If you were, like me, a UNC Tar Heels baskeball fan, what two autographs would you want most? Michael Jordan and Dean Smith, right? Smith is the fabled coach, winner of two NCAA championships, and Jordan is, well, Jordan. I have their signatures, plus those of Jim Valvano, Lawrence Taylor, Fran Tarkenton, Roman Gabriel, and Ron Jaworski, all of whom played in a celebrity golf tournament in Greensboro, NC some twenty-five years ago.
My parents went to the tournament, approaching the stars one by one, including Jordan, who was in the foothills of fame at the time. (My father marveled at the size of Jordan’s hands, and I imagined one engulfing my adolescent head.) The names are written on a yellowing paper visor, a tournament giveaway. For years, the visor was lost, a victim of too many moves in too few years, but last year I found it, framed the frangible item, and hung it on a wall in my study.
Are sports autographs worth money? If they aren’t fakes, sure. There are several keys to the value of my autographs. One is the signers’ popularity. Smith is a coaching icon and Jordan a worldwide celebrity. Taylor and Tarkenton are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and the image of Valvano rushing around the court after that unlikely 1983 championship is a March Madness staple. Another key is the signed item itself. Compared to cards, jerseys, and balls, a paper visor is unremarkable, but that is offset by the third key: scarcity. How many documents are signed by Smith and Jordan, two of basketball’s greats? Cancer shortened Valvano’s career, making his signature uncommon, and Gabriel’s prime was in the 1960s, when football players were B-list at best and didn’t get many signing opportunites.
I won’t say I will never sell the visor. All those stars will be gone someday, their deeds reborn as legends. The autographs remind us that those legendary figures were once men you could talk to and touch, men with families and bills and birthdays same as us. I can’t keep that magic to myself forever, but for now, it lies behind glass on a blue background (Tar Heel blue, natch). And every time I re-watch Jordan’s dunk on Patrick Ewing or his jumper over Craig Ehlo in the 1989 playoffs, I say to myself, he writes his E’s just like I do.