Doubting the Existence of a few Orioles Crown Autographs

Orioles autograph collectors are lucky that the Crown Gasoline card set was issued in 1991 to commemorate the final season that the team played in Memorial Stadium. The set included every single player who appeared in even a single game for the team from their introduction in Baltimore in 1954 through the early '91 season. In many cases, the Crown card is the only baseball card made of those players, and certainly the only Orioles card that exists for quite a few others.

The set can also be a bit of a curse to someone like me, who would be happy to have any autograph of many of these players if not for the Crown set picturing them as Orioles. As I can attest, it is much easier to find any random signature of a player as opposed to trying to find a specific card that is signed. Which leads me to this post.

As I said, the Crown set came out in 1991, so any player that passed away before that time and is included in the set obviously never signed their card; 32 former Orioles players died before the set came out so there are no signed Crowns of those guys. Another five died during 1991, and as the set was available for sale in four parts (May 18, June 29, August 11, & September 16) most of those five passed away before they feasibly could've signed their Crown cards.

Finally getting to the main point of this post, the list of Orioles autographs I have been chasing after is at a scant 15 players I have been trying to track down upgrades for; and of those 15, 8 are only pictured as Orioles on their crown cards, John Anderson, Stan Jefferson, Ed Lopat, Chuck Oertel, Carl Powis, Joe Taylor, Valmy Thomas, and Marv Throneberry. Of that group, Stan Jefferson is still alive, so I can hold out hope that one day he will sign his Crown card, or I will come across a signed copy. Of the others, I have seen signed copies of Taylor's Crown, and have been told of other collectors who have Lopat & Thomas in their collections.

Which leaves us with John Anderson, Chuck Oertel, Carl Powis, & Marv Throneberry. I recently came across the story of an older gentleman who has collected autographs of this set since it came out in 1991. And he doesn't have any of those four signed Crowns, among a few others. Which leads me to believe that those signed Crowns might simply not exist. And if that's the case, I'm going to remove them from my need list. 

If anyone out there owns, or has ever seen a signed Crown card of any of those four, please let me know, because I am at the point where I am seriously doubting their existence. Anderson and Powis largely fell off the map after their playing careers ended, and their autographs seem to be extremely limited. I don't know much about Oertel's post playing career, but his autographs are also quite limited. Throneberry was a Miller Lite spokesman after his career, but passed away in 1994 after battling cancer, so it's possible that he was too ill to sign once the set came out. 

Again, if anyone knows if these signed cards do in fact exist, please let me know. Because after almost a decade of trying to track them down, I think they might just not be out there.

Unpossible Autograph Friday- Unpossible No More?

In a somewhat happy turn of events, I have now profiled all of the "unpossible" Orioles autographs in my collection, meaning that this feature will be suspended until it unfortunately becomes necessary again in the future.

However, since I have profiled a few of the former Orioles players who have passed away, I have been able to upgrade the autographs I have of them in my collection.

John Anderson's autographs are few and far between. His only Orioles card was in the Crown set and he largely "disappeared" near the end of his life around the time that set was issued, so I really don't know if he ever signed one of them. This small black and white autographed photo shows John during his time with the Miami Orioles, a minor league affiliate of the O's back in the day, and might be the closest I ever come to getting an Orioles autograph of him.

A knowledgeable autograph dealer that I have purchased from in the past recently told me that the autograph of Carl Powis that had been in my collection was likely not authentic, so I had to put him back on my need list. Enter this "beauty" of a cut autograph taped onto a 3x5 index card. Like John, Carl's autographs are in very limited supply, so this might be as good as it gets for me.

This signed Senators card of George Brunet joins a signed index card in my collection. George was featured on an Orioles card during his playing days and his autograph turns up marginally more often than those of the other two players shown here, so I'm still holding out hope that I can add his autographed O's card to my collection one day. I got this signed card at a great price but his autograph is generally quite pricey, so it might be a matter of finding one at the right price. 


To briefly explain the misspelled/made up title of these weekly posts: Every Friday, I profile a former Oriole who has passed away. I've substituted the word unpossible for impossible as an homage to a line from "The Simpsons". Young Ralph Wiggum, who is not very smart, says "Me fail English? That's unpossible." 

Unpossible Autograph Friday- John Anderson

Last week, I wrote about how I finally tracked down an autograph of tough-to-find Mickey McGuire. Well, in that same transaction, I was also able to finally add an autograph of John Anderson to my collection. To that point, John was one of the 6 former Orioles whose autograph had eluded me.

John pitched parts of three seasons in the Major Leagues for four different teams between 1958-62. He pitched in five games for the '58 Phillies, four with the '60 Orioles, and split the '62 season with the Cardinals (five games) and Astros (ten games).

In John's four games with the Orioles, he pitched 4.2 innings of relief, and gave up 8 hits, 4 walks, and 7 earned runs which worked out to a 13.50 ERA.

His minor league baseball career stretched from 1952-67 and he spent parts of four seasons pitching in the O's farm system for the Miami Marlins and Rochester Red Wings between 1959-62.

John's only major issue card release was in the 1962 Topps set that lists him as a member of the Cardinals, but I'm pretty sure that he is wearing an Orioles uniform in the image that Topps used. The one piece of his hair that is sticking almost straight up adds some flair to an otherwise boring card. The '62 rookie star adds some pizazz too I suppose.

John was also included in the 1991 Orioles Crown set, but I couldn't find an image of that, and I never scanned my own copy since it's not singed. Theoretically, since he was alive for seven years after the Crown set came out, there might be a few signed copies of it somewhere, but as I understand it, John disappeared for many years after his playing career and was only found again by collectors shortly before his passing, which is why his autographs are so scarce.

I'm very happen to finally have any autograph of John's in my collection and once again have to have to thank my dad for my birthday autograph funds which allowed me to add it to my collection.