I received two more ttm returns today.
I have a lot (like 16!!!) mail-in signings in progress right now, with many not occurring until late this month, but a few will trickle in before that. I have spent WAY too much so far this year and have to scale back, hopefully sticking to sending out cards and items I already own to avoid more purchases. And I need to scale back on any new mail-in signings unless they are rare opportunities.
Anyway, I received a 1965 Topps back from Bill Roman which was previously signed by Bruce Brubaker. Mr. Roman is a generous signer with a 93% success rate on sportscollectors.net (SCN) but lately people had been getting their request returned due to an address issue.
Luckily, I purchased Harvey Meiselman's baseball address list this year which had the current address. If you don't buy this list, you should! Not only do you get the hardcopy list, but he sends you email updates throughout the year with updates and changes, including fee changes and deaths. I suspect many of the addresses on SCN came from Harvey's list. For that reason, when I use an address from his lists that aren't already in SCN, I list the address as "Harvey 2024" to let people know where the correct address can be found. I don't think it's right to publicly post the address that he spent time and money identifying. However, in the spirit of helping my fellow collectors, if anyone reaches out to me asking for the address, I will share it with them. I think this is a reasonable balance between giving Harvey credit and protecting his work, while also helping out other collectors.
These days, I don't buy the list every year, but every other year instead. I might rethink that since I've really increased the number of requests I send, but I'll worry about that in the fall when he starts taking orders for the new book, typically shipping early in January each year. You can order it here: https://sportsaddresslists.com/. It's gotten a little expensive over the years ($49.95 now), but it now provides over 9,000 addresses! I think the cost of postage has greatly increased as well. I paid $33.95 for my first list back in 2006 and have bought 15 lists over the last 21 years. Some years I bought the bundle of all lists (football, basketball, hockey, etc.) but send so few requests other than baseball that I quickly stopped doing that.
Okay, unpaid endorsement complete.
I also received a return from Wayne Causey, who, like Roman, is a very generous signer with a 97% success rate on SCN. He signed his 1965 Topps, which is a nice blue sharpie upgrade to the one he signed for me in 2005.
He also signed team cards from 1956, 1958 and 1965.
The 1958 Orioles team card is one I bought as part of a lot of signed team cards that already had Joe Ginsberg and Billy Gardner (upside down) on it. I previously had Causey sign a version of this card that I have been sending around, so decided to add him to this card as well. His is the first signature on the 1965 Athletics card. I had another version with 5 or 6 signatures on it that I sent to very reliable signer Jim Gentile, that has been outstanding since last September. I am afraid that perhaps he is in poor health, because he has not had any returns for many months. In the past, he normally replied in about three weeks, but had some fairly regular returns in the 5-6 months range. I also sent two other team cards with a handful of signatures on them that I am now afraid may be lost forever. I wish him the best and hope he is doing well.
Cards missing in action:
I have sent many Orioles team cards to Brooks Robinson, with the intent to keep his signature as the only one on it. I've done the same with Orlando Cepeda. I wish I had thought about team cards when Al Kaline was still around as I'd love a few Tigers team cards with just his autograph on them and he was such a great signer.
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