Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Welcome!

Hi, I’m Shelley. Welcome to my autograph blog! I'll start my first entry with a little bit about my autograph collecting and how I started. I sent my first autograph request out in 1999. It was shortly after I came back from a family vacation at Disney World, during which I had seen Davy Jones (from the Monkees) perform in concert there at Epcot. I was in elementary school at the time, and oddly a big fan of the Monkees. I really wanted Davy Jones autograph but had been unable to get it. My Dad told me how one of his friends collected celebrity autographs through the mail, and he suggested I write a letter to Davy. I searched online and came across the database The Star Archive as well as collector's personal websites. I found an address for Davy, wrote and letter and sent along a brochure from Epcot and a photo. Months later I received both of my items back in the SASE I provided along with a black and white postcard size picture that he included- all authentically signed. I don’t have a scan of any of these as they are packed away separately from the rest of my autographs, since it was before I really began to collect.

Then in April of 2001 I decided to send out some more requests. As I received responses back I became hooked on the hobby and have been sending out requests ever since. Once I began collecting I wanted to construct a website to share my successes with other collectors, but it became to time consuming and I was never quite happy with the results so it never really took off. Then recently I came across autograph collectors who displayed their successes through blogs. It seemed like a creative and less time consuming way to share my successes with other collectors, so I'm going to give it a try! I collect autographs of everyone from Actors, Actresses, Voice Actors/Actresses from Disney movies to singers and American Idol contestants. I even have a few off-beat oddities like ex-con man Frank Abagnale-from whom the movie Catch Me If You Can is based after, Art Clokey- the creator of claymation shows such as Gumby and David and Goliath to Marcus Hamilton and Ron Ferdinand- cartoonists of the comic strip Dennis the Menace...I will be posting the new successes I receive as well as those that I have already collected thus far. I will work on getting scans of my autographs up on my blog. In the meantime, you can check out some of my favorite autograph collecting sites under my links section!

Happy Collecting! :)

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