On-card autos vs. Sticker autos

I will sum up my feelings on this issue with a couple pictures and some more words.


Here's a 2005 Topps Marquise Hill autograph. And I hate to use the card of the dead guy as an example here, but it was the best one to use for aesthetic purposes, so what can you do. But just look at this thing. The sticker is all crooked, it doesn't really fit the design of the card, and the ink itself is all screwed up, with the autograph getting cut off by the restricting border of the sticker itself. And look at that autograph. I tried to find something that looked like a letter in there, but none could be found. But let's give the guy the benefit of the doubt here. Here's another copy of this card I found on Ebay:


And another, that also showcases the most spectacular Ebay salesmanship photography ever:


These cards, to me, illustrate two things: The guy clearly started out signing the stickers with a fully-formed "MH" signature, and while that is sort of lazy, it's at least something identifiable. What happened here in all likelihood is that someone threw a big ass sheet of stickers in front of the guy, and the guy started going to town on them. And did you ever misbehave in school badly enough to to get a "here, copy this a billion times" punishment? And how did that work out? The first few looked perfect, but as boredom, frustration, the urge to hurry, and physical soreness set in, the copies toward the end got sloppy. And that same process led to the vague scribble on the sticker of the card I pulled. Second, take a look at that sticker on the second card, coming from the same year's Topps Total set. It's the exact same sticker. (and the exact same photo, too, which is a whole different kind of card company laziness) Probably from the same sticker sheet that the regular Topps version came from, too. And that shows just how impersonal and meaningless a sticker auto can be. The player has no idea what kind of card this is going on, where it's going on the card, what it looks like, how expensive a product it's going into, nothing. Why should a guy take extra care to have a nice looking autograph when writing his name a hundred times on a shiny silver sheet? What's that, you say? Maybe Marquise Hill just had a lazy autograph? Well, take a look at this other Ebay find, toward the right side of the helmet:

Why look, it's an actual signature where he actually wrote his name, lined up just right to look nice on somebody's helmet. Hell, he even added the extra touch of class that "Geaux Tigers!" adds. See, that's what happens when a guy knows what he's signing.
Now, take a look at this beauty:

Now, that's a much nicer-looking autographed card. Not the neatest handwriting, but hey, all his autographs look like that, so it probably wasn't the result of a guy's hand turning into a twisted claw from signing a thousand stickers in ten minutes. He signed his whole name, added the jersey number inscription, and lined it up real nice on the card, seemingly even working it around the Topps Pristine logo on the bottom. Because, you see, he knew what he was signing. I mean, which would you take more pride in? The signing of a sticker or the signing of a chromed-up card with a Pro Bowl jersey swatch glued to it that even someone who knew nothing about cards would automatically know was something special? And with the sticker autos, the player himself never actually touched the card. He just wrote his name a bunch of times, followed by some intern slapping them on a huge stack of cards, possibly while cursing God in the process. But with this one, man, he actually held that card in his hand and looked at it with his own two eyes. Do you understand what I am saying here? Olin Kreutz actually picked this card up before.

The hand that broke Fred Miller's jaw actually held this card.

And that sort of amazing awesomeness simply cannot be had with a sticker auto.