Tis the Season to Get Suckered by IG Ad Posts

Do I really need an autographed Jimmy Fallon Christmas album?

Through some sort of luck – or maybe something more dastardly – an ad appeared in my Instagram feed, months ago, of Katy Perry, in various stages of bathing suits and formal wear, autographing copies of her upcoming album. It was clever — she was signing copies everywhere, she got exhausted, but the point was she was autographing a bunch of them and YOU CAN OWN ONE! for what I remember being about $25. 

I’m not a Katy Perry fan, but come on — a Katy Perry autographed vinyl for $25? It has to be worth more than that. And it kind of is? So I bought it and it arrived two months later.

But in between the ordering and the arrival? The Deluge. 

An Andrea Bocelli autographed CD popped up in my feed. Cheaper than you would think! Then Clay Aiken. Then a Martha Stewart cookbook. Then Elle MacPherson. And just this week, Jimmy Fallon’s Christmas album. All signed, all going for well below what eBay had established as market value for their autographs. 

You can get the digital version of Jimmy Fallon’s album for about $12. You can get the CD for $15. Or you can get the autographed CD for $18. So really the upside here is the signed copy, right? And dammit I went all the way to checkout with two of the autographed ones — until I got hit with $10 shipping. Call me old fashioned, but $36 for two Christmas CDs (one for me, one as a gift to… someone in the Fickle Family, who knows) is fine. But $46 plus the tax? Meh. Especially with the way you see the Katy Perry vinyl resale value crashing. And I guess this is that thing called “economics” that people talk so much about. A lot of supply, not a ton of demand. How many other people were likely served that Instagram ad? And then Katy Perry’s album bombed and she got a lot of public backlash for working with Dr. Luke, so that didn’t help with the resale value. WE NEED A COMEBACK! (and I don’t think we’re getting one).

The point of this all is… well… there are a few:

1. Maybe you didn’t know this signed album phenomenon/scourge existed and you’re a Jimmy Fallon/Christmas/Weird Al fan — and you don’t stand on Shipping Principle like JR Fickle does! You’re welcome.  

2. Maybe you knew this existed and it’s kind of like, “welcome to the shared hell we are all in, getting served autographed everything by celebrities on our Instagram feeds and we don’t know how to make it stop.”

3. Maybe you were wondering why the resale value of your Martha Stewart autograph collection was tanking.

Whatever the case, this does once again show that being a collector is sometimes weird and you can very easily find yourself buying a Katy Perry vinyl and then not wanting to keep it, gift it, play it, or even open it. There has to be a name for this, and if not… give us a week!

The Mail Day newsletter hasn’t been shy about our Leaf love — they do fun, unexpected stuff like pickleball cards, Savannah Bananas packs, bowling autographs and more. Their designs are cool, they get a lot of autographs — and they’re usually kind of cheap. So we’re obviously opening emails from them every time a new product is released. 

We were in on the pickleball cards, we missed the boat on Livvy Dunne, and we’re keeping our Savannah Bananas packs unopened for another 5-10 years. 

But every now and then there’s a card that leaves us perplexed. Today’s is the Pro Set Prep autographed Deshonne Redeaux card. And really all three of the new Pro Set Prep cards from Leaf. But the Redeaux one is the cheapest (at $19.99). 

Is it weird to buy autographed cards of high school football players? Yes, 1000%. And I think Redeaux is only 16 (class of 2026), but I’m not googling “Deshonne Redeaux age” — who knows what autographed album offers will be hitting my Instagram feed after that. 

Will this card be worth anything? I don’t know. Any of these players can fail to deliver in college, transfer a bunch, end up a backup in the NFL, or not even make the NFL. I wouldn’t buy one of these cards because they’re super cool; I’d buy it because that $20 will be worth $150 at some point. And there is zero way of knowing that right now. 

I say this all to ask you (and maybe this becomes a Mantel post all by itself) — can you see a scenario where an autographed high school football card of anyone outside of the very tippy top LeBron/Bryce Harper/Arch Manning studs, turns a profit that would be enough to cover eBay’s cut and shipping costs? I can’t… but perhaps there’s an angle I’m missing.

I took a trip to NYCC last week. And outside of the usual collectibles, two booths stood out as “very cool” this year. 

One was an artist called “ChuckU”, who has an etsy store, and I ended up grabbing a couple prints online (free shipping!) I liked that I didn’t see at his table. 

The other was a staple of NYCC – the unofficial Lego character booth. This year it was super-packed and bulged out so much that you had to do that sideways slide thing to shimmy past. I snapped a couple pics of some pieces I found uniquely neat. And then I couldn’t find the company online to link here. Even googling turned up empty. If you like what you see here and want to try and track it down, maybe you can hit the right search term. If you find it, let us know on Mantel. Full disclosure: I am not a Lego guy. I just think these are cool and really well done:

Final note: Happy Halloween, everyone! May you be giving away the packs of trading cards, and not hoarding them for yourselves!!