How to Collect Baseball Autographs Through the Mail

If you’re a baseball fan, you probably have a few favorite players around the league, whether they toil for your local team, play for a favorite team that plays elsewhere, have a local connection, or just play the game you like to see it played. Autographs of your favorite players make a great collectible. Buying autographs on the secondary market can be expensive, however. When you’re paying good money for an autograph, worries about authenticity also come to the forefront. Can you trust that the signature you’re paying for is real? A better approach, and one that I’ve found a quite enjoyable hobby, is collecting autographs through the mail. For less than a dollar, you have a chance to attain a collectable that you can enjoy and that may even become valuable someday.

What can you get signed through the mail? Most people send baseball cards, team-issued postcards, or small pictures, but some people send larger items such as posters, books, and magazines. The key is to never send anything you can’t afford to lose…not all players honor autograph requests through the mail, and the postal service does occasionally lose things. If you don’t already have items to send, eBay or your local sports card store should have something that’d work just fine.

A note on selecting players to send requests to – the more popular a player, the less likely they are to sign autographs through the mail, simply because the number of requests they receive are overwhelming. For the highest success rate, stick to non-star players, prospects who have not yet made it big, and coaches. Also, some players are known non-signersâÂ?¦which is why it’s great to share successes and failures with your fellow autograph collectors. There are many online forums and web sites dedicated to autograph collecting that will help you avoid sending something you won’t get back.

Now that you have picked a player and have an item that you’d like signed, where do you send it? Active players (and coaches) are the easiestâÂ?¦you can send the item to them care of the team they play for. The address of every team, major league and minor league, is easily available online. Do a search using your favorite search engine. Sending an item to the player care of the team allows them to deal with their work-related mail at work, not at home, which many players seem to appreciate. Retired players are a bit trickier, but several excellent address lists are available for purchase. These lists, sold either in book or digital format, include the home addresses of many retired players. Make sure to get the most up-to-date list possible, as people do move.

Here are a few rules and tips that should help you succeed collecting autographs through the mail:

– Send a short, handwritten note to the player requesting an autograph. Mention something specific or personal about the player and/or his career and team.

– Include a self addressed stamped envelope (SASE) with proper postage for the player to send your item back to you with. I usually put two index cards into my SASE to help protect the item that is being sent back.

– Be polite. Make mom proud and use please and thank you liberally. Also, refer to the player as “Mr.”, with their last name, not by a first name or nickname.

– Don’t send more than one or two items to be signed.

Sending out a request takes only a few minutes, and costs you less than $1 for postage. It is helpful to keep a journal of your requests and successes, so you can continue to hone your list of targets and your approach. I personally have acquired over one hundred autographs through the mail. I have not kept track of all the requests I have sent, though�which would have been interesting to look at.

Some players are incredibly quick signersâÂ?¦I have gotten several requests back in a number of days. Some are much slowerâÂ?¦I have also gotten cards back signed over a year after I originally sent them. So, don’t give up hope if you don’t hear anything back right away, or your first group of requests goes unanswered. With the small investment of time and money involved, even a few successes more than make up any failures. Opening your mailbox to find one of your SASEs holding an autograph is a great feeling.

Good luck, and happy hunting!