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Photos, autographs, etc.
So I'm trying to figure out if I got the better or worse deal here. I think I came out ahead, but.
Basically, a few weeks ago, a bunch of baseball players from the Tokyo Big 6 university league went to Hawaii to play a series against some local teams there. (I think it really was just an excuse for some guys to go to Hawaii in all honesty.) Anyway, among those players were Yuki Saito, Kazuhito Futagami, and Yusuke Nomura -- three of the most famous college baseball players in the country. And me being the big college baseball dork I am here, I've taken photos of all of them on the mound at one point or another. So a guy living in Hawaii who found my blog sent me an email like "Hey, can I buy some of your Tokyo Big 6 photos off you? Get the originals of some of these so I can get them printed? I wanna get autographs when these guys come here and I like to get action shots signed."
I replied, "Actually, there's a player going there who I'm totally in love with named Tatsuya Ohishi, from Waseda University. How about I give you the photos and you get some autographs for me too?" He said he'd be happy to do that, and also asked if I had photos of any other players coming to Hawaii from the Big 6 team.
So, I looked at the roster and basically sent this guy photos of 9 players: Hosei's Kazuhito Futagami, Shota Waizumi, captain Shuhei Ishikawa, batting champs Shingo Kamegai and Masatoshi Matsumoto. Todai's sole representative Shuhei Iwasaki. Waseda's Yuki Saitoh and Tatsuya Ohishi. Meiji's Yusuke Nomura, as famous for losing Koshien 2007 as Saitoh is for winning 2006.
Well, get this -- he not only got the photos printed out 8x10, but got them ALL signed for me. (He printed out 3 copies of each -- one to get signed for himself, one for me, and one to give to the player.) And to add to that... he gave me a bunch of signed 8x10 action shots from the Hawaii Winter League 2006-2008. Takumi Kohbe and Yasutaka Hattori from the Lotte Marines (and Ryohei Tanaka, former Marine and now Baltimore Oriole) Ryo Hijirisawa from Rakuten, Tomoaki Egawa from Softbank, Keisaku Itokazu, Kazunori Yamamoto, Mitsuo Yoshikawa, and Atsushi Ugumori from the Fighters, Makoto Moriyama, Tomotaka Sakaguchi, and Yasunari Takagi from Orix. The Kohbe one is a total winner, though the weird thing is that a bunch of the guys signed in English. I got Yoshikawa's signature on a shikishi in Kamagaya two months ago and it isn't in English... Yamamoto wrote his HWL one in both languages. Ugumori signed the HWL one "Ugu #13" -- I got his signature a few weeks ago too and he wrote "Ugu #65". His name is a pain to write (鵜久森) so I guess it works. Tanaka actually wrote "T. Ryo", kind of funny.
The college signatures, by and large, just look some dude wrote his name on the photo -- it's not like normal Japanese baseball player signatures with these huge scrawly things, but are just legible kanji. Shingo Kamegai's looks like a "signature" but it's the only one. I wonder how early guys here start making and practicing a "signature" per se. The guy told me that "Ohishi wrote a bunch of stuff on it but I can't tell what it says" -- well, it just says "早稲田大学 大石達也１５", or his university and name. Nomura also wrote 明治大学 on his.
It's also weird because some of the photos look great at 8x10 and some of them don't look nearly crisp enough. I feel a little guilty about not having a better Saitoh one but it's so hard to get close to him. (He used this one.) Either way, I'd never actually printed out large versions of any of the baseball photos I've taken -- now I'm thinking, maybe I should! Hmmm. I'm not a huge autograph collector as I'd rather have my photo with a player than a signature. Not sure which one annoys players more to have requested... though at least they know a photo together is for ME and not for anyone else, like a signature that can be sold.
Anyway, all of this aside -- I'm still trying to decide, did I come out ahead in this or not? I'm not sure how much one would usually sell photos for, so I basically gave him 9 photos to use to get signed -- and he printed 3 copies of each at $1.50 per photo, got them signed, and sent me 12 extra signed HWL doubles, for $20 shipping. I dunno, he's an experienced autograph collector and I'm not, so if he felt it was a fair trade it probably was. The Futagami photo in particular I am super-proud of... especially since he'll probably go pro this year here. (This is what it looked like unsigned)
Wheeeeeee.
