Autographs - Collecting

Walk past the Essex House on New York City's Central Park South when Eddie Fisher is staying there on one of his frequent trips east, and you may think that just about everybody collects autographs. Well, almost everybody does. We, for example, have never collected autographs, but we have carefully preserved letters from Fred Allen, Roy Rogers, and Jim Tully, who was hailed as a great American novelist during the 1920's.

The amateur autograph collector will not spurn an autograph of historical significance if it happens to come his way, but his chief interest is in contemporary celebrities. Perhaps the reason for this is that a historical John Hancock is hard to come by and the celebrity is within comparatively easy reach.

Some autograph hunters carry a more or less unwieldy book wherever they go on the chance that they may run into a celebrity unexpectedly. Others are content to use any piece of paper they can get their hands on. It seems to us that the most practical method of collecting signatures is always to carry several plain white file cards (three by hQ inches), which can be neatly mounted later in a scrapbook.

The autograph collector is a hardy soul who expects to be shoved around at stage entrances or on the sidewalks near hotel entrances. He stops at nothing—not even the cop on the baseball field, if he thinks there's a chance to get to Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays.

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