Chris Johnson's Autograph Needs To Match His Performance

Chris Johnson is one fucking talented running back. After another 200 total yard performance last week, he is continuing to tear up NFL defenses like tissue paper. The problem with Chris Johnson isn't something he does on the field, but more something that he does for us in the hobby. In case you are unfamiliar, Johnson has a card signature that is reminiscent of Vernand Morency, and seems to give less than two shits about what we think. His two letters (barely) and out, leaves me VERY bittersweet whenever I pull an auto of his, or see a card I would like to buy. In fact, I actually think the value of his autograph is lower because of the fact he is a jackass in that respect.

Funny enough, when you see his signature on non card items, it’s the full signature, but cards are still lackluster if not worse. I know for a fact that the companies have approached him about the stuff he signs, but obviously we have not seen the results in the cards for 2009 and beyond. There are rare instances of a full signature, but 99% of the time his effort is less than the effort Keenan Thompson puts into his characters on SNL. That takes talent.

I have avoided buying Chris Johnson's cards from the beginning because I cant stand his signature, and I have put any I pull up for sale right away because of that same feeling. That’s a huge problem for a lot of fans out there because he is doing so well on the field. Usually when someone has a shitty signature in the past, they have been an unimportant pick with no prospects, but this is completely different.

Say he goes on to win MVP in the next few years, which could be a possibility with his talent. Immediately, the bandwagon collectors go back and try to purchase some of his cards, only to see that he has the worst signature in the last few years. That sucks for this hobby, and its even more frustrating because cards are the only thing he does it for. It also adds a whole new level to forgeries because its so hard to tell what is what.

Granted, fellow defense destroyer Adrian Peterson recently switched to a similar 4 character autograph, and that is just as frustrating. Personally, despite the number of things they have to sign, I would never have a problem giving the fans what they want in most normal circumstances, even more so when you are sitting at a table signing stickers or cards. No screaming fans, no quickness needed, just sign and be done. There is no earthly reason to shaft your fans, especially because one day, it may be the way you are remembered.

Ask people like Harmon Killebrew, Torii Hunter and Kirby Puckett, who all stood by the fact that a measure of a player's signature is the presence of every letter. Harmon has said on numerous occasions that an autograph is just as much a part of the player's history as their game, and to have one that doesn’t look like some effort was put into it, is detrimental.

I agree.

The 2009 Autolic Test: NFL Draft Edition

I thought now was as good a time as any to go over this, mainly because I have a feeling that many of you are wondering. For each draft class we all pick our people. We go over the rounds and decide on a guy based on team, college, style whatever. I also know that many of you want to see an auto before you decide. Or, as I put it, whether or not the guy passes or fails your version of the Wonderlic Autograph Test (The Autolic Test). For those of you who are not familiar, the Wonderlic is a test given to all prospects at the combine to test a number of different things about their intelligence, football intelligence, etc. The Autolic test is one performed by many collectors to determine if the autograph has merit or is subject to the Morency quotient.

This year, I think we are ridiculously lucky as long as none of the players decide to pull a press pass and sign better when there are few cards to sign, and give up when there are many. Top QB autos have been very good the last few years, and Stafford is no exception. The guy is great, he should be hailed for his detail and penmanship. Nice job. Same goes for Beanie Wells, who has a great auto for his cards. Sanchez has a loopy swoopy graph, that I don’t mind, and Moreno's isnt bad either. Harvin and Crabtree have a nice visual appeal to theirs, as well, as both should do pretty amazing when you see them on better cards.

On the other hand, Josh Freeman is a jumbled mess. If I gave you this pic and told you to pick his out, you would really have to go through a few deductions in your head before pointing the finger in his direction. Heyward-bey isnt horrible, but it is boring to me for some reason, mainly because you could practically draw a line through his sig and hit every stroke of every letter. Like I said, not horrible, just boring.

You may think that I put too much thought into this, but I will give this fact as the reason for my use of the Autolic test. I hate give up autos, and I hate weird looking autos. If the player puts no effort into it, I will not keep any of their cards. I did not buy a single Chris Johnson card last year, mainly for that exact reason.

Im sure as the card season progresses, we will see numbers added and all sorts of changes as the cards transfer from on card to sticker and back on card. However, as of now, this class' graphs pass the test with flying colors.

THE 2008 AUTOLIC TEST CAN BE FOUND HERE


(CLICK TO ENLARGE)

New Addition To The Autolic HOF

I was going through a thread discussing bad autos, and Geronimo Gil came up as one of the worst. In terms of bad, this is beyond awful, even though there is twice as much ink as Mendenhall's, Johnson's, or Timmons'. Add in the fact that his auto looks like a big penis, and you have a new inductee into the Autolic Test Fail HOF.



