What's going on, everybody? We are back with another episode of Cards in Hand brought to you by my good friends at eBay.

This is happening at the national, at the card ladder booth. This is if you've been listening to the series, this is my final conversation for today, and I'm very excited.

I'm bringing a guest on who has been on the podcast, who is very thoughtful with the way he collects, has got an incredible collection, and I wanted to make him a part of this series.

I am joined by Tony, southern collector fourteen on Instagram. And he's got an incredible YouTube channel where he talks about pre war vintage baseball.

We're gonna be talking specifically about a Jackie card. And before we get into that, Tony, welcome. Happy national. How you doing? I'm doing great, man. The dogs are barking. I'm a little tired.

But, hey, man. I'm hanging in there and having a blast. It's it's just been a fun time seeing a bunch of hobby buddies and had a few big pickups. Okay. Okay. So, the the vintage community, like, you guys run-in packs.

I've been, like, watching you all, like, going around doing content together, like, talking. Like, what is this and you're the only vintage collector that's been on this series.

What's it been like to come to the national, meet all the buddies who you interact with online, and share kinda stories about the cards you have? Well, that's what makes it so rich because, like, that's the community.

Right? I can collect. I could've just stayed home. I could've just perused eBay. I could've done other things trying to find cards. But coming here, you're gonna see stuff that you don't see all the time.

But the main thing is to see it with your friends, share your pickups, let them get excited for you. You get excited for them. It's like having your own little cheering section.

If they're not with me and I pick one up, you know, I've been texting pickup alert and I send them a and then they all like, dude, that's awesome. So, yeah, it's it makes it a lot more fun, and it's it kinda energizes you in a way.

I think, in knowing you, it kinda we you collect a lot of different players, a lot of different sets, a lot of different cards, but I gather that it kinda starts and stops with Jackie. He's kind of one of your guys.

Yeah. Very, significant. You've got a lot of history and stories that you associate with these cards. In an event like this, I would imagine Jackie is a big piece of the areas you're observing and collecting.

And, is there been any cool before we get into the card itself, any cool Jackie, conversations you've been into or pieces you've seen? Yeah. I've seen some really cool pieces. There's a lot of, you know, type one photos.

I haven't seen a lot of memorabilia of Jackie. Last year, there was, like, Jackie Robinson, Gaymore shirt, jerseys, and stuff like that, and some of the REA boots and things, but not a lot of that.

But, yeah, there's there's really cool Jackie cards, high high graded Jackie cards all over the floor.

And, but what you don't find a lot of is signed Jackie cards. There's two on the floor in two different auction houses. They're not in cases.

They're regular dealers don't have these. So, so that's kinda one of my lanes. So, and we'll get into that, I'm sure. But, yeah, there's some cool Jackie stuff out here. And, yeah, we've had some good conversations with some people.

Yeah. So I love it when the guest kinda builds the segue, for me. So I'll introduce the card, and I've got it in my hand. It's the 1954 Topps Jackie Robinson, and this is hand signed best wishes with a ballpoint pen.

It's in a PSA holder graded to auto 10. I've I love seeing stuff that I've never seen before, Tony, and I can tell you right now, I have never seen anything like this.

And when you were talking to me about this card, the way you were talking about it was Jackie was holding this card. And, like, once you said that, Jackie Robinson to me is kinda yeah.

There's, Tony's getting some goosebumps. He's kinda this, like, he's so important in this almost mythological sports figure that has so much history behind it and to know that I'm holding a card that he held the sign is pretty special.

So let's get into these hand signed portion of Jackie Robinson collecting and, like, we'll get into the card.

But, yeah, just let's open it up. Let's talk about this card and kinda what it means to you. Alright. So I can go out there on the floor right now to any vintage dealer booth and I'm gonna find a Jackie Robinson card.

Alright? So those are plentiful. But, again, the pop count. We'll get into pop count in a minute. But what this card means to me, man, Jackie Robinson was one of the bravest dudes in the history of our nation in sports wise.

They're not making stories like Jackie Robinson anymore. What he went through to come out on that field and play ball was insane to me.

And to do it at a high level. So a lot of people don't realize this. He was the first winner of the, rookie of the year award. And back then, they didn't give away two, one for the National League, one for American.

They they only had one. So he was the best player in Major League Baseball his rookie year while putting up with hatred and and not being able to stay in the team hotel and all this stuff.

It was really difficult. So to have a card that that man held in his hand he held it in his hand.

