 Pittsburgh Penguins' Hall of Fame center Mario Lemieux
Ron's
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Welcome to Ron's Sports Autographs! I'm mostly a collector of autographs from the Pittsburgh Penguins, Pirates and Steelers, and I also spend considerable time collecting from their minor league affiliates. But as you'll see in visiting my site, I collect lots of other players from all sports as well. Most of my in-person autograph collecting happens at the AA minor-league baseball level at Harrisburg's Commerce Bank Park and I also do in-person collecting of AHL players at Hershey's Giant Center. I have been sending out an increasing number of requests through the mail as my interest in the hobby has grown. Thanks for checking out my site and I hope you'll check back from time to time to see how my collection is growing. If you're a fellow sports autograph collector, all the best to you as you seek to build your own collection. 02-28-08 - A nice bunch of hockey cards arrived as part of our ongoing trade with an out-of-town NHL collector. We received signed cards from Niklas Backstrom, Cam Barker, Rene Bourque, Keith Carney, Kurtis Foster, Josh Harding, Kim Johnsson, Milan Jurcina, Duncan Keith, Nikolai Khabibulin, Cliff Malarchuk, Mark Parrish, Branko Radivojevic and Andrei Zyuzin. A few TTM hockey returns have also arrived recently including J.P. Levasseur, Andy Moog and Brian Propp. We also received two signed cards from former Pittsburgh Pirates' southpaw Randy Tomlin in a whopping 776 days, which is my record for longest wait to receive a successful response.
The Bears are now on the road for a record-setting nine games, so there won't be any in-person signing opportunities for us for the next few weeks, but hopefully, our mailbox will be brimming with returns from spring training. 02-24-08 - We saw the Hershey Bears squander a 3-0 lead against the visiting Philadelphia Phantoms on Saturday, with Philly claiming a mind-numbing, come-from-behind 5-3 win to pad their division lead over second-place Hershey. Afterwards, we picked up signed items from the Phantoms' Chad Anderson, Brian Boucher, Denis Gauthier, Triston Grant, Kyle Greentree, Martin Grenier, Lars Jonsson, Boyd Kane, David Laliberte, Scott Munroe, Alexandre R. Picard, Ryan Potulny, Darroll Powe, Darren Reid and Jared Ross. The 07-08 Phantoms team card set looks pretty cool, if you're not looking to have the card signed. I'm not big on cards that are so dark that they must be signed in a light color marker. But, they turned out OK signed. After the Philadelphia bus left the Giant Center, we scooted around the corner of the arena to the Hershey exit and picked up autographs from Dean Arsene, Josef Boumedienne, Frederic Cassivi, new assistant coach Mark French, Tyler Sloan, and new Bears' defenseman Danny Syvret.
I managed to squeeze in a few TTM requests a little while back and three of them found their way back to my mailbox since my last update. We received signed cards from New Jersey Devils head coach Brent Sutter, former NHL enigma Petr Klima and former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive back Dwayne Woodruff. A busy weekend lies in store for us with two home games in Hershey against the division-leading Philadelphia Phantoms on Saturday night and then the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins on Sunday. And we've just received the 2007-08 team cards sets for these squads. Check back to see how we did.
Before the skies opened up, two of my kids managed to get cards signed by Hershey's Ben Clymer and Ryan Flinn. In the mailbox since my last update, I was happy to see that Pittsburgh Penguins' rookie defenseman Kristopher Letang did personalize and sign two of three cards we had sent just last week.
Next up for us, the Portland Pirates will be in Hershey to play the Bears on Wednesday night, then the Worcester Sharks visit the Bears on Sunday.
We also received our end of great trade from a collector in Michigan who graphs the Grand Rapids Griffins. We picked up signed from John Anderson, Danton Cole, Matt Ellis, Valtteri Filppula, Eric Himelfarb, Jim Howard, Jiri Hudler, Jakub Kindl, Derek King, Tomas Kopecky, Niklas Kronwall, Marc Lamothe, Donald MacLean, Evan McGrath, Kip Miller, Michel Picard, and Brad Shaw. A very nice trade .... thanks! In the mailbox, we picked up a return from former Pirate and Dodger Manny Mota. I've also posted a certified autograph from the LA Angels' Joe Saunders. Tomorrow night, the Albany River Rats visit Hershey and we've got a nice bunch of cards to try to get signed.
After the Bears game, we picked up autographs from Norfolk's Marc Denis (got plenty of extras if anyone cares to trade), Junior Lessard and Paul Szczchura. This week, we received a TTM success from new Cincinnati Reds' manager Dusty Baker and, in a trade, signed cards for baseball prospects Michael Bowden (Red Sox), Rob Johnson (Mariners), Jed Lowrie (Red Sox), Garrett Olson (Twins), David Purcey (Blue Jays) and Travis Wood (Reds).
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02-27-08
- Sunday night, we enjoyed a frenetic last three minutes of the Hershey
Bears - Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins battle as the Bears managed to hold off
the Baby Pens by a 3-2 margin. We had just received two of the WBS team
card sets, so we were all set for a big haul and despite their loss, no problems
in getting lots of autographs from the Baby Penguins. We scored successes
from 
02-20-08
- I'm a little late in posting our successes from the Hershey Bears' game
against the visiting Worcester Sharks on February 10, but the schedule's been
pretty jam-packed the last couple of weeks with tons to do at work and lots of
basketball practices and games to coach. Against Worcester, we did pretty
well, picking up autographs from the Sharks'
02-07-08
- A depressing loss for the Hershey Bears on Wednesday night as the visiting
Portland Pirates rallied from a 3-1 deficit to pull out a 4-3 victory.
Following the game, a wind-driven downpour almost caused us to miss out on
getting any of the Pirates' players. Thankfully, the small group of
autograph seekers was able to prevail upon Hershey security to nudge inside the
arena roll-up doorway to get out of the rain and salvage a few autographs.
Most of us couldn't get far enough inside to miss a few raindrops falling on our
stuff to be stuffed - as my custom index cards show. We did get signed
items from Portland's 
02-03-08
- We had the chance to work on our first visiting team's 07-08 card set with the
Albany River Rats. Following Hershey's win over the Rats, we did very
well, picking up signed cards from Albany's
02-01-08
- Last Saturday, we enjoyed watching the Hershey Bears overcome a 3-0 deficit to
beat the Binghamton Senators 5-3. After the game, we picked up just a few
successes from the Senators'
01-25-08
- Everyone in the family got involved in chasing down autographs
on Wednesday night this week. While my youngest son and I went
to the Hershey Bears game against the Norfolk Admirals, my wife and
other two kids went to York Sports Night - an annual event in town
that brings in some pretty big names and this year was no exception.
At Sports Night, my wife and kids picked up successes from Hall of
Famers