This is the best auto of his I could find. There are ones that are MUCH worse.

The Plight Of The Player Collector

Sometimes, players you love go through a pretty radical change, and you are forced to adapt collecting habits to fit it. Either they get traded, they go to jail, or in some cases they switch their auto or something about their allegiance to the collecting public. It really sucks for the player collector in many of these instances because you are either left with a player on a team you don’t like, or nothing if they go to jail. With the auto, a very important part of player collector's collection, you have to adapt, especially if it goes from one of the most expressive to a give up.

First I want to talk about a trade or free agency. With a trade, it wasn’t anything the player did directly (most of the time) that you have to deal with, and it can be tough to figure out what to do. Free agency is player directed, but the result is the same. If you are that player's collector, but didn’t live in the city he was from, or had no ties to the team, it should be easy to swtich things up. You may have to put up with mismatched swatches for a year or two, but generally things are fine. If you have a tie to the team AND the player, it’s a completely different story.

Lets use KG as an example, because I think he could fall into a few of these categories. KG was my favorite player on the Timberwolves, duh, and both free agency and a trade were possible at one point. There were probably a lot of KG fans outside of MN, so it wasn’t as big a deal for them. KG gets traded to one of my least favorite teams, and I am stuck with team allegiance to the wolves, but signed memorabilia from a Celtic. I ended up letting both player and team allegiances stand and kept my stuff, but that didn’t mean I didn’t try to get rid of it a few times out of anger.

With Jail, it’s the other side of the pillow altogether. With those types of situations, its tough to like or collect a guy that is a bad enough person to do something requiring jail time. At that point, you might be stuck, it may be time to fold it up and move on with your collection.

For this ill use Michael Vick, because he seems to be at the forefront of all of this, and he has a lot of people who collect him. If you look at his stuff, he went from being one of the more valuable players to someone with little to no value. The falcons quickly moved on to Matt Ryan, which gave falcons collectors someone to bank on from here on out. The Vick people, well, they are out of luck.

As for people and their auto, for us second worlders, this is key. I could love Chris Johnson all the live long day, but I am never going to get a card that is worth my time. For that matter alone, many people may avoid him. I know it would be tough for me to collect a guy with as much of a give up auto as that is. What makes it a slap in the face partially, is that he signs much more completely on the certified stuff I see on eBay. If you can sign for people face to face, but you cant do it on cards, I think it says something about what you think about collecting. Again, that isnt necessarily a bad thing, a la Dirk Nowitzki signing TTM, but its not necessarily a good thing either.

Peterson recently switched from a full auto to a give up, and for people like me, its tough collecting decision to make. My gut says that the give up isnt as good and I shouldn’t buy it, but my collecting tendencies make me want to go after new stuff. Funny enough, about six months ago, I got an email from someone saying this was going to happen, and I shrugged it off at the time. I think from now on, ill stay away from his give ups on stickers, but make an exception with on card shit. Sadly, he has also switched his IP auto as well, which makes me question what he was thinking.

Personally, its really about how much you are willing to tolerate. If Peterson wasn’t a Viking, I probably wouldn’t collect as much, but that is the nature of the NFL. Its become expected that players wont stay with their team their whole career. Its also pretty much expected that eventually players will develop a primadonna attitude and give up on the fans. There are always awesome stories, but more than a few times players have become enemies of the collector before becoming a sympathizer. Hopefully every door that the players close, somewhere they open a window.

Welcome To Autograph Hell

We all know that Chris Johnson's "attempt" at an auto is probably the worst thing since Vernand Morency and Lawrence Timmons. The sad thing is that as things move forward, bad autos like Randy Foye's RF4 and so many other examples of autographic diarrhea are becoming the norm rather than the exception. There are two main things I want to address though, mostly because they suck so bad.

First off, I want to discuss redemptions for players that have shitty autos. A main example of this is Johnson's SPA auto patches this year. ALL redemptions. Why would I even want to bother with that shit? I have to wait 8 months for a redemption of a guy with the worst auto in recent memory, with no advanced knowledge of patch colors, auto placement, or pic? Forget that.

Secondly is the card company's acceptance of these practices of awful signatures. They are paying the players to sign, they should have some clauses saying that they have to sign more than initials. Personally, I probably would not have as many Petersons in my collection if he signed the way that he has been lately with this AP 28 shit that I have seen around the net. Total crap. I am almost of the belief that sig quality can make or break a card. I think it would almost be better to cut them out of the set rather than focus their main hits on junk signed initials or Allen Patrick style symbol shit. I know people will disagree with me, and I know that Gregg from UD joked that I have a very simplistic view on things, which is completely true actually, but really, its a bad situation out there right now.

