Never Trust a Table Sharpie!
It's officially 2020, and that means it's time for another Star Wars Celebration, which is only seven months away! While that may seem like a ways off, it'll be here before you know it, and we wanted to help educate and prepare you for your best Celebration experience possible.
This first installment is about being prepared, and in this case - always bring your own pen when getting your item signed. While it may seem like a small thing, the last thing you want when you go up to a signer with your own item (be it with multiple signatures already on it or a photo that you ordered from the Star Wars Authentics website), is them signing it in dead sharpie and saying that's that, or them re-signing on top of a botched signature.
Aside from that worst case scenario, here are some other reasons why it's good to bring your own pens:
You have the right tool for the job: Sometimes a Sharpie just won't turn out well on an item, such as a trading card. Having pen or a marker with a extra fine or fine tip will help you get the result that you want.
Your pen hasn't been used all day long (and possibly over the course of several days!): Through constant use and abuse as the celeb signs items, the tip of the marker is blunted, and delivers a poor quality signature.
Continuity of color: As you more and more involved in autograph collecting, you start developing preferences for certain pens and colors, and then getting items signed in non-standard colors. For example, I have a Battlestar Galactica photo that I've been working on, but it's all signed with a DecoColor Liquid Copper paint pen, which none of the signers would have at their table.
Color Preference: This isn't as much of a problem these days as it was when I first started going to conventions, but sometimes all signers will have at a table is a box of black sharpies, and that may not work well on darker images.
You can help out a fellow collector! I always carry extra brand new black, blue, and silver sharpies on me, because you never know when they will come in handy. For example, when Doug Chiang did a spontaneous signing after one of his panels at Celebration Chicago, all he had on him was a black sharpie, and one person who was ahead of me in the line had an item that was exclusively signed in blue. Upon seeing this, I quickly offered up a blue sharpie I had so that it wouldn't ruin the color scheme he had, and it would give him more options for signing other fans' items
With all of that being said, I have a small bag that I store all my pens in, along with other key signing items (Post-It Notes, Artist Erasers, Ballpoint pen), so that way, I always have my signing gear all in one place for fast in easy access. If you want one of your own handy pen cases, you can find here on Amazon. Hopefully this will help you out for the next time you’re going to get an item signed, as it’s definitely helped me out!
