Sunday, January 30, 2011

Orioles FanFest 2011 pt. 1

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Orioles Fanfest 2011. While it is a 2 and half to 3 hour drive, I still think its worth it to make the trip up I-95. This year the Orioles instituted a new autograph policy in which you had purchase one of the 250 available tickets for each session. For 15 bucks and peace of mind, I think the new policy is fine. A lot of people were complaining that they didn't know they had to preorder the autograph tickets, but these days you have to pay attention to what is going on with your team.

Here's a picture of the free giveaways that I was able to get in between my autograph sessions:

During last season the O's had 3 different bobblehead nights. Apparently they had tons of these things left over because I saw people carrying around all they could carry of these things. I think it is a little unfair that these people were just going through the line time after time grabbing all they could just so they could sell them on eBay. (Strangely enough I haven't seen a single one for sale all day. I'm wondering if ebay is not allowing these for sale since they know these were given away for free this weekend.) I was able to get two of them and only need the Riemold to complete the set. The smaller bobblehead on the left was from the Aberdeen Ironbirds display. It is of Nick Markakis and they were 2 bucks because the bat was broken off. I super-glued the bat back on! I also grabbed the palm tree bottle opener from the good people at the Sarasota (O's spring training site) booth.

I also bought this out of print Sports Illustrated that I had never seen before from a memorabilia dealer. 2 dollars and its in great shape. I haven't read all of the articles yet but it's got the Ironman on the front, how could I resist?

Now, the Orioles had a game used memorabilia sale running where you could dig through piles of stuff until you found something you might want. I had some spare time near the end of the day so I rummaged through the $20 game used / BP worn jerseys. I was able to find this Rhyne Hughes BP Jersey at the bottom of one of the piles. I couldn't resist. This may be Rhyne's only BP jersey because he was only with the team for about 2 or 3 weeks this season. Anyways since his name is so close to mine I had to have it for my wardrobe.
Next up I'll show off some of the autographs I got.

4 comments:

  1. Love the Markakis and Jones "At the Wall" bobbles. The wall is perfect for autographs They were just giving them away? Wow.

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  2. $15 bucks for how many Autos? That's not a bad deal if you know ahead of time. I went to a car show, where John Schneider and Erika Eleniak were both signing, but for $25 per signature, and it cost me $8 to get in the front door. I would not have wasted my time driving down there if I'd known they wanted that much money to sign stuff. I'm not above paying for an autograph, but to not post pricing anywhere ahead of time is just wrong and kind of makes you feel cheated.

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  3. It was nice meeting up with you at Fan Fest, even if it was only for a minute. Thanks so much for all the awesome cards! I'll be sending something your way in the near future.

    db- Even when the O's give stuff away they don't attract 25k fans anymore.

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  4. Do the fans in Baltimore just not care about the O's anymore? Last time I was in Baltimore there seemed to be some interest, but for the most part it really seemed to be a Raven's town.

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