About Time (and autographs).

Blogging about baseball and hockey cards without a scanner lends to some difficulties.

I will admit, however, I do not hate it nearly as much as I intended.

The use of digital (handheld) photography for posting cards does have one perk, in which the repetitive narrative of "the scan doesn't do this card justice" is completely thrown out the window.

Bowman Platinum is one of those sets, along with many refractors from Topps and Bowman Chrome and Finest, in which scanning the cards doesn't quite give the true light-bending properties of the card.

Take this Brett Lawrie relic-auto. While the sticker may not be incredibly obvious in a scan - neither would the eversweet rainbow stock of the card. This is a blue parallel, numbered to /199, and I landed it for the price of what a base version usually runs. There are also green (eww) and gold parallels, but since Brett is rocking the Jays deep blue batting practice Jays jersey (which matches the swatch! rejoice!) the blue version looks the best other than the base refractor, which seems kind of rare lately.

But what is it that I love the most about this card? Check out that autograph. For Brett Lawrie, that thing is immaculate. Let's take a look at his more recent inkings:

Ugh. This may taint my quest for the reverse-box of 2013 Tribute.

What the hell is that

AHH! Look away!

The thing is, Brett Lawrie collectors, or possibly autograph collectors in general, have taken notice. Brett's Red Bull-induced autographing process since 2011 (I am assuming the '12 Bowman Platinum in the first picture is from a set of 2011 stickers) has led to lower values of his cards, rather than the cleaner, crisper autographs you find on the early-2012 and 2011 releases. Perhaps this coincides with his call-up in late summer of 2011 and the flurry of off-field action he may be seeing, including appearances, endorsements and so on. He is the Canadian Jesus, after all.

Oh, and in case you're wondering what those other clean autographs look like, behold 2012 Gypsy Queen:

Holy YES.

and his 2011 Bowman 1stie:

This would make no one blue.

Or maybe it's the ever-growing number of tatts messing up is penmanship.