Behind the Signature: The Truth About Athletes at Autograph Shows

 Meeting your sports heroes at autograph shows can be a thrilling experience, but what happens when they turn out to be completely different than you imagined? In this episode, we talk about the unexpected side of meeting athletes in person—whether they're kinder, more humble, or even a bit standoffish. We share real stories from collectors who’ve experienced everything from surprisingly warm interactions to shocking behavior that left them speechless. Tune in as we discuss how these personal moments can shape the value of the autograph and change how we view athletes off the field. This episode is a must-listen for anyone attending autograph shows or curious about what really happens when fans meet their idols. 

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Welcome back to another episode of the Power Sports and Rebelia Show. I am your host, Matt Powers. Thank you again for joining me. Don't forget to visit the website, powersports and rebellion.com. Also give us a follow over there on Instagram at PowersAutographs. Well, I'm sitting here recovering after a long day at the autograph shows, getting stuff signed for everybody. And I thought it would be fun to kind of talk about the shows and how things go and also why some athletes might not be the athlete that you think they are, as far as from a personality standpoint. I always enjoy meeting some of the new guys out there and meeting some of the old timers who I've never seen before and getting kind of a feel for their personality. And it's always interesting. Sometimes you meet someone, you're like, wow, they're going to be a certain way and they're not, and then the vice versa. So there's always some fun in meeting athletes for the very first time. I also want to talk about some uh of the other things that kind of happen at shows sometimes as far as getting items resigned, waiting for authentication, and also what happens if athletes' flights get delayed. So first off, let's talk about the long days for these autograph shows. Oh, so usually they're Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And Friday tends to be one of the longest days. Now, usually you would think, well, wouldn't Saturday probably be the longest day? Because that's when the most of the guys sign. And yes, that's the probably one of the more busiest days for actual autographs, but guys are signing typically from probably about nine to about three. And so you can kind of get everything wrapped up and kind of get out of there by six. Sunday is one of the shorter days because the shows typically close a little earlier, so you're usually out of there by three. Fridays tend to be the longest day because some athletes who are going to be signing on Saturday, for example, and even Sunday guys too, they will come in on Friday and start knocking out some of the stuff for the wholesalers in the back. So they will get there and hopefully we can get our pieces knocked out on uh Friday. But sometimes those guys are coming in late from flights from all over the country. So, for example, with we had to do Carl Malone on Friday, we were there waiting for stuff to get done until about 11 or so is finally when everything kind of started getting back and was able to start packing some stuff stuff up. So that was kind of a longer one of the days there. But Fridays tend to be the probably the least fun day, I think. Saturdays are a little bit better because there's a shorter day and it's a lot more activity. And Sundays are kind of the getaway day, so you can kind of um kind of make it a little bit easier and more of a fun day, too, as well. So that's kind of how it typically works, like logistically wise for shows, is that Friday one is kind of uh probably one of my least favorite ones because you're kind of setting everything up and then you kind of kind of be there for a little bit longer of a day. Uh that does happen with athletes missing flights or getting delayed. Uh, we did have one athlete that got delayed coming in, wasn't able to get anything signed. Now it will be signed in you know uh another signing coming up here in a couple weeks, next couple months or so. So it will get done at some point. It's just always disappointing that you can't get it done right there and then. But again, flights get delayed, as you guys have seen with all the weather going on. Guys miss flights. Um, so it's it definitely does happen. So that's always one of the unfortunate things about bigger shows is guys obviously have to fly in, and you know, stuff like that can happen as far as connecting flights and missing flights and all that kind of stuff. So um, another thing you want to kind of talk about too today is why I think that some of the retired guys are probably some one of the best ones to meet. Now, athletes aren't always who you think they are, just they're just like people, right? I think a lot of people have this perception of some athletes based off what they've seen by watching on TV or what they've heard from other people. And sometimes that might be right, but sometimes it might be wrong. And so you really kind of have to meet someone kind of in person and kind of really kind of figure out what kind of person they are. Uh and I I want to kind of give you guys a perfect example today is Brett Favre was signing autographs for the public. And Brett Favre doesn't do a lot of public autograph signings, um, uh especially given all of his recent kind of uh health issues going on there. So uh this was kind of a like a big treat for a lot of people to have Brett Favre out there signing autographs. And Brett, from from everybody I've talked to, was he was out there talking with everybody, all the Packer fans, and it was actually taking longer than he should have to be signing the autographs. He was uh talking with so many fans out there. And uh listen, you can say whatever you want about the guy, but that's pretty cool as a Packer fan to be out there and to be able to meet Brett Favre, get his get your his autograph, and have me able to talk with him for a few moments there and share some sort of interaction and have it be a genuine interaction, because I I think that's probably one of the highlights people will remember of Brett Favre. If you are a big Packers fan, yes, you'll remember the Super Bowl wins, you know, all that kind of stuff, and you'll remember the MVPs, but you'll remember that one interaction that you had where you know shared some sort of connection with Brett Favre, even if it was for less than a minute. And um, you know, Favre's obviously had those recent health issues, and he was signing he was there for a long time, signing everything, and um really doing a great job signing stuff. So, I mean, I know you guys think sometimes signing autographs is easy. Yeah, it's easy for a couple autographs, but when you gotta sign two, three, four thousand autographs, it it it's it can be a grind, it's an absolute grind. So um it's not as easy as it looks from a mental and and physical standpoint. So Fav did a great job. Um, but there's