30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Hands Down... The Best

For the past two decades, autographs have been one of my favorite things to collect.  It started with products like Be A Player and Signature Rookies, but within a few years I was chasing down any certified pack pulled autograph I could get my hands on.

These days, I've had to scale things down a bit.  I try to focus on specific players and teams, while avoiding "sticker" signatures as much as possible.  Over the past few years, I've added signatures of guys like Hank Aaron, Sandy KoufaxTed Williams, and Willie Mays to my collection.  All four of these old timers have beautiful signatures, but none of them are in the same league as the newest member of my autograph collection:


Have you ever seen such a beautiful signature?  It's hands down the coolest, most awesome autograph in my collection.

Before last night I had no idea who the woman was, but thanks to the internet and The Raz Card Blog, I was able to dig up some information on the signer.  Her name is Kayoko Haruyama and up until a month ago, she was a professional Japanese wrestler.  On December 27th, she wrestled her final two matches and wrapped up an eighteen year career.  During that time she won multiple individual and tag-team championships and according to Wikipedia was a very accomplished wrestler.

This certified on-card autograph is from 2015 BBM True Heart and was sent by Raz last week.  He also sent me the rest of the cards that I needed for my 2014 BBM True Heart set (which by the way was part of a previous Raz care package):


If you're interested in learning more about these cards, I encourage you to head over to The Raz Card Blog.  He has several posts featuring these lovely ladies of wrestling.

Thank you so much Christopher for this awesome care package!  I'll head over to COMC right away and start shopping for your care package items.

Happy Sunday and sayonara!

5 comments:

Corky said...

That has to be the most ornate signature I have ever seen.

RAZ said...

Some of these wrestlers really go all out on their signatures. There are others that give the equivalent of a major league scribble, but for the most part they have elaborate signatures with inscriptions and illustrations.

I'm glad you liked the cards. I felt bad for sending you that partial 2014 set earlier, so I really felt a need to make it right and fill out the rest of the checklist as soon as I could get the cards in-hand.

BobWalkthePlank said...

Wil Myers she is not...

Stealing Home said...

Sgt. Slaughter she is not,as well.

Fuji said...

corky - nice. that's the perfect adjective

raz - yeah. i revisited your post and was blown away by all of those amazing signatures. and you are crazy if you feel bad. you added two amazing sets to my collection. even if you didn't send me the missing cards, i would have appreciated the partial sets. i can't wait to display them in a binder, so i can flip through them at my convenience. thanks again bud.

mr. scott - very true. is he considered the worst autograph in baseball?

stealing home - lol... but i'd rather receive a hug from kayoko. slaughter's mustache would tickle too much.