Morning Mail

The Nats have quickly become one of my favorite teams in baseball, and you have to love their uniform combos.  I haven't sent out many requests to current players thus far this year, so it was a nice surprise to get this one back.

Morning Mail

It can be easy to take reliable signers for granted.  After all, how many cards do I really need of Fernando Vina or Frank Tanana?  But it's always fun to find those interesting, unique cards that you just know will look great signed.  And when that card is of a guy who you know is a reliable signer?  Even better.

 Pat Neshek is one of the best guys in the hobby, and type of player you can't help rooting for.  I already have some signed Twins cards in my collection, but when I found this Cognac parallel in a quarter box, it seemed worthy of another mailing.  The card looks amazing in person

And this one comes from the Wisconsin Woodchucks, a wood bat summer league.  It looks like they were doing some kind of anniversary set.  Kind of interesting to see Neshek pictured in what appears to be a more traditional pitching motion.

Mail Call

 Some more mail, including my first return of the seaon from an active player.  Lowrie has shown nice pop for a shortstop, and has been signing pretty consistently this season.  Definitely a nice signature to add.

I loved Don Baylor's Rockie teams in the mid 90's So of course Topps decided to stop making making manager cards those seasons.  But the 87T is a nice consolation prize.

 Brooks Kieschnick was a top prospect, who went the anti-Ankiel route, converting from position player to pitcher.  He played a dual role as pitcher/pinch hitter for the Brewers for a couple seasons.  I'm hoping I can tack down one of his Brewers cards featuring him on the mound at some point. 

I forgot how much I liked the 97 Stadium Club set as a kid.  I may have to take a crack at putting it together one of these days.

Now Pitching...

 It's always interesting to see who signs TTM and who doesn't.  Whether it's the guy that was impossible to get during his playing days who suddenly decides to start his stacks of mail once his schedule frees up, or vice versa. 

One thing I've noticed in my years of ttm mailings is that it seems like pitchers and catchers are often pretty good signers.  Or at least it sure seems that way.  This can be a blessing or a curse.  If it's a former starter, that probably means there are a bunch of cards out there to be signed, even for the most middling pitcher.  For a reliver, the prospects are less optimistic.  Especially in recent years, it seems like the middle innings guys are very hit or miss as to whether they'll make their way into a card set during a given year.

So enjoy some of my recent returns from the guys on the mount.

 The 1991 and 1987 sets are two of my favorite designs, and have a special place in my collection.  87 is my birth year, while '91 marked my first pack of cards, which my dad picked up for me during a trip to the gas station.

 I've been told that these strange markings somehow resemble letters.  I'm picking up an H, but that's about it.

 The spaceman finally did away with the "Earth" insciption he has added to all other autos I've sent to him.  I do love signed vintage.

And finally, a swift return from a very good signer who surprisingly I had never sent to before.  I may be strange, but part of me misses the early 90's Mariners logo, though it looked more like a gas station logo than a baseball team.

Morning Mail, On Ice

 I don't collect much hockey.  My Pens collection is the smallest of my Pittsburgh collections, at just a little over 200 cards.  It's not that I don't have an interest in them; hockey cards just seem to be nearly impossible to find at decent prices in Ohio/Pennsylvania. 

Beyond my Pens cards, the entirety of my hockey collection comes from a huge box of commons I (my parents) bought when I was 9 or 10 at a garage sale - 20,000 cards for $20.  It was a goldmine for a kid.  Probably 7k of those cards were hockey, which are still sitting in a big box in my parent's house.  There is probably some TTM fodder in there, but I am so backlogged with requests I rarely look.

Except when something catches my eye.

I've said it a million times, but I love cool jerseys.  And by extension, I suppose I love goalies.  So when a name caught my eye while skimming successes on SCN, I knew I had to dig out a few cards from the mysterious hockey box.

 As much as I loathe the smug Caps these days, I love the old jerseys, and these are two great action shots.

The Lindsay was a little less romantic.  I knew he's  good signer, and dug through the rare hockey dime box at card shows until I finally found a card to get out to him.  It's not my favorite card, but I can't complain about adding a very gracious TTM signer to my collection.

The Other Colts

Now that I finally had some time to scan some non-Pirate cards, I'm on a bit of a posting frenzy here.  Should anyone actually be reading these, I apologize. 

Dave Giusti was a relief ace for the Pirates, and an overall good guy.  But he also happens to be featured with the Colt .45's on two awesome vintage pieces.  I had a couple Pirates cards I didn't have signed by Giusti, so it seemed like a great excuse to send these in the mail as well.

Being a jersey nerd, I really like the fact that his compact signature doesn't obscure the jersey in either of these photos.  It's certainly for the best that the team in Houston switched to a less...deadly...name, but like the Seattle Pilots, these cards are among my favorite oddball teams to get signatures of.

Morning Mail

 I've been collecting TTM autographs for almost a decade now.  My first requests were sent out during spring training of 2004. 

Yet almost unfailingly, I continue to discover fairly significant players who are great signers...who have never found their way into my collection.

It's not oversight, per se.  My card collection spans from the late 80's forward, as does my baseball fandom.  I consider myself a student of the history of the game, but certain aspects just get lost.  So I was shocked to see both how good Ken Singleton was, and that I had never even thought to write for his autograph.

A few vintage dime cards and a surprise find of a 2012 Archives card later, and these beauties were back in my mailbox.

I love the vintage (and once again current) Orioles logo and helmet design, and these cards look great signed.  Another easy signer down, who knows how many more to do.

Seeing Red

My non-baseball ttm collections are weak at best.  The vast majority of my non-baseball cards are from the 90's, and there simply aren't a ton of players from that period who sign ttm.

But occasionally I run across some cards that allow me to expand my collection a bit.

I actually pulled the ATFF card on the right from a blaster box in 05 or 06 (which also contained a Fridge Perry certified auto.  Woo!).  A few years later, I looked up the common players in the blaster to see who signed TTM.  Foley is a great signer, but I didn't want to use two stamps for a single card of a player who I knew almost nothing about.

Fast forward a couple years, and last month I was able to find not one but two different vintage football cards (at two different shows!) after a few years of looking through vintage fb dime boxes.  Off to the mailbox they went, and I must say it was worth the wait.  The cards look great in red sharpie.