Since 1994, I have sent out over 2,000 autograph requests and have received about 65% back and over 2,200 autographed cards and pictures! The reason why I receive more cards than requests for autographs is that I send more than one card per request whenever possible in case the player would like to keep one. Through experience, majority of the time, the player will autograph the additional card instead of keeping it.
Comparing different sports, hockey players seem to be the best signers (71%), baseball players second (63%), football players third (46%) and basketball players are notorious in not signing (34%) (but I’ve heard that the WNBA players do sign!).
Minor league players have a high tendency to sign autographs. For baseball players, my success rate for minor leaguers is around 69% and for hockey players, the rate is about 75%!
The average time that it takes from the day I send out a request for an autograph is about 60 days.
The longest period of time that a request took to be returned has been 948 days (almost three years!).
The shortest period of time has been 4 days.
