Lt. Dan Approves This Card

I'm not the only one going out and getting solid autographs from Donruss Americana for less than the price of a pack more likely to have a costume piece from someone I've never heard of, am I? Here's another one:

That'd be Gary Sinise, Academy Award nominee, star of CSI: NY, Apollo 13, The Green Mile and seemingly every other made-for-cable movie about a politician. I'd also mention Mission to Mars and Reindeer Games but I'm working on forgetting those ones.

Being one of three people in North America who doesn't watch any of the CSIs, Sinise is best known for this role:

Believe it or not, there's CSI: NY cards out there. Released a couple of years ago by British manufacturer Strictly Ink. Sinise was scheduled to sign, redemptions were included, many sold on eBay for more than $50, then Sinise never signed. After more than a year and many promises from the manufacturer (if you want to sift through the details you can in this long discussion thread starting around page 15) this is what collectors were sent instead:

It's a cool looking card, right? Perhaps but it's not Sinise's autograph. It's a preprinted facsimile. And yes, that's a hologram on the bottom of the card promising that it's a real "not real" autograph. To be fair - at least a little bit - to Strictly Ink, apparently they included another fake autograph card and a few promos as well. But the owner also promised in the thread linked above much more than that.

I don't know the story as to why Sinise never signed the CSI cards, but it's another example of why redemptions suck.