PHOTOS WITH THE STARS - - Gretzky, Koufax, Spielberg, Earnhart, Joel, Slash, Ryan and President Carter.

PHOTOS WITH THE STARS - - Hetfield, Ozzy, Ford, Hanks, Nicklaus & Hamill

I'm Dean Mickey Zippo and zog2007 is my eBay seller's name.  zog stands for Zippo's Original Graphs.  I've been collecting autographs in-person for almost 25 years and making my living selling them for almost 20 years. 

Fresh out of college in the early 80's I worked as a salesman for Pitney Bowes and my office was near the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York City.  At that time every major league baseball team stayed at the Hyatt when playing in town.  I would walk up the street to Grand Central Station in order to take the subway to my sales territory.  In front of the Hyatt, which is built right over part of GCS, there was always a crowd of guys.  Eventually I stopped to see what they were doing and found they were getting autographs from ballplayers on their baseball cards.  I loved baseball cards.  I always did.  I loved opening a new pack, I loved the pictures, the smell and the stats.  What a thrill as a kid to peal open a new pack of cards to find a Mickey Mantle card. 

I also loved getting autographs.  In the late 60's my Dad would take my brother and I to Hofstra University during the summer to see the NY Jets practice for the start of their season.  They would sell the remainders of the previous seasons yearbook cheap, so that's what I would work on for the summer and we usually did pretty good.  I still have a yearbook signed by the majority of the Super Bowl team.  Mainly because Joe Namath's ballpoint was a little light so I traced over it to make it darker.  My Dad, who has since past, also signed it.  For some reason this particular day the players weren't signing so my Dad signed it so we didn't walk away with nothing.  Joe Namath, Al Atkinson, Don Maynard and Emil Zippo, what a great piece.

On the few occasions we got out to Yankees Stadium, god bless him, Tom Tresh could always be relied upon for a signature and then a little later on Roy White.  I still have a few programs from those days and Tom or Roy are on all of them.  I've since met and worked with both and they are still great guys.

So the things I enjoyed as a kid, ended up growing into my business.  Since those days I've worked at card shows all over the country and I've done thousands of signings with ballplayers.  I've even done signings for my favorite card company Topps.  You know the signed cards you can get in a pack of cards today, many are from signings I did.

PLEASE CHECK OUT MY OTHER EBAY AUCTIONS:

SELER NAMES:  PASTIMEAUCTION & 99CENTSSTORE99