Hobby Musings: Tim Virgilio Continues SFS’s Amazing Ride in 2023 – Tim Virgilio has been one the better feel-good stories in the hobby over the past decade. With his Signatures for Soldiers initiative, Mr. Virgilio has been able to turn autographs and memorabilia into a highly worthy cause. I had the chance to catch up with him to talk about SFS’s latest progress, as well as what’s next for them.
Hobby Musings: Tim Virgilio Continues SFS’s Amazing Ride in 2023 – Interview
Hobby Musings: Tim Virgilio Continues SFS’s Amazing Ride in 2023 – Interview Transcript
Editor’s Note: Some text has been altered from original audio for clarity.
TV: Thanks for having me on Kelsey. Always great to see you and talk to you and appreciate the opportunity to talk more about Signatures for Soldiers.
KS: So, Tim, you’re very active on your social media, whether it’s with sales or updates, and one of the things you talk about is the money you raise to help out with veterans. As we sit today, how much has Signatures for Soldiers raised?
TV: So, we are now up over $218,000 raised since November of 2014 when I started this. It’s been pretty amazing. It’s been an amazing ride.
KS: So, for anyone who doesn’t know, how did it get started?
TV: So, my wife and I were involved with a charity in North Carolina that was helping homeless and disabled veterans, and then my job took me out of North Carolina, and we were living in Savannah, Georgia at the time. I was just kind of trying to think about how I could continue to support the charity, and you know, what charity doesn’t need money? So that’s when I started to kind of think about how I could help raise money. I’ve always collected autographs as a hobby, so I decided to kind of mesh the two and started reaching out to some athletes, asking them if they would sign a few cards, knowing that I was going to sell them and that the money was going to go to charity and what the purpose was.
So I was literally sitting at home. It was a Thursday night NFL game that I was watching in November, and the idea just kind of came to me. At that point, it didn’t have a name. I didn’t have a business plan on how it would grow or anything like that. I just kind of allowed it to be grassroots, and that’s kind of the impetus of how it all started. The original goal was to raise $500.
KS: Well, I think it’s safe to say you’ve gone well beyond that. I see you at the National with progressively larger and larger booths you set up with more inventory, more items to offer to people. Did you ever imagine it would grow to be what it is today?
TV: No. Absolutely not. Like I said, it’s been quite a ride. It’s been a great journey. Like I said, I didn’t have any business plan put together. By year three, we’ll be here. Year five, we’ll be here. That type of thing. Like you said, it’s just been very grassroots, and the support’s amazing. The whole thing has gone from strictly being about raising money to really about raising awareness and has really developed into a community.
I’ve said this in several interviews, and my wife and I still talk about it. We honestly believe that people want to help, they just don’t know how to help, or they don’t think that what they can offer, what they can give, isn’t significant enough, so they just don’t. And people hear that right now sitting at $218,000 raised, that has literally been a couple of dollars at a time. It has not been 218 $1,000 donations or purchases. It’s literally been two, three, four, five dollars at a time. And I think most people can spare $2, $3 knowing what it’s going towards. And I think people have seen, okay, hey, today I can give $5 knowing that that $5 coupled with the next handful of dollars that comes down the road is going to make a true difference.
So, it’s been really amazing. It’s humbling, because, I mean, who am I? I’m just an ordinary guy, you know, kind of working to provide for his family and have an enjoyable life. Signatures for Soldiers is an all-volunteer non-profit, so I literally make myself and anybody else that’s involved in it, we literally make no money off of this so that we can streamline the money to go to help homeless and disabled veterans. It’s been an incredible ride. It’s been pretty humbling.
KS: So, you talk about the humbling part of it, the humble beginnings and everything else. When is the first moment that you kind of got to a milestone or got to an accomplishment with it where you kind of thought to yourself, I may just have something here?
TV: So, when I first started it, I didn’t have a Twitter account, didn’t have a name or a logo or anything like that. I was really just kind of posting things on my personal Facebook page and, you know, hey, have this for sale, and that type of thing. I remember Barry Lyons, former catcher for the Mets, had signed a couple of cards for me, signed maybe about ten cards or so. A lady reached out to me, and she said, hey, I want to give you $300 for all the cards you have. And I was like, okay. And that’s when, I think that was kind of the realization of, this has the potential to be more impactful than what I thought it could. So that’s really what kind of the got me thinking, okay, now I got to give this thing a name.
A couple of days later, I’m walking the dog and just kind of nice zen moment of just letting my mind wander, and I just started playing around with some ideas, and Signatures for Soldiers just kind of developed literally just very naturally in that moment. Okay, let’s go with Signatures for Soldiers and see what it does. I think that was really the moment when I realized that this could develop into something a little bit more than what I had first envisioned.
KS: It’s always kind of amazing how those strokes of genius come at the most random times when you’re not even really necessarily looking for them, but they just kind of come to you. So, you talk about having to reach out to athletes and soliciting their help in this. How do a lot of them react when you ask them, explain what it is, and then you’re asking them to sign their autograph for this?
