History of Autograph Collecting in Sports
People have been collecting autographs for longer than you may realize
The hobby of collecting autographs has a history perhaps much further back than you have ever realized. As far back as the times of the Roman Empire, when people used individually designed signet rings to seal in wax their official documents and letters, collector’s emerged who wanted to collect these signet rings.
Even Julius Ceasar himself had six cabinets full of his signet ring collection. Even the word signature itself comes from this time, as it has its roots in the Latin word “signo”, which means “to designate” or “to mark upon”.
After the Roman Empire times, during the Renaissance period, a signature on an original piece of art or book manuscript increased the value significantly. Throughout Europe, original literary works signed by the author were highly prized and carefully protected.
During the 18th century, wealthy elites continued this tradition and assembled great collections of correspondence and written words of literary greats.
