I got there around noon and was third in line.

Shortly after I got there the underarmor rep organizing the signing came over and told us the rules about items. Turns out, what they meant by no outside items were "no competing brands." So like no apparel like nike, reebok, sneakers, etc. He said photos, minis, jerseys, etc were ok, unless for some reason Julio was uncomfortable doing it.

So I was covered with my 8x10s, but I immediately started calling/looking around the mall for falcons minis. The only one I could find was about 20-30 min away at another mall, and even that store only had ONE LEFT. But the line got pretty long and I didn't want to lose my spot.



My wife actually stopped her errands, and ran to the mall to get the mini for me so I didn't lose my place in line and come back with me and wait in line to get an extra auto!

Like I said, is she awesome or what?

Julio arrived just before 3 and did his brief VIP stop in back of the store behind closed doors. Then he came out and did a brief radio interview with power 99 a local station, in which the radio personality also picked one random person out of line in a julio jersey to ask questions. It was kind of a cute thing the teenaged/college aged kid they picked was totally star struck and didn't know what to say.

I got a pseudo-selfie with him before the radio interview started:



Julio was obviously in a good mood and joking with the kid and the crowd throughout all this, telling everyone we were going to have a good time today, being pretty bubbly. It was nice for a guy of his stature, even if he is being paid to be there.

The signing was like lightning fast. They guided us right to the front of the table, the handler took your item, made sure it was kosher, handed it to Julio and he did it. Julio was being nice and not refusing any item (though I heard later they did refuse a competing sneaker brand, but we were warned about that already).

He took my mini and signed it with my silver pilot and it came out PERFECTLY.



He signed my wife's 8x10 and it came out pretty good as well



I'm so glad I wasn't discouraged by the lack of outside items, as it turns out it was a nonissue. I think a lot of people were turned off, because the turnout was mostly random walkins to the store. Not a lot of graphers. It also wasn't very well advertised, so maybe that was part of it.

Still, not everyday you get a free sit-down signing of a possible future-HOF type player in his prime where you get 2 decent items done. I am psyched!

Like I said this was an epic free weekend, mostly made possible by my lovely wifey/graphing partner!

[walker066]

Damn, I wish I had seen the Julio signing. I'm really close to both big malls in Delaware. Great sigs!!

[walker066]

Also being a huge Red Sox fan, I really like that Groome autos you got. I'm curious as to when he goes through the minors will it be personalized.

[djauwerda]

Just jumped on your thread for the first time in awhile. GREAT story about Bonds and Fernandez. I know Bonds can be moody, but there are a ton of stories out there that say he is actually a decent dude, probably just gets tired of the rush. You're on a pretty strong run!