Saturday, June 6, 2020

TTM Returns and Trade Autographs

I don't do a lot of TTM anymore, just a trickle now and then. I saw that Bryan Harvey had been signing cards, and still free, God bless him. So I sent him a couple cards and a nice note asking him some questions about his career and his personal life.

BTW, I will not PAY for an autograph anymore, I don't care how much I might "need" it. I don't blame players for charging for thier autograph, and if the cash is going straight to them, or to a cause that I agree with, I think that's fine. It's when we get into these guys that have contracted with players so that they can get a cut of the signing fee. No. It's taken the fun out of it for me, and the personal correspondance is lost. And that's why I've always collected autographs and sent some questions, for the correspondance with these players. It's just not the same anymore.

I sent these to Bryans home in Catawba, NC and he returned them in 12 days. He decided to not answer my questions, and that's fine.

I used to do a lot of autograph trading on sportscollectors.net but that also had gone down to a trickle the last several years, and actually had pretty much ceased. Another member reached out recently inquiring about an Ed Vosberg signed card he need for his Giants collection. As a result I netted these two cards in the trade:
One of the reasons I stopped traded on SCN for the most part is because, in my opinion, there seemed to be a rash of questionable autographs being traded. I wasn't having confidence that the cards I were receiving were legit, but that they were forged by traders. Again, just my opinion. That's a chance you take with trading autographs, you never really know for sure if they're legit, you have to trust the trader. I'm sure that there are far more genuine traders on SCN (like for this trade) than forgers, I had just started to have some doubts, so I stopped.



3 comments:

  1. I don’t do much TTM anymore either. It’s gotten much less enjoyable for me over last few years.

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  2. I feel ya with the money thing. It was kind of a mixed thing when the whole Past Pros company started. Sure, they got some tough guys to start signing, but then they reached out to easy guys who would sign for free like Tommy Greene and convinced them to quit signing for free and charge 5 bucks or whatever. They basically ruined it for future ttm collectors because some of the easier guys aren’t signing for free any more and without getting a decent amount of success during the first month or so, they will probably give it up.
    I don’t really do ttms anymore, so I let my SCN subscription run out a year or so ago.
    It’s such a crap shoot anymore with autographs, it’s almost worth it more to just graph the minors and settle for the few guys you can still get there.

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  3. I think I have only sent out one TTM request in my life (Dal Maxvill) and was very happy with the return. Well... I guess two, if you include Night Owl. I'd probably do more if I knew what I was doing and had more time and the money thing wouldn't bother me too much if it was reasonable. I'm actually hoping to send Steve Largent a request one of these days.

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