My wife picked up the mail today and forgot one of my little sases in her purse.
It was a return from Jack Hiatt, who was kind enough to sign the 1965 Angels team card, his 1966 Topps already signed by Dick Estelle, and his 1971 and 1973 Topps.
I already had the 71 and 73 but included them since I was sending anyway. I usually try to maximize a request, noting how many cards a player is willing to sign based on their history on SCN. Although I've done very little of it so far, maybe someday I'll use these duplicates to sell or trade up for things I don't have in my collection.
When I first started collecting autographs ttm in 2003, I went hard after the 1958 set. At that time, there were more local shops I could buy them from. I sent a lot, probably hundreds, of requests with just the 58 Topps in it. I wish now I had sent at least one more card along with those requests. It would have doubled my cost since I would have had to buy more cards but would have built my collection more quickly since I was already writing all those letters and addressing all those envelopes. And at that time, I was hand-writing all my letters.
I could have built a nice collection of 57 and 59 Topps for example, which I have very few of now.
Anyway, I ended up sending to many of those players multiple times over the last 20 years, so I've caught up by now, I guess. I never really focused on the 57 and 59 sets but sent whatever cards I felt were the most desirable for each particular player.
For example, I sent just a 1958 Topps to Dick Groat back in October of 2003.
A couple years later, I sent him a 1954 and 1955 Topps to sign. I could have sent all three of these in my initial request because he was a generous signer.
No comments:
Post a Comment