This is a guest post by Troy Kozlowski. This guy knows how to pull in autographs and it's been great getting to know him through Opening Day Cards. Thanks Troy!
How to Acquire a TTM Success:
TTM stands for through-the-mail autographs. This is any easy way to, hopefully, to get your favorite player to sign your favorite trading cards. You can also take it further than just sending a trading card. If you would like, you can send a photo, baseball, football, jersey, etc. The easiest thing to send is a trading card. First what you would have to do is write a letter to the player of your choice explaining that you think that they are a great player and that you would like to get them to autograph your card. The best place to mail your card to is the stadium address for the team of that player. Let’s say that you are sending a request to Jason Motte, pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, you would send it to Busch Stadium address. This is a sample letter of something that you could send to your favorite player:
Mr. Motte,
I am a huge fan of both you and the Cardinals. I think you are an amazing pitcher and so glad that you are on the Cardinals. (You could personalize it with an experience that you had or some accomplishment that the person you are writing to has accomplished.) I was hoping that you could autograph my card for me. I have included a self-addressed, stamped envelope so that you could send it back to me. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy day to read my letter and hopefully you’ll get back to me soon.
Your #1 FAN,
And if this player takes the time to autograph your card, you could end up with the great autograph you see at the top of this post!
The most important thing to include is an envelope with your name and address so it can come back to you; but, for a chance to get a success you will have to add a stamp on the envelope coming back to you. If you are sending anything other than a trading card you must go to your local post office to check how much postage you need to put on your package so that it will come back to you. This is a great link to use to get team addresses to send your cards to: http://www.sportmapworld.com/map/baseball/north-america/mlb/.
Collecting autographs is a great hobby to get into. It is great for people that cannot get to the ballpark to get autographs from the players in person. An average wait for the return of your autographed card can be anywhere from 5 days to 3 years; but, a normal wait is usually about 3 months. Some bad things that can happen are: if you send your card to the wrong address you may get everything back with a yellow slip from the post office, which is called a RTS (Return To Sender). Also, if the player is in a hurry they could put the signed card right in the envelope after signing and it can get smudged.
If you really want to get into the hobby of collecting autographs, Harvey Meiselman creates a comprehensive book for every sport, every year, with the players’ home addresses. It is so great to use and you get the address for almost every current and retired player. The link to see how you could purchase it for yourself is here: http://www.sportsaddresslists.com/ . This is the best product to obtain retired players’ addresses and, during the offseason, current players. The Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY, has recently added his Baseball Address List to the permanent collection in their library. Harvey gives updates three times a year for addresses that he found out didn’t work and gives a new current address. It is a great resource to have.
A great website to use is Nolan’s TTM, He updates his website whenever he gets a success. His website is: http://www.nolansttmgraphs.webs.com/. Another great website that is always updating their user’s success is: http://www.fanmail.biz/ and click on the tabs for any of the sports and you get to see who signs autographs. I also use this website to see what he has gotten back lately: http://www.sportsautosttm.com/.
Even though I used the above example with a baseball player, you can send to NBA, NFL, and NHL players; but, MLB has the highest success rate if sending to players. I have been collecting since last Spring Training and I have just over 100 autogtaphs and still collecting. On one website that I have come across, someone did a test to see if he will have a higher rate of return if hand-writing the letter opposed to typing it. His study showed that he had a higher rate of return if he had hand-written the letter to the player. It is a really fun hobby and it blends right in with the hobby of collecting. The most important thing to keep in mind is to not send something of value, because you may NOT get it back. The players are not forced to sign items; they just do it for their fans!
Troy Kozlowski
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