Luis C. Garcia Finally Joins My Collection

About a month and a half ago, I showed off a long-awaited signed Orioles card of Bret Barberie, and teased the fact that I had added another long sought after autograph to my collection. Well I hope that no one was holding their breath waiting for me to show off that other signature, because six weeks is no short wait.

Without any further ado, I present to you my signed Orioles card of Luis C. Garcia. His has been one of the autographs that had remained just out of my reach since I restarted collecting Orioles autographs in 2008. I was able to track down a signed custom index card back in September 2011, but I had never seen one of his signed Orioles cards available until last November.

Once I saw this card available for sale, I recall being ridiculously excited, and pulling the trigger on the deal right away. There is still at least one other of his signed cards for sale online, and only a handful were available, so that kind of shows me the limited demand for his signature, but at least I know there are other Orioles autograph nuts out there.

There are a few factors that contributed to the difficulty of tracking down Luis's signed Orioles cards. First, he appeared in just six games for the 2002 Orioles, and played exclusively in Mexico after the '02 season. While he continued to play in Mexico through the 2011 season and seems to still be involved with baseball in his home country, there are precious few 'graphers who take care of former players in Mexico, and fewer still who are truly reliable.

Secondly, Luis Garcia is a somewhat common name for baseball players from Mexico, and why I list his name as Luis C. Garcia. Luis R. Garcia played in a handful of games for the 1999 Tigers, and Luis A. Garcia pitched for the Phillies in 2013. Not to mention the additional eight Luis Garcia's who have played in the minor leagues over the years. So even figuring out which Luis was the one who played for the Orioles was a challenge.

Lastly, Luis C. appeared on just two cards as an Oriole, this 2002 UD 40 Man card, and a 2002 Fleer Box Score card, of which both sets were relatively limited. So the simple matter of having an Orioles card of his to be signed was no simple matter.

All of these things worked against me for a long time, but I have to admit that made it all the sweeter once I finally had this card. Welcome to the collection, Luis.


(I plan to get back to my FanFest autographs soon. I would like to show them all off before I head down to Spring Training, in case you care!)

New Year, New Autographs

Wow, has it really been almost a month since my last post? Laziness The holidays really crept up on me this year and I feel like I've been behind on a lot of things lately. But anyway, here I am, and I have a few new Orioles autographs to show off in 2014. 

I recently had the luck to knock two names off of my need list, and both were guys whose signed Orioles cards have long eluded my collection. I will show them off in separate posts, if for no other reason but then to motivate myself to post a bit more frequently. 

I finally (FINALLY) have a signed Bret Barberie Orioles card in my collection. I have sent no fewer than 3 TTM requests to three different addresses in an effort to add a signed Orioles card of his to my collection and never had any luck while he seemed to sign sporadically for some other collectors. And his autograph is widely available on Expos or Marlins cards. If you want one of those signed it will cost you about $1 and take thirty seconds of searching. But his signed Orioles cards seem to be few and far between. 

Bret has at least four different cards that picture him as an Oriole, all of which were produced in 1995, and this is by far the least autograph friendly of the four but beggars can't be choosers. The signature is bubbled to boot but it matches up well with other examples of his signature and I got it for under $10 shipped. If I could pull that off with the rest of the players on my need list, I would gladly do that deal. 

So today, my need list is one autograph shorter. Here's hoping that I can track down a few more in 2014!

Happy 44th Birthday Bret Barberie

Some days, I don't have any great ideas for posts, so I check the Baseball-Reference.com birthdays page to see if any former Orioles are on the list. Today is Bret's big day, and I hope it's a good one for him.

Bret was one of the inaugural 1993 Florida Marlins; he played second base in their first ever game and recorded the first hit in team history. Not too many modern era players can lay claim to a mark like that, so that's pretty awesome.

I've been trying to track down a signed Orioles card of Bret for quite some time to no avail. Signed Marlins and Expos cards are plentiful but I have yet to find an Orioles autograph. If you know where one is, please let me know. Bret only played with the O's for the 1995 season, but was pictured on at least five cards in an Orioles uniform, so I have to figure that there must be a few signed copies out there somewhere!

Bret seems to be a hitting coach/fielding analyst for a Southern California sports agency, so maybe I can reach out to him through them.

In the very unlikely circumstance that Bret comes across this post, Happy Birthday to you.