a lot of retired guys out there too that I always enjoy talking to. Like Joe Thizman is probably one of my favorites. Joe is just he just always seems really kind of ecstatic to be there. And I think that I was talking with another lady today, and I think that's kind of the one of the cool parts about doing shows is you see these athletes come together, even if they play different sports, and they all have some sort of connection together. And you'll see Gary Payton going up and um, you know, talking with uh an athlete from another sport, or uh Carl Malone will go up and talk to someone from another sport, and it's like, how do they have some sort of connection there? But it's like they're they just know like Ed Reed will come up and talk to him, and they have some sort of previous relationship where they've actually you know become friends and they play two different sports. And you know, go talk about athletes who you may not think who they are. Like Carl Malone is like a he seemed genuinely happy to be signing autographs and to be there. And you may not think that of him, but that was the experience I had was he was genuine happy. Now he's probably getting paid pretty well, but listen, you can still you can get paid pretty well and be kind of like a douchebag, and uh, that's not what I was saying. Like he was genuine happy to be there, he's got a great looking autograph, and um, you know, really did a good job with really thousands of pieces that he had to sign, which again is not very easy to do. And another thing that's not very easy to to do sometimes are the logistics of signings. So we again I mentioned you've got Friday, you've got Saturday, you've got Sunday, you've got probably 50 to 60 guys that are signing over this time period, and a lot of customers they want to have items signed by multiple athletes. So I've got one helmet that we are getting done that's got uh 17 different guys on this item, and so that can be a big logistics issue to try to number one, remember to get all these guys on there, but then number two, actually execute it and get all these guys on there. So the first thing you need to have to do is we have what it's called like a multi-signed table. So anything that's got to get more than one autograph on there stays on this table until it's completed. So if an athlete comes by your booth area and says, hey, are you have pieces for so-and-so, yes, you've got them all laid out there, but then you know, hey, listen, I've got 10 pieces here, but I've got two multi-sign, you can easily get over to that table, find those items, and bring them over there and get those things signed. Whereas if you just had them just laying around wherever, maybe with a different athlete that was supposed to be signed, it'd be very difficult to find that. So if you had 17 guys getting on one helmet and you had in the pile of one of those 17 guys, it would be rather challenging to find that item when it was needed to be signed. So that's always a tough challenge. And then also, sometimes if you're getting a couple different guys done at a certain time frame, you may miss a guy. So you may be like, hey, did so and so come by here? Yes, he did. Where is he now? And you may have to go run down and bring all your items to him and get those guys on them. So that's why it's important to have a list on your table there of, hey, who have you gotten? And you can cross them off there and make sure that you're getting all these guys done because the worst thing you want to do is miss a piece, and that's never good to do. So that's why you got to stay organized with those sheets on there to make sure you're crossing guys off when you get them. And also those multi-sign sheets, too, to make sure that, hey, this guy's got 17 guys on here. Let's make sure we cross them off as we go along here so we know that we can uh finish this item up and get everybody that we said we were gonna get on him. So um that leads me into another point where about a multi-sign item. There was an item that uh we were getting done with uh it was gonna be four autographs on there. And the first autograph that went onto this item was subpar. I was not happy with it at all. It just the the pen just did not look good. It was just started changing colors and it wasn't drying quickly, and it was just it was not looking good. So, in that particular case, what's actually kind of cool is we can actually wipe that autograph off and get it re-signed. And so most athletes are very cool with that, most promoters are very cool with it. Hey, listen, this autograph didn't come out the way we wanted to. Can we clean it off and get another one on there? Because they're not really technically getting another autograph, we're still getting it on the same item there. So this one we wiped it off there, got done with a new pen, it looked perfect, and then we got the three other guys done with the same pen, and all four of them came out perfectly, which I was super happy because I the worst thing you want to do is have one autograph that looks like crap, and then the other three look great. So we were definitely trying to avoid that, and I was real happy we were able to get that one cleaned off there. Um, and it it just came out really, really super uh super nice for the customer. So very happy about that one. So that's something that you can have the fortunate uh thing of doing when you do shows is you can get stuff re-signed should the pen, you know, not uh not do well, or if the autograph gets smudged or something like that. Uh people are usually generally pretty flexible about getting stuff done like that. So um, but again, shows are fun, but they're long and drown out, and by Sunday time around, you're ready to go home. But this has always been a fun one here. I always love doing these kind of three-day shows. The national where it's five days or six days or whatever it is, that's that's too long. I don't want to be doing that many autographs at time, but um this you know, shows where you do the Friday, Saturday, Sunday deal aren't too bad, um, especially when you don't have a ton of autographs. If you have help, even better. But uh this one was a solo trip, so uh gotta kind of handle everything there. But it's been fun. It's always cool doing the logistical stuff. I always find that fascinating about autograph signings, getting product there, getting it unboxed. You know, when you ship your stuff to these shows, you gotta make sure you put on the outside what's Friday, what's Saturday, what's Sunday, so you're not scrambling for stuff. And it's really kind of cool to see though how everybody does kind of their logistical stuff, uh, because that's really what makes the shows actually kind of go off without a hitch, is to make sure that you have people there that are very well organized to make sure that the end customer gets what they are looking for. So hopefully guys enjoyed this episode. Again, don't forget to visit the visit to the website, powersportsmorbility.com. Also give me a follow up there on Instagram at powers autographs, and I will see you on the next episode.