Los Angeles -- In 1990, Nate Sanders took the 12-year-old autograph business he'd been running from his Pikesville home and headed for California. No one exactly told him to "Go west, young man," but if you're running a business that depends on the rich and famous, it makes sense to hang out where they do.
"I figured there would be more business out here," he says, decked out in an L.A. business suit -- blue jeans, striped cotton shirt and no socks. "I wanted to get away from home and I liked L.A. My nights in Baltimore were filled with trips to the Fair Lanes, where here you can do something more exciting."
Today, Nate's Autographs employs six people, operates out of a fourth-floor apartment a few miles from Beverly Hills and sells about $1 million worth of autographs a year. Not bad for a 21-year-old guy who never went to college.
Of course, he gets a lot of help -- from people like Abraham Lincoln, the Wright Brothers, Rudolph Valentino, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein and scores of others who were considerate enough to sign their names a few thousand times, as well as those customers willing to spend thousands of dollars to obtain what it took these famous people seconds to create.
For Nate Sanders, his association with the autograph business began when he was still in elementary school. Using a cousin's book of celebrity addresses, he wrote to a handful of stars and ended up with autographs of Lillian Carter, Mel Blanc, Jimmy Stewart and others.
Mr. Sanders hasn't looked back.
"I was just always into it," he says from his apartment in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, trying to explain what made him decide to make a living from other people's penmanship. "As a kid, I could make relatively good dollars.
If you're a 13-year-old and you're going to a show and you're making $200 in a day, that's darn good."
'Most complete collection'
His parents, who still live in Pikesville, can't quite explain their son's avocation. But he's always been a collector -- including an early brush with "Star Wars" figurines -- and always seemed driven to have a better collection than anyone else.
"If he was to get involved in it, he had to get the best and most involved and most complete collection," says Hildagarde Sanders, who teaches biology at Villa Julie College. "Whatever little boys collected at the time, he had to have the best."
His father, Elli, a science teacher at Pikesville Middle School, says he encouraged Nathan to write away for celebrity autographs, but admits to an ulterior motive. "I thought that was a good idea, so he could become familiar with writing, communicating with the written word," says the elder Mr. Sanders, who subsidized those initial forays by contributing a nickel toward each stamp.
Are they surprised by their son's success? "Yeah, I think anyone would be surprised," Mrs. Sanders says. "When a kid goes out and is on his own, you wonder how he's going to do. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been a problem."
Easy-entry hobby
While not on a level with such burgeoning hobbies as comic books or sports memorabilia, autographs occupy a comfortable niche in the world of collecting. Hard-core hobbyists may be hard to find, but almost everyone owns an autograph or two, whether it's a Cal Ripken obtained after standing outside the gates of Camden Yards for a few hours or the Franklin Roosevelt handed down by a grandfather.
A hobbyists' group, the Universal Autograph Collectors Club, boasts a national membership of 1,700. Earlier this month, the UACC sponsored a show and sale at the Sheraton Inner Harbor -- one of 12 such shows it is sponsoring this year around the country. About a dozen dealers showed up, selling everything from a $10 Jaclyn Smith to a $1,000 Greta Garbo and beyond.
The money can be impressive. According to a recent article in Newsweek, the going rate for a George Washington signature is $6,500. James Dean's scrawl can fetch $2,950, probably tops among entertainment figures. Mark Twain would cost a collector around $1,500.
Mr. Sanders sold his first autograph at age 10, through the same cousin who had gotten him hooked in the first place. But he soon gave up the hobby in favor of the profit.
"I don't collect anymore," he says. "I always found that to be a conflict of interest. Whenever I tried to hold stuff back, I'd always have to end up selling it, because there would be someone who would want it and it would be ridiculous to hold onto it. You would start keeping more than you were selling and you would be out of business."
For Mr. Sanders, the growth from small-time autograph dealer to big-time moneymaker was steady. He started selling at the occasional collectibles or antiques show, graduated to a largely mail-order business promoted through catalogs published four times a year and has reached the point now where he deals exclusively with high-end pieces. A recent catalog includes not a single item priced under $500; in February, his second auction included a letter from Robert E. Lee that sold for $28,500. A letter from Buffalo Bill Cody, in which the Wild West promoter tries to lend frontier doctors the same sort of notoriety he'd already created for cowboys and Indians, has an asking price of $62,500.
Most of his stock, Mr. Sanders says, is obtained during periodic -- maybe four times a year -- buying trips. Just last month, during an eight-city East Coast spree, he landed a letter from George Washington to Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, written from Yorktown, Va.; a letter from John Hancock, written one day before the British surrendered to end the Revolutionary War; and a letter from Andrew Jackson, written just after the Battle of New Orleans, giving the British a flag to put on ships so no Americans would shoot at them.
"I think we're busy enough with just the high end," he says, estimating his business needs to bring in at least $1,000 a day to remain profitable. "There's not much point in trying to make 10 sales when all you have to do is try to make one.
"These things are skyrocketing, as far as values are concerned," he adds. "I think they said [Abraham] Lincolns have an average return of 14 percent in the last 50 years, which is way more than anything else would have given you per year."
Although young Nate started selling at shows while still a student in middle school -- his father says customers always assumed he was the dealer, and would be surprised to be referred to the teen-ager behind the table -- he credits Jerry Miller, his business teacher at Pikesville High School, with inspiring him to make names a career.
"The kid is amazing," says Mr. Miller, who estimates that his course on salesmanship is two-thirds selling technique and one-third how to get a job and how to get into college. "He always had an interest, he was always there with the questions."
West Coast called
Mr. Miller remembers Nate showing off the catalogs he had put together (he still sends his former teacher copies of his catalogs, even though the man who helped inspire Nate's Autographs never adopted the hobby himself). And Mr. Miller recalls his student itching to head for the West Coast.
"I remember him telling me that he wanted to move where it would be easier to get a hold of these collectibles and where people might be more receptive to them."
Even though autographs can mean big money, not all collectors are attracted by the potential for profit. For some, Mr. Sanders notes, it's the closest they may get to people they admired, or to people whose lives were an inspiration. With an autograph, he says, "you actually get to have a piece of history on your wall."
THE WRITE PRICE
Autograph prices vary from dealer to dealer and depend on the piece's condition and what has been signed -- photograph, letter, baseball, check. But assuming that what you're buying is simply a slip of paper containing a person's signature, here's what Nate Sanders estimates certain autographs are worth:
* Charles A. Lindbergh, aviator: $750
* Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. president and five-star general: $250
* Paul Newman, actor: $50
* Eleanor Roosevelt, first lady: $75
* Jackie Robinson, baseball player: $300
* Marilyn Monroe, actress: $2,750
* Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson, confederate general: $3,750
* Janis Joplin, rock singer: $1,000
* Diana, Princess of Wales: $750
* Groucho Marx, comedian: $250