One of the things you left out on the description, you did a good job on the description, by the way. It's dodger blue ink. Okay. It's in the in the blue ink looks like he signed it today. It is it's bright blue.

It's not faded, and and it's indented in the card. I mean, it's like dented. So I was telling somebody yesterday, I showed it to him and I said, you know, not only is it a Jackie Robinson signed card, but it's indented.

And it was indented by a pen that Jackie Robinson imprint. And to me, that is freaking insane, man.

That is insane because of what he meant to not only baseball history, sports history, but American history. And so the story of this card, I bought this card on an auction house and they shipped it FedEx.

I haven't told you this story. Nope. They shipped it FedEx and, I wasn't gonna be home when it was scheduled to arrive. My wife wasn't gonna be home. She was out of town. So I went on my FedEx app, had it sent to my Walgreens.

I'm a little nervous. It's an expensive card. I get to the Walgreens. I go over to the photo area. The little guy, he doesn't really look like an athletic type of dude, which is cool.

And then there was an African American young lady. She was probably about 17. I asked them if they could go back there and grab this box. They go back and they're back there, like, ten minutes and it's scaring the crap out of me.

They finally come out. They have the box. I said, hey. Could you, they said, what is it? I said, I was nervous. They said, what is it? I said, it's a baseball card. And they kinda looked at me funny. I said, you wanna see it?

And they said, yeah. So he cut it up right there, cut open the box, pulled it out. Both of their reactions was priceless. Both of them, like, it was like the Home Alone thing, had their hands on her cheeks and was like, oh my god.

And the little girl of color starts kinda tearing up, man. She's and her hands were shaking. She said, can I hold that? I said, yeah. And I hand it to her. She said, can I take a picture? And she sent it to my dad and my granddad?

This is a young lady who's 17 years old, and Jackie Robinson meant that much to that young lady in this generation to shake and hold that card. That is what that card means to me. That's freaking awesome, man.

When you left Walgreens after picking up this unbelievable card after that interaction you had, like, we in our minds have this own perception of what these cards mean and what they mean to us, and most of it's in isolation.

But you had a rare moment where you got to share this with people you're meeting for the first time. Yep. And you get that reaction, like and you're telling a story about it here on the podcast.

Like, what was going on in your head on your drive home after experiencing that? It it validated me, man. It validated my feelings that I have, and I realized it's just not me.

Kids in school are learning Jackie Robinson's story. Jackie Robinson is, well, now we had Lou Gehrig day, but Jackie Robinson will have a day in Major League Baseball, and it's always the same day, April 15.

Every team in Major League Baseball wears number 42. Every team. And they honor that man.

So from this day until they'll never stop it, everybody will know about Jackie Robinson, man, and they should. They absolutely should know his story. His wife is still alive, by the way. She's a 103 years old, just had a birthday.

Think of the stories that lady could tell. You talk about a woman with dignity and class. So yeah. I mean, he is a beacon of human civilization in my mind. And, with what he went through, he died at a young age.

He was in his fifties, had diabetes really bad. And, but you gotta think what he went through paid a toll on him. He was gray really early in his life. And so he was under a lot of stress, but but he never buckled under it.

He never buckled. So I wanna talk about I could probably go find a 54 tops Jackie anywhere in this, building, but you mentioned you're not gonna find another one like yours.

Maybe talk about, the what, like, the autograph and what that does to shrink the sea of this copy. Like, talk about the rarity around, like, this this card specifically and its of itself.

Yeah. Well, there was a guy that was hooked in with a major company in the in the modern hobby, and he was on Instagram the other day and did a reel.

And he said, you know, unlike, the modern hobby, the vintage cards, the only thing that makes them different is the number on the slab, the grade. And I reached out to him in a nice way, and I said, that's not true.

There are other things. There's eye appeal. There's you know, they can separate a card. I said, but you add an autograph on a vintage card, and the pop count on that goes to to nothing.

And I said, it's the exact same thing with a modern car, you know, because what he was comparing was the different colors, you know, you got the super factor and then you got the black finites and they all have a different number.

Right? He was he was trying to compare it to that.

And I said, no. I said, you know, the pop count gets really low. So, anyways, the this 1954 Jackie Robinson, there is 11,773 of those graded through all different grading companies. There's only 16 signed ones.

So if you do the math, that is point 135% of all the population signed. There's 16 of them. And that's one of the, actually, the higher pop counts. He has eight main cards in his main run, and it starts in 49.

