I find myself curious about the history of collecting autographs. When did it become a hobby? Who were the first really sought-after signatures, especially those which were sought separate from being attached to any historically significant document? When did it turn from hobby to business? And, you know, like that.
While I’m not hugely interested in the contents of anyone’s personal autograph collection, if anyone has any particularly fascinating autograph stories, feel free to share.
I got no historical info for you, so let me be the first to respond to the second paragraph of your OP.
I used to collect autographs; I got some good ones. One of the best stories is when I got Angela Lansbury’s. It was 1980; I was 17. She was in Chicago with Sweeney Todd (why I wanted her autograph). While she was there, her Miss Marple movie, *The Mirror Crack’d, *was released. As part of the publicity for that movie, she appeared one morning at the Marshall Field book department to autograph copies of the Agatha Christie paperback tie-in with the movie. (I know, right?) So I buy the book and get in line. When I reach her table, I pull my Sweeney Todd program out of my coat and ask her if she’ll sign that as well. She says, with something of a maternally indulgent frown, "Well, I’m only here to sign the book; I’m not really supposed to sign anything else. " I lean toward her and say in a theatrically conspiratorial whisper, “I won’t tell if you don’t.” She laughs and signs my program.
Lily Tomlin told me she didn’t sign autographs, so I got her thumbprint.
Then there was the time my friend Tom and I invited Bette Midler to lunch . . .
From an 1849 US newspaper:
“A gentelman of Savannah, who has been collecting autographs during 25 years past, has now 35,000 of them, valued at the saleable price of $200,000. They embrace the chirography of all the signers of the great Declaration of Independence; the framers of the Constitution; all the Kings of England, &c.”
The Button Gwinnett autograph(rarest signer of the Declaration) alone is worth more than that price today.