Holiday Auction Closing December 7 ,2019
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/7/2019
The late 1980’s and early 1990’s was considered by many the golden age of collecting, where every town had a memorabilia store that was thriving and starting line ups had changed the game by introducing licensed figurines with trading cards. Both Gartlan and Salvino quickly jumped into the game and introduced figurines with an autograph shaking up the competition. Of those figurines, both the Muhammad Ali and the rare Roy Campanella were the centerpieces of the collections alongside the Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams figurines.
Two of their sports premier Athletes, Muhammad Ali and Roy Campanella, while both took very different paths, they ultimately are highly sought after in the autograph and collectible marketplaces. Since Campanella was paralyzed from the neck down he was unable to sign from the late 1950s until the late 1980’s when a special apparatus was designed for him to be able to produce signatures, making his autographs highly desirable. An additional rarity on the Campanella signed figure is that it is also signed by the artist James Rogers. Both of these figurines come from the personal collection of Willie Randolph and a signed LOA from Randolph will accompany these items. There are also individuals LOAs from Beckett Authentication (A25580, A25577), who have graded Ali's signature a GEM MINT 10.