Signature Sundays - Johnny Pesky!

I don't usually go five days between posts, but it was a very busy week.  On top of that I got buried by two separate card packages that arrived, both sent to me by very generous folks who hit me up completely out of the blue.  I'm talking hundreds of cards, too.  I will have a few thank you posts up soon, but while I dig out from under those piles and get everything scanned in, here's a quick Signature Sundays post.  Going to take a break from all of the recent Classics Signatures hockey autographs for a week and go back to baseball:

I have wanted a Johnny Pesky autograph for a long time now.  He's certainly one of the fan favorites in the history of the Red Sox franchise.  He's not a Hall-of-Famer, and strikes me as a somewhat under-the-radar guy outside of New England, so he hasn't been in a ton of products over the years.  Looking just now I can say that there are just a handful of certified autos like this on all of eBay at the moment.  Johnny passed away in 2012, so they're not going to get any easier to come by either.

When I stumbled across this one with a Buy-it-Now price of just over $20 earlier this year I snatched it up immediately.  I don't care that it's PSA graded, but I do love that it's shiny and has a great picture of a young Pesky (I think this is from his days managing the team in the '60s).  Nice, bright, legible signature too.

A beautiful card, and a name I'm excited to add to my autograph list.  I've got over 30 certified Red Sox autographs at this point, and Johnny here easily falls inside my top three.  The other thing I love about this card is that it's done up in the style of 2005 Topps baseball, including a full back:

Came out a little fuzzy in the scan because of the PSA slab, but in person it's a great looking back.  Johnny could really hit for average, and led the league twice in hits, which you can see in red up near the top of his stat lines if you've got a keen eye.

That's it for today, Marc and Jared, thank you both again for the cards, going to start working on some return packages today...