Just as a tribute to those who are great, check out sigs from these people:

Harmon Killebrew
Brian Bannister
Ronde and Tiki Barber
Mickey Mantle
Ted Williams
Joe Dimaggio
Brian Westbrook
Torii Hunter

All have longer names, all have really, really nice sigs. FIX IT.

This Is The Penultimate Auto "Win"

Check out this work of autograph art:



If that isnt a perfect display of penmanship, Im not sure what is. In fact, they should print this card on a sheet of metal. Take that metal and get it autographed by both players, so that it would be the same on the card as pictured above. Then, take the metal and form it into a sharp battle axe. No toy like shit, the real motherfucker. After that, they should take the axe and cut off the hands of Chris Johnson, Lawrence Timmons, and Vernand Morency. When they are done bleeding, they should have the blood made into the ink for red sharpies, and have Ronde and Tiki sign the stumps with said pens.

I would pay to see that.

Value Bumps: Week 4

Not much happened to the rookies this week, but there were quite a few suprises in terms of the rest of the league. Dallas lost, Philly lost, and a lot of people had some great games.

Brett Favre

I dont know how he fucking does it, but he continues to be a force despite having the body age of 85. 6TDs is a monster and a half, and I was shocked to see that he did it in such awful jerseys. Also, I dont know how his cards can get any more of a bump, so ill say his Jets stuff just gained a head of steam.

BUMP: UP

Matt Forte

I told you Philly would kill him. 19 for 43 when the offense was moving is a pretty bad game. He had 40 receiving, but those were nothing special. I wish people would just see him as a mediocre starting back rather than a guy whose SPA Patch Auto will break $300.

BUMP: DOWN

Chris Johnson

He puts up two TDs against the league's stingiest defense? Thats impressive. He did okay for the game, and he is quickly becoming the front runner for OROY. Too bad his auto didnt pass 2nd grade, a real loss for the collecting base. Hopefully the manufacturers will ban him from products until he signs with a number or something. Its embarassing.

BUMP: UP

Adrian Peterson

I am putting him on this list because it is a feat to keep even with the bumps he got from last year. He is in the top 5 in yards and has 3 TDs on an offense that barely makes it close to the red zone each game. He is doing it with no QB and no WRs, and I gotta give him props for accomplishing as much as he has.

BUMP: EVEN

Darren McFadden

Wow, he dropped off the face of the earth due to that injury. 7 for 20 gets you a big downer, especially when Michael Bush gets your carries. Not necessarily his fault, but not my problem either.

BUMP: DOWN

Larry Johnson

Where oh where have you been lately? Oh, thats right, stuck on a shitty team and injured. Well, its nice to have you back, have a few TDs. I guess now would be a good time to buy in because his prices are WAAAY down and he is showing that he wont be the next Priest Holmes. Its nice to see he can make it back to where he was. Dominant on the league's worst. Good job.

BUMP: UP

Ryan Grant

I totally loved seeing this guy crash and burn. People were paying in upwards of $225 for a sweet spot rookie, and now he is all over every product. I complained back in the beginning of the offseason how much I loathed the fact he was given so much attention in products, and I now have a hearty laugh reserved for the idiots who bought in before he actually accomplished anything outside of half a good season. It only goes to show how much Favre meant to the Packers, as everyone benefited from his dangerousness.

BUMP: DOWN AND A HALF

Michael Turner

Man, what a crappy game that was overflowing with nothingness for him. You can be the burner all you want, but with a rookie QB, I am not going to let you beat me at all.

BUMP: DOWN

Jonathan Stewart

Not bad, not great. Show me some big games or ill give up on your chances of hitting OROY for this year.

BUMP: EVEN

Possible Bumps For Next Week

Laurence Maroney- I hate the system you are in. If you could be on a normal team, I would love you. Right now you are heading down a long and lonely road.

Jonathan Stewart - You get KC next week, be happy. Run happy.

Anthony Gonzalez - I see big things for him next week, but he is a WR, and WRs are never worth anything.

Chris Johnson - Good luck with Baltimore. You're going to need it.

Matt Forte - You get the Lions, you lucky fucking bastard. I hope you have an awful game so I can forget about you.

Autograph Fail

So far we know that Chris Johnson and Rashard Mendenhall have awfully bad sigs that failed the Autolic test (see here and here). Well, we have a new fail. Its not an Epic Fail like Morency, Lawrence Timmons, and the two lazy asses mentioned above, but it is pretty fucking close. How about a little more effort Kenny Phillips??? Someone smack this guy.

Contrary to Common Belief, High Price 1st Week DOES NOT Equal High Price After That

Lets face it, the Coe Jollectors love to jump on products when they are hot. THEY LIVE FOR IT. What they dont get is that after the first weeks, you can pretty much cut the price by 20-50% for the remainder of the time. No matter what happens, TWGM jumps in volume sold and price when things are first listed.