And then it goes all the way through his last card is 56. And there's a total of 98 or 99 graded signed copies out of that whole run. So it's very similar to modern cards where it just gets really rare, and it's cool.

So so if you're if you know, what makes a card cool? I know you collect those Colts cards. Yeah. And if you can get that Superfractor or that Black Finite or whatever it is, all of a sudden, you got something nobody else has.

And and the rarity of it is what drives the cost of it. And so that happens with these. That's a very expensive card sitting right there.

But, man, I love it. I mean, so it's cool. I'm trying to do a signed Jackie Run. I've got the 1955 and the 1954, but they just, you know, they come up a little bit, mostly in auction hat.

You're not gonna find them, you know, just in a dealer table. But, but, yeah, it's a it's a cool car to own for so many reasons, and it checks so many boxes for me.

How what is the scene right now in the community around the hand signed vintage stuff? Like, is is it ever since you've been into collecting this stuff, has it always been super popular?

Have people, even though they're rare and scarce, people chasing it? Or has the popularity maybe increased and the demand for these types of cards increase? Well, the the the prices on them are going up.

Yeah. I think if you did a graph and you you looked at like a graph page of like how much VIN inches is going up and whatever percentage, I think this is outpacing it because people are getting more into it.

There's always gonna be the old school vintage guy who says, you ruined the card. And and you also have the guy, how do you know it's not fake?

Mhmm. Because nobody was around, like, nowadays when the players are signing stuff. And then you just had the big fake autograph scandal mainly with memorabilia, not necessarily cards.

And it was mainly modern people. Well, you know, there's so many fake Mickey Mantle autographs out there and and they got into slabs and, you know, how do you know?

And at some point when you're collecting in that lane, you gotta trust the system, but you can't be stupid. There was a signed, card of a player that was auctioned off recently, and it was signed by Sharpie.

And the guy died in 1971, and I really questioned whether or not that was real and sold for a lot of money. So I wouldn't have bought it. But, hey, man. Whoever bought it, congratulations, you know.

I'm not saying they're wrong. I'm saying I do look at the signature even when it's slab to try to consider is it real or not. So So you mentioned the card was being pressed down ballpoint pen.

I'm guessing based on error, like, that to you is, like, looking at the autograph, it's it obviously, it's graded by PSA too, but it's validation that that that is a legitimate autograph.

Is are you like, when you're looking at these types of cards, are you mentioned the Sharpie and it not aligning with the area.

Is that just something part of, like, the process that you have to go through to make sure that you're doing your due diligence when you're landing a card is as expensive and significant as this jacket? Yeah. Absolutely.

So there's also vintage guys, a ballpoint pen signature on a vintage card. People really love those because they And he he changed his signature over the years. So you can tell it's a, And he he changed his signature over the years.

So you can tell it's a it's a rookie era signed signatures, probably only three or four of those. But as Hank got older, he would sign for money and it was always in a big fat blue Sharpie.

And those are cool. But to me, that ballpoint pen era is so much more cool. And it and it gets a higher price too because it's another level of scarcity.

I love it. I always learn something new when I talk with you, Tony. Maybe as we're kinda rounding the corner on this, this card in your collection, you've got an incredible collection.

We've talked about a lot of your cards. What has this card specifically taught you about Tony as the collector and what this card means for your overall collection? So this is one that I'd I'd never say never on moving cards.

I don't plan on moving it because it just means too much to me from an emotional standpoint and from a meaning standpoint. It has soul behind it. And, it ain't just a number. Like, I've got this card because of what it means to me.

And so now could it leave one day? You know, I never say never. Yep. But, yeah, this one is the gold standard. It it really is. So, you know, some people collect things in really high grades and you do that a lot in modern.

It's hard to do in vintage. But, man, when you get a nine and a $19. 52 tops, that's a very expensive card. So that's one type of scarcity. But you add an autograph, that's the other.

So what I found is, autograph, that's the other. So what I found is I'm getting to where I don't even look at cards without autographs much anymore. And that's sad to me in a way, but it's just what I love, man.

And everybody knows that about me, and some of my friends make fun of me about man. And everybody knows that about me and some of my friends make fun of me about it, and it's all in fun.

But, we have a good time with it. But, yeah, man. This is this is the pinnacle for me. Tony, appreciate you coming on here. It's fun to do this in person.

You sharing your story of an amazing card, this 1954 Jackie Robinson, best wishes, Dodger blue. That's right, man. That's right. Yeah. Thanks a lot, man. You're welcome. I it was I appreciate you having me on.