[aggie4ever]

Just wanted to thank Beckett, JSA, and Donruss for the great autograph seminar held this past Saturday in Dallas.  It was held at the Beckett offices, which are really nice, including a neat theater where the talks were held.  It's pretty much a mini theater, with ten rows of seats and a movie screen, before the talks started, we watched Super Bowl coverage on the huge screen.<br />
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I was there mainly to get some autographed memorabilia authenticated by JSA.  It's nice to see that JSA will be in Texas a couple of times a year so I can get my auction house LOA's upgraded to full LOA's.  Saves me the shipping both ways, plus I buy a good amount of framed items which you can only get authenticated in person.  I had four items authenticated:  DiMaggio baseball, Mantle/Mays/Snider baseball, Ali glove, and Payton/Unitas/Staubach/Lott/Greene Neiman lithograph (the print that was used for the Wheaties box, although this one is a huge 30x40 framed print).<br />
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Donruss provided promo cards and a t-shirt to everyone who came, the cards I received were a Pro Bowl set which included Flacco, Ryan, and Forte, plus seven others like Peterson and Manning; a Forte National Treasures promo; and Peterson and Bush foil cards.  Donruss also provided some good door prizes, including 1/1 autos of Bradshaw, Jurgensen, Tarkenton and two others; a cut auto of Bronco Nagurski; an auto g/u of Peterson made just for special seminars; and some boxes like Contenders, Americana, two Hawaii black boxes, etc.  I saw only about 20 people in the seminars, so thought I had a great chance at winning one of the 15 prizes.  No such luck though, I guess there must have been many people who came just to get their stuff graded/authenticated who didn't go to the seminars, since only 2 of the 15 or so people who stayed for all the seminars actually won something.  All the rest were won by people who didn't stick around.<br />
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There were four talks, one about modern card grading, one about vintage card grading, another about obtaining autographs, and one by James Spence about authenticating autographs.  They were all fairly interesting, and I learned a few things.  Since I am now looking to get some vintage Yankees team signed balls, it's nice to know that Mantle was usually a clubhouse auto from 1958-1968, so I will value any baseballs with an authentic Mantle auto more from those years.  Also interesting to find out that PSA is no longer doing memorabilia auction house LOA work for the most part, so JSA is picking up most of the slack.  I had noticed Heritage switched over to JSA in late December, and had been wondering.  <br />
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All in all a good time, I am looking forward to next's years event!  Just hoping that next year I have a little more luck in the drawings ;-)