The reason I am bringing this up is because Topps Football was just released and not only are people falling all over themselves to buy in at the 85+ dollar price for a box (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!), but they are also killing any surviving brain cells by paying "REDICOLUS" prices for the rookie premiere autos.

This has led more sellers to post enormous BIN/BOs on their auctions, while others dont even bother with the BO, and just expect people to buy their third string WR red ink auto at $250. Lets go over something:

1. All Day (ROY, all time yds leader single game, beastly runner with tons of hype) - $300 Bucks
2. Matt Ryan (Plays for a shitty team and wont be good for three years) - $199
3. Darren McFadden (shitty team, wont do half of what peterson did) - $310, sad
4. John David Booty: Red Ink /10 (5th rd pick, 3rd stringer) - $149?

Am I missing something here? I dont know many JCs that would even buy in at these prices. Hell, even I wont buy in on Peterson because I know those prices are going to drop like a rock, not to mention the fact that he has played a year. Yet, people are buying Rashard Fucking "NO SIG" Mendenhall at 230 plus? Fuck!

Someone really needs to have a mass murdering rampage across TWGM, I am super cereal about that.

I Am Not A Fan Of Chris Johnson

Is that all you got? Seriously? I swear to god you better be the best fucking player in the world at some point in your career because if you think thats gonna cut it, you got another thing comin. Congrats for failing the "autolic" test. You, Vernand Morency, and Lawrence timmons can all shack up together and trade auto stories.

For fuck's sake you could at least make it SEEM like you care about your fans. Judging from your auto, it seems like you have more important things to do, like sitting third string on the Titans bench behind other autograph all stars like Chris Henry and Paul Williams.

Sweetness!

Since I am not wasting my money on busting boxes these days, I am more focused on padding my auto collection. Trust me, it is so much more fufilling than pulling a Quentin Jammer Auto out of a $120 box. I feel so much better knowing that this was only 95 dollars worth of JSA certified goodness.



Who needs wax?

Autolic Test II: What To Do With Your Johnson

Thanks to one of my readers, Justin, for this:




Looks like we have our first F- for the year. I dont even know what to say! Are you fucking kidding me? This guy put as much effort into his auto as your wife does to that "Anniversary BJ" you get once a year. Listen, Mr. Johnson, I know you are doomed to being a third string special teamer your whole career, but that doesnt mean you need to ruin our boxes of prestige with this shit.

One down, eleventy billion to go.

The Autolic Test

If the Wonderlic is the test that determines how intelligent/football intelligent a prospect is, consider this the Autograph equivilent. Since we all pine after the top autographs of the newest players as soon as new sets are released, I thought I would go over some of the best and worst of the 2008 class - so far.

Last year's class was a "B" at best. We had good autos like Peterson and Brady Quinn, and VERY bad autos like Lawrence Timmons and other nobodys who probably understood that it would be pretty pointless to sign nicely because their cards would eventually end up in everyone's bargain bin. Then we have Josh Wilson of the Seahawks who decided that despite his role as a back up special teams guy, he had to sign everything "the truth." Well Josh, $.50 - that’s about as truthy as you will get as to your value to this hobby.

This year, we have a class that I would say is about average. Example A, Matt Ryan has a beautiful auto, my compliments to him and his family. Rashard Mendenhall, on the other hand, has the auto of someone who failed 3rd grade art class. I may avoid his cards all together if he is going to be signing like that all year - what is he thinking? As for creativity, Jake Long and Booty-licious have gimmicky cool autos like Sidney Rice's new one. Bootycall may have scored a 10 on the wonderlic, but he gets better grade here. At least he can write.



GRADES

Ryan (Picture: A Grade: A)
McFadden (Picture: B Grade: B+)
J Long (Picture: C Grade: B)
Mendenhall (Picture: D Grade: F)
DeSean Jackson (Picture: E Grade: B)
Devin Thomas (Picture: F Grade: B-)
Booty (Picture: G Grade: B)
Brohm (Picture: H Grade B+)

Im sure we will get another Timmons or *gasp* Morency this year too, I just havent looked hard enough to find it yet. Regardless, nothing pisses the fuck out of me more than pulling an auto and seeing the guy fail to even produce initials. As a lesson to the slackers, I know you have a lot of cards to sign, but take the extra effort and give us something to remember you by (other than a few tackles in a preseason 4th quarter). So to those who dont I have this to say:

To Morency: Fuck You!
To Timmons: Fuck You!
To Brandon Marshall : Fuck You!
To Tiki and Ronde Barber of the Autograph hall of fame: You're Cool!
To Josh "the Truth" Wilson: Fuck you!

Im outta here.