STUFF Vol. 6
In 1991, Alpine developed and Sega released Mario Lemieux Hockey for the Genesis, a forgotten blip on the radar screen of gaming, an utter nonentity in the rare moments it actually is extensively remembered.
This might explain why I was able to nab this autographed puck for around $45 shipped in what I believe was 2005, in spite of the fact that
a) it's an oddball, officially licensed promotional item,
b) it's autographed by a legend of the sport, and
c) it's limited to 100.
A bargain, even if one dismisses any collector monetary value. But things get a little more interesting when authenticity is questioned. There are three possibilities regarding the authenticity of the signature: it's one of the hundred signed by Lemieux as part of the promotion, he signed a previously unsigned one after the game's release, or the John Hancock is bogus. Either one of the first two situations would be great. The third one, less so.
I don't remember much about the auction that led to my possession of this puck. I remember it was on ebay, the approximate price and my bidding thought process, the photograph and the vague description. Actually, that's quite a bit to remember. Anywho... The item description didn't guarantee the authenticity of the autograph. Not knowing much about it, and finding it in the waning minutes of the auction, I put down a bid for between $45-50, refusing to go higher in the event it wasn't authentic, expecting it to be quite a bit higher if it was. I won the auction with a bid at a shade over $40.
I put it in a box of stuff and forgot about it for the next five years or so. I found it and noticed some smearing around the signature (look just above the M in Mario), so I picked up a puck holder and placed the puck in it beside my desktop monitor, signature-side facing me. Looks nifty, I thought.
Curious about this thing's real value and other stories surrounding it, I dig around Google. I find no stories or accounts of value, or much of anything else about this promotion, but plenty of Mario Lemieux autographs. And I've got to say, most don't bode well for the puck of interest's authenticity.
Lemieux's signature is on much more of a straight line on my puck than it is in most pictures of his autograph online. The individual letters of his signature are also much more defined on the puck than in most representations of his autograph. This doesn't automatically mean it's fake: Sega might have asked Lemieux to make it look reasonably like the facsimile on the reverse side. After all, the Sega can't get a simple blue signature imprint to look like his actual signature, what can they do right? They might have asked him to sign the puck in more of a horizontal fashion than usual so as not to any of the other images. After all, when most athletes sign stuff, images are often ignored, especially when space is limited, as is the case here.
Plus, some of his signatures/forgeries do have a more legible letter structure, more like the puck in my possession:
Less interesting, but still likely more so than the game itself, is the package in which it comes, bought separately in a lot of Genesis games, I'll say this was $10, and it's surprisingly relevant to the question of the authenticity of my puck, which I'll discuss in a bit:
Clockwise from the top right: standard case in which to hold Genesis games; the Mario Lemieux Hockey cart (untested); the enlarged box with hole in the center, both the enlargement and puck are present to accommodate the puck, and a small note on the bottom of the outer box states the odds of that box holding a Mario-signed puck are 1:2,000, which my camera couldn't capture; the game's instruction booklet, an puck without he signature, and a pamphlet advertising a sports memorabilia dealer's autographed wares. That last item is important because of this:
To repeat a hackneyed phrase: kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it? I'll leave what about you wonder up to you.
But the puck and the legitimacy of the signature on it remains a mystery. If anybody knows the score about this item, please email me at arkfullofsorrow@arkfullofsorrow.com. I don't want this thing ending in a tie. This game was released when the NHL still allowed that, after all.