TTMCast This Week
Drew is joined by guest co-host Sal Barry and monthly correspondent Clemente Lisi as they give a recap of the 2024 National Sports Collectors Convention, and Arron Littleton calls in for the second time from his graphing trip in California.
You can listen to this week’s show here.
We’ll do some more sports memorabilia appraisals with Les Wolff in August, so send us info and photos of anything you want him to take a look at. Clear photos/scans are required, and any info you can provide is certainly appreciated. You can contact the show at [email protected].
TTM Successes
Eddie Brown
Brown was the 1985 Offensive Rookie of the Year and a 1988 Pro Bowler after leading the Bengals to the Super Bowl. His 24 yards per catch average is still an NFL single-season record for receivers with 50+ receptions.
His career prematurely ended in 1993 due to a 1992 disc rupture in his neck. He signed these via his Florida home in two months.
Jimmy Spencer
After seeing some long-awaited successes from him in various Facebook groups, I figured my 2019 request must be coming back soon too. It did. The former NASCAR driver signed two cards and kept two through a North Carolina address.
Tony Dorsett
Dorsett is of course a Hall of Famer and Heisman winner and was the first to set an NFL record with a 99-yard touchdown run. Quiz time: besides Dorsett can you name two players who have had a 90+yard run and 90+ yard catch in their careers?
The answer will come later.
Dorsett signed his rookie card in a week with a very reasonable fee of $10.
Chris Hanburger
A Hall of Famer from the other side of the ball, Hanburger was a nine-time Pro Bowl linebacker and a three-time All-Pro. He tallied five defensive touchdowns in his career and John Hannah called him the smartest player in the league.
He signed his rookie card via his South Carolina home in a week.
Jim Palmer
If you’re seeing a pattern here, you’re right: another Hall of Famer’s rookie card. Palmer, of course, was the pitching ace of the late 1960s through early 80’s Orioles teams when he wasn’t feuding with Earl Weaver. Three Cy Young Awards, four Gold Gloves and a broadcasting career that’s still going at age 78. He signed this in a week for an also very well worth it price of $10.
Craig Patrick
One more Hall of Famer’s rookie card! Though Patrick’s playing career was rather nondescript, he was an assistant coach of the 1980 U.S. Olympic “Miracle On Ice” hockey team, general manager of the silver medal winning 2002 squad, and general manager of two Stanley Cup winning Pittsburgh Penguins teams. His his early 2000s drafts assembled their trio of 2000s Cup titles.
He signed this for me in a week through his Pittsburgh home.
Small Sets, Big Maildays
As one who is working actively on 23 different autograph projects revolving around sets– and completed four others– I’m going to let you in on a big secret about signed set collecting.
It sucks.
Perhaps I should have realized that before starting one or two of them, much less over 20. When you’re looking at sets of 400-800 cards, it’s already a tough task. When you realize that some of those cards show multiple players and some players have multiple cards per set, it becomes downright Sisyphean.
But if there’s a positive, it’s realizing that not all sets have that many players. Not all sets have tough signers, as even some big names are very accessible (see Palmer and Dorsett above). Team sets are often completable– perhaps not easily, but at least within reach.
So here’s a look at a smaller set from each sport that are worth trying out. I’m limiting it to 132 cards or less (the size of the 1980s/90s Topps Traded sets that could be printed on a single sheet), nationally released without a super-specific theme (no team sets, or Topps 1000 Yard Club inserts in football), standard trading card size, and reasonably easily findable as a complete unsigned set.
BASEBALL: 1983 Topps Glossy Send-Ins
I’ve always liked the 1980s Topps All-Star Set Collector’s Edition– more commonly called the Glossy Send-In sets. The simple design of a white border, single-color internal frame (yellow in this case), and a photo with no extraneous design elements is perfect for showing off an autograph. Of the 40 players in Topps’ initial offering, 16 are in Cooperstown and several others could eventually get the call.
Over half of the players in the set have TTMed in 2024 according to SportsCollectors.net. Only three are deceased. And of the three living players who haven’t TTMed in over a decade, all are accessible through private signings. Topps made these sets for eight years, ranging from 40 to 60 cards.
BASKETBALL: 1990-91 Fleer Update
I’ll be honest: basketball is not my forte, so there is likely a better option out there than this set. But the 1990-91 Fleer Update set is at least manageable with only 100 cards and best of all, no Michael Jordan card to set you back a few thousand dollars. 21 of the 100 players in it have signed via mail in 2024. Of the nine in the set who are deceased, six TTMed with at least a 50% success rate during their life– so they’re accessible on the secondary market. It might not be the best known set, but it’s at least a starting point that lacks the stress of needing the game’s biggest names.
FOOTBALL: 1989 Topps Traded
Score and Pro Set really knocked it out of the park in their debut releases in 1989, managing to put in a lot of rookies that Topps opted not to print. But Topps corrected this by taking the Traded concept used in baseball and putting it into football for the first time. Of the 132 cards in the set, at least 50 have TTMed successfully in 2024. It’ll be tough with the likes of Hall of Famers Troy Aikman, Barry Sanders, Deion Sanders, and Randall McDaniel all having their XRC in this set. But it is doable: only seven in the set are deceased. As for who to have sign that pesky checklist card? I recommend