I should write more about today at some point but this was the exciting point of the evening, getting the package in the mail tonight!
Basically, a few weeks ago, a bunch of baseball players from the Tokyo Big 6 university league went to Hawaii to play a series against some local teams there. (I think it really was just an excuse for some guys to go to Hawaii in all honesty.) Anyway, among those players were Yuki Saito, Kazuhito Futagami, and Yusuke Nomura -- three of the most famous college baseball players in the country. And me being the big college baseball dork I am here, I've taken photos of all of them on the mound at one point or another. So a guy living in Hawaii who found my blog sent me an email like "Hey, can I buy some of your Tokyo Big 6 photos off you? Get the originals of some of these so I can get them printed? I wanna get autographs when these guys come here and I like to get action shots signed."
I replied, "Actually, there's a player going there who I'm totally in love with named Tatsuya Ohishi, from Waseda University. How about I give you the photos and you get some autographs for me too?" He said he'd be happy to do that, and also asked if I had photos of any other players coming to Hawaii from the Big 6 team.
So, I looked at the roster and basically sent this guy photos of 9 players: Hosei's Kazuhito Futagami, Shota Waizumi, captain Shuhei Ishikawa, batting champs Shingo Kamegai and Masatoshi Matsumoto. Todai's sole representative Shuhei Iwasaki. Waseda's Yuki Saitoh and Tatsuya Ohishi. Meiji's Yusuke Nomura, as famous for losing Koshien 2007 as Saitoh is for winning 2006.
Well, get this -- he not only got the photos printed out 8x10, but got them ALL signed for me. (He printed out 3 copies of each -- one to get signed for himself, one for me, and one to give to the player.) And to add to that... he gave me a bunch of signed 8x10 action shots from the Hawaii Winter League 2006-2008. Takumi Kohbe and Yasutaka Hattori from the Lotte Marines (and Ryohei Tanaka, former Marine and now Baltimore Oriole) Ryo Hijirisawa from Rakuten, Tomoaki Egawa from Softbank, Keisaku Itokazu, Kazunori Yamamoto, Mitsuo Yoshikawa, and Atsushi Ugumori from the Fighters, Makoto Moriyama, Tomotaka Sakaguchi, and Yasunari Takagi from Orix. The Kohbe one is a total winner, though the weird thing is that a bunch of the guys signed in English. I got Yoshikawa's signature on a shikishi in Kamagaya two months ago and it isn't in English... Yamamoto wrote his HWL one in both languages. Ugumori signed the HWL one "Ugu #13" -- I got his signature a few weeks ago too and he wrote "Ugu #65". His name is a pain to write (鵜久森) so I guess it works. Tanaka actually wrote "T. Ryo", kind of funny.
The college signatures, by and large, just look some dude wrote his name on the photo -- it's not like normal Japanese baseball player signatures with these huge scrawly things, but are just legible kanji. Shingo Kamegai's looks like a "signature" but it's the only one. I wonder how early guys here start making and practicing a "signature" per se. The guy told me that "Ohishi wrote a bunch of stuff on it but I can't tell what it says" -- well, it just says "早稲田大学 大石達也１５", or his university and name. Nomura also wrote 明治大学 on his.
It's also weird because some of the photos look great at 8x10 and some of them don't look nearly crisp enough. I feel a little guilty about not having a better Saitoh one but it's so hard to get close to him. (He used this one.) Either way, I'd never actually printed out large versions of any of the baseball photos I've taken -- now I'm thinking, maybe I should! Hmmm. I'm not a huge autograph collector as I'd rather have my photo with a player than a signature. Not sure which one annoys players more to have requested... though at least they know a photo together is for ME and not for anyone else, like a signature that can be sold.
Anyway, all of this aside -- I'm still trying to decide, did I come out ahead in this or not? I'm not sure how much one would usually sell photos for, so I basically gave him 9 photos to use to get signed -- and he printed 3 copies of each at $1.50 per photo, got them signed, and sent me 12 extra signed HWL doubles, for $20 shipping. I dunno, he's an experienced autograph collector and I'm not, so if he felt it was a fair trade it probably was. The Futagami photo in particular I am super-proud of... especially since he'll probably go pro this year here. (This is what it looked like unsigned)
Wheeeeeee.
I should write more about today at some point but this was the exciting point of the evening, getting the package in the mail tonight!