General Forum

Has anybody here had any success with TTM autographs?  I've never tried it but I'm intrigued.  Somebody on reddit recently mentioned that they got Luis Tiant to sign autographs for them for free and all he had to do was send him some cards and a short letter.  Tiant lives like 5 minutes away from me and I've always been a huge fan of his so I would love to do this if it's so easy.  I had no idea it was even possible to contact players in that capacity outside of official appearances.

Is it really true that I can just send cards to players and they will sign them for free (or not, I'll pay too)?  Is there someplace where I can find a list of players who will do this and their mailing addresses?  I would love to hear about y'all's experience with this.

I've been doing TTM auto collecting for about 20 years now (I still remember getting my first success back - thanks Bobby Bowden!) I have three main collections: College Football Hall of Famers, Hockey Hall of Famers, and Olympic Gold Medal winners. If you're looking for a Trout or Jordan through the mail, good luck with that, but there are many players who are more than willing to sign an autograph or two. Some charge a fee, but even those are usually cheaper than trying to get them through an official signing. I got a membership on SportsCollectors.net (I think it's like $15 a year) and there's A LOT of addresses on there. For my Olympic collection I usually do a little research on the internet and have had good success finding people on WhitePages.com. If you have any other questions, feel free to PM me.

Smilar to Packsux, I've been doing TTM for a while, althought I've slowed down a bit over the past year or so.

If you want a free resource to try some TTMs, check out the TTM Manager page on sportscardforum.com.  Once you are a registered user (free), you have access to their database of TTM addresses, and you can see where others have had recent success.  Additionally, you can track your TTM submissions and returns.

Thank you both for the info and the resources.  Definitely going to try this out with some of my favorite players.  

I've been very interested in trying to do this with some players but have always been hesitant bc I have heard stories where the cards are not returned at all. 

In my brief research from the information I've learned here, it seems that some players are notorious for not returning your cards, namely Andre Dawson lol.  I'm going to send one out to Luis Tiant today and see what happens.

@bakerybum

That does happen on occasion unfortunately.  The nice thing about the resources mentioned above is that the return rates and dates are tracked, so you have an idea regarding the liklihood of things getting returned.  People will also make notes regarding if the signatures appear legit vs autopen so that you can make a determination yourself if you want to risk sending your item(s).

I will share candidly that my overall return success rate is about 80%, which I am ok with. (I have tracked over 550 TTM submittions.)

I've only ever sent two. Only got one returned. I'm not a huge fan of TTM cards but the one I was successful had no pack issued autos, or at least I thought he didn't. Turns out he did, although it's fairly rare and I've never seen one. 

I reached out to him via Facebook. 

My failure was sent to the team using address published in Beckett. Never got anything. Not even a form letter. 

Success: Stanton Barrett, failure: Rik Smits. 

That's really interesting.  I've had fantastic success with Mr. Dawson. (He does require a cash "donation", so maybe that's why you are hearing that people don't have success with him.) I am also seeing a high level of success from others with relatively quick (usually less than 3 weeks) turnaround.

Good luck with your submission to Mr. Tiant.  Be sure to include $10 and a SASE; he apparently is now requesting the $10 per autograph due to high volume of requests.

pugchump wrote:

In my brief research from the information I've learned here, it seems that some players are notorious for not returning your cards, namely Andre Dawson lol.  I'm going to send one out to Luis Tiant today and see what happens.

what is autopen?

I assume you enclose a self address stamped envelope.  Curious, how much do you write in the letter and is it typed or hand written?