Crave/AME Holiday Show in Roseville, MN


1st off...AME Sports, the card shop hosting the autograph show today, is pretty notorious with collectors around here for selling a lot of fakes.
Went into their store today hoping they had shaped up, since they are getting some solid names in for signings, and seem to be becoming a pretty established company. Nope, I'd still estimate 1/3 of the items in their store are obvious forgeries. Simply put, don't buy anything from their store. As an example of their practices, when Favre was with the Vikings, a local collector (as I've been told) who had seen their forgeries decided to test them. Sold them an unsigned Brett Favre Photofile 8x10 and wrote down the hologram number on the photo beforehand. Checked back later that day and the exact photo (matched the holo #) was hanging on the wall for sale, "signed" by Favre.


That said, the holiday show they put on was alright. Not all that well organized, but some solid names at not bad prices. Included names like Bud Grant, Pat Neshek, Scott Studwell, Jim Marshall, and a handful of other solid Minnesota guys.
In the first group, I got Carl Eller on a card, who was signing for free. Awesome guy, super chatty, was having a good time. Our conversation:
"What does the G stand for on your jacket?...Girls?!"
"Gustavus, I go to school there."
"They've got girls there, right?"





Went for the Timberwolves in the second group. Got two photos signed by Anthony Bennett. AME didn't even provide him with a blue sharpie. (I guess it goes to show that I should have been following the #1 hobby rule: always bring your own marker, but I guess I've been spoiled by the way Fan HQ handles their signings, having a store rep sitting at the table testing every marker before every signature). They grabbed an off-brand blue marker off a different table and gave it to Bennett when I requested blue. Looks really dull in person.

Went with silver for the other photo after seeing that.

Shabazz was friendly. Been great to see him really tear it up lately.



Excuse the poor iPad pictures.