Four TTM and a Private Signing Return - Including Bill Mazeroski and Denny McLain

I know I kind of obsess over my Informed Delivery email, and you probably don't care, but I'll talk about it anyway.

My email this morning showed three TTM returns. Based on the stamp on one of them, it was more than a couple weeks old, and potentially a year or more old.

But when I went to my mailbox, I had four returns, and none of them matched the ones in my email.  I think the holidays throw off the timing of when the scanned images actually reach my mailbox.  Hopefully I get the three returns from my email in my mailbox tomorrow.

The four ttm returns I received include:

Jack Aker, who signed his 1971 Topps with $5.

Dave Bristol, who signed his 1971, 1976 and 1980 Topps.

Bill Mazeroski, who signed the 1961 Topps commemorating Game 7 of the 1960 World Series and his walk-off homerun.  I can't believe I didn't get this card signed earlier, especially since he's been pretty automatic ttm for a while now.  The card itself is hard to find in decent condition, and gets very pricey as the condition goes up.  Good centering is especially hard to find.  I settled for this card, with printing dots and nearly mis-cut, and still had to pay $16 for it.  It's a cool card though, and I have been casually working on the 1961 set over the years, so I'm glad I added this one to my collection.  I enclosed $10 with my request.

Buddy Schultz, who signed his 1978, 1979 and 1980 Topps for me.

I also received four cards back from a Denny McLain signing.  I paid $10 per card, which is what he charges ttm, but I thought it would be safer to have a promoter there making sure they got signed nicely and with a decent pen, etc.  This isn't normally an issue with McLain, who does a lot of signing, but I had to pay a bit for these cards so I wanted to be sure.

The 1971 and 1972 cards are high numbers, so they weren't cheap.  I paid about $17 for the 1972 and probably something similar for the 1971.  Too much, really, but I'm running out of cards I need for both these sets and the ones remaining are either players that charge, cards that are expensive, or both, as in this case.

I have a few more private signings that I'm sending out to.  I'll wait until they come back over the next month or two to post about them, but I will note that I'm sending a Gold Glove ball to a Bill Mazeroski private signing.  I have one Gold Glove ball left and was contemplating sending it directly to Mr. Mazeroski, but I didn't want to risk it not getting signed correctly, or getting signed in sharpie or something.  Mazeroski has eight Gold Glove awards.