TV: The response rate has been overwhelmingly positive. There are times that I get an athlete that will say, no, not currently interested, for whatever reason. Or some athletes have their own foundations or a charity that they’ve been connected with for several years, and that’s their focus. That’s completely understandable, but, you know, overwhelmingly it’s been extremely positive, especially once I have an opportunity to really explain to them what I’m looking for from them. These athletes, I can’t even imagine how many requests they get in a day to do something, invest in this or support this or those types of things. So when I have the opportunity, it’s like, hey, not asking for you to do an appearance, not asking for you to write a check. All I’m asking for is your willingness to sign a couple of cards for me. I tell them, you put the limit on it. If you want to sign two cards, you want to sign 200. It’s been really positive. It’s amazing. And it really opens up a lot of communication and storytelling in terms of finding out how these athletes have a connection to the military. It’s just one of those avenues that just freely opens up that discussion of, hey, my so and so, my brother, my sister, my dad, my aunt, my uncle, my someone served in the military, and that this is an honor for me to support what you’re doing. So, it’s really neat. It’s really neat to hear those stories and just share those kind of personal moments with the athletes.
KS: So, you talk about getting cards signed, but over the years, you’ve added a lot of other items, game-used memorabilia. Over the years, if you had to pick something, what would you say is the coolest item an athlete has ever sent you, or you’ve received and been able to offer to people?
TV: I think probably the very first item that I could say just literally brought me to tears was Lance McCullers Jr. with the Astros. I had probably been doing this thing two years maybe. He and I got to talking, and he sent me his game-issued hat and cleats from Memorial Day weekend. So that was one of those moments where I’m like, are you sure you want to do this, and he’s like, yeah, absolutely. And they arrive, and, I mean, it literally just brought tears to my eyes. So, I think that was probably that first one that it was like, this is cool. And then T.J. Oshie, who plays hockey for the Washington Capitals, he says, yeah, I want to send you some stuff. So, he sends me some stuff, and I come home from work the one day, and there’s this giant bag at my front door, and it just has Washington Capitals logo all over it. I could tell by the height of it that it was a hockey stick, and it was one of his hockey sticks. That was another really cool item. There’s just been so many, like you said, just game-used cleats. Mitch Haniger, who this year will be playing for the San Francisco Giants. The last two years, at the end of the season, he literally will just send me a box full of game-used cleats, and it’ll literally be six to eight pairs of game-used cleats. Again, the ride’s amazing. It’s really grown into something much more than I could ever have imagined, and the support has just been, like I said, it’s humbling for me because I’m not even important in my own head. To have people really kind of get behind what I’m trying to do has been really great.
KS: So, we’re in 2023 now. What is the next goal you want to reach with Signatures for Soldiers?
TV: End of ‘21, and then into ‘22 was really kind of a pivotal turning point for Signatures for Soldiers, because the charity that we were supporting, the founder died unexpectedly end of December of ‘21. That got my wife and I talking about, what are we going to do with Signatures for Soldiers? Because at that point, we had been kind of operating under their 501 (c) (3) umbrella. So, in ‘22, we took a big step, and we became fully recognized as an independent, registered 501 (c) (3) nonprofit through the IRS as of May 4th. So now we are a freestanding nonprofit. We have a board of directors. We’ll be filing our 990 through the IRS, which every nonprofit needs to do, and that just keeps the financial transparency public. Now that we have that under our belt, we’ll really continue to operate this out of our home.
I think the next goal for us right now is really continue to establish those relationships with other nonprofits that are helping homeless and disabled veterans. Because really, at the core, what we’re doing is we’re raising the money, and then writing grants out to these nonprofits so that they can continue to do what they do really well. Really, we want to be kind of that stopgap for a system to kind of fill the gaps where there’s a disconnect between the veteran getting the resources that they need and the agency that can get them that resource.
A lot of people have heard of a lot of the very large nonprofits that help homeless and disabled veterans, and those are not the nonprofits that we’re targeting, because when they’re bringing in several hundred million dollars a year, I want the money that we raise to have a real, genuine impact. We’re always looking for those smaller nonprofits to partner with.
KS: You talk about having an impact. So, for anyone who asks, like, hey, I donated $10 to buy these cards off you, where does that money go? What’s a very kind of tangible, direct outcome of what that money does? If someone wanted to know where their money goes, where would that money go? What does that money go to buy or help provide support for?
TV: Great question. So just since we’ve been set up as our own nonprofit, we have here locally, where my wife and I live in Florida, Signatures for Soldiers has purchased 25 queen size mattresses, box springs, bed frames, sheets, pillows, and comforters. All brand new and we have gotten those to formerly homeless veterans who, through a program through the VA, were able to get affordable housing, but might not have had a bed to sleep in. So, we were able to do that in September.
Then in November, we worked with a local restaurant that we helped provide 100 meals to formerly homeless veterans and their families for Thanksgiving. Christmas time, we purchased $2,500 worth of gift cards to give out to formerly homeless veterans so they could have a good holiday meal. We’ve written out several grants already for nonprofits throughout the country that help homeless veterans. One out of Minneapolis, they help train service dogs for veterans with PTSD. We’ve paid about $3,500 in overdue electric bills for formerly homeless veterans to ensure that they can stay in affordable housing.
We brought a current mortgage and car note for a veteran who was just kind of going through a rough patch. And then literally as recently as yesterday, we just wrote out a check to buy about $7,400 worth of needed medical equipment for a triple amputee combat special forces veteran.
So, it’s pretty tangible stuff. It’s been really satisfying to be able to take a hobby that I enjoy and then turn it into something really tangible like that where I know that, the quality of life for this veteran is going to improve greatly.
KS: That’s really incredible. For everyone watching this, in case you were wondering, or kind of on the fence about supporting, as to where your donations go. So, Tim, kind of talking about yourself a little more. You are a collector. Obviously, you do this for Signatures for Soldiers. You’re a collector yourself. How did your origins in the hobby get going?
TV: So, I can remember being, I don’t know, I was probably six, seven years old. What got me into collecting cards was my parents had friends, and the guy owned a convenience store. Every time they would come over, Mel would always bring packs of cards for my brothers and I, and hey, good to see you kids, here’s a couple of packs of cards. So that really got me into collecting cards. That was kind of how I started collecting.
Baseball has always been kind of my first love in terms of sports, and my father was a big baseball fan, so we would watch games and all that. He grew up at the time with the Yankee dynasties of Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, all of them, and he grew up in the Bronx area. So, the one day we were talking and he was like, I used to write to these players and ask them for autographs, and then I’d get stuff back in the mail. I’m like, really? So that kind of got me into starting to do autograph collecting, and then we would start to go to shows and get autographs from there. So really, that’s kind of how it progressed. Same story as most other folks.
KS: What would you say is your favorite item in your personal collection?
TV: Right now, I have two items that are probably kind of my favorite ones. As a kid, the 1985 Topps set was the first set I remember hand collating together. I remember there was one card. It was actually a Shane Mack Team USA card. That was the very last card that I needed for that set, and my father came home one day, and he goes, here you go. He stopped at a card shop and picked it up for me, because he wasn’t into collecting, but he knew that was the card that I needed. So, kind of that set, now that my father has passed, kind of has some sentimental value for me. I’ve recently started to try to get that whole set signed, so I’m working on that.
KS: That’s tall order there as quite unfortunately, quite a few people in that set have passed away. I mean Kirby Puckett, Dan Quisenberry. I can never quite pronounce it. I know they’re all passed on, unfortunately.
TV: Tony Gwynn. Yeah, there’s quite a number of folks. And then probably the autograph piece that is really kind of my gem is a baseball signed by Willie Mays, Duke Snider, and Mickey Mantle. Again, my father, having grown up in those heydays as we talked baseball, he would tell me about those players, and I would beg him, can we go to this show, because so and so is signing. My father would say, okay, let’s get in the car and go. It was a great way to spend a Saturday or Sunday just with my dad. All three of those I got at three different shows. I got those in person with my dad. So that’s probably kind of the highlight of my personal collection. But, yeah, I’ve got so much other stuff, like many collectors.
KS: Hey, Willie, Mickey and the Duke, that’s not a bad centerpiece item to have. So, Tim, I’ll get you out of here on this. You talk about trying to get more support for the program. How can people get in touch with you, or how can they see what you have for sale? Like, how can they support?
TV: Yeah, so one thing that we set up this year was our website. So, it’s signatures4soldiers.com. So, on there, it has a lot of information about us, what we’re doing, also see an inventory tab. So, if you click on that tab, it has links to Google docs, Excel spreadsheets, where I have kind of all the signed cards and photos available for sale. Best way to reach me would be SignaturesforSoldiers@yahoo.com via email and then just kind of following on social media, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Signatures for Soldiers. If you just search it, it’ll come up. Like you said, I try to stay pretty active on that, kind of keeping people updated on what’s going on, what’s happening, any new developments, any new items that come in, those types of things.
KS: Very awesome. Tim, thank you so much for doing what you do, and thank you for joining us today.
TV: Thanks, Kelsey. I appreciate it. Always great to see you.
Hobby Musings: Tim Virgilio Continues SFS’s Amazing Ride in 2023 – Resources
- Website – Signatures for Soldiers
- Facebook – Signatures for Soldiers
- Twitter – Signatures for Soldiers
- Instagram – Signatures for Soldiers
Hobby Musings: Tim Virgilio Continues SFS’s Amazing Ride in 2023
Kelsey’s ability to bring hobby coverage to the mainstream sports fan has been a true asset. GTS is happy to feature his thoughts on collecting in Hobby Musings. The opinions expressed are his and do not necessarily reflect those of GTS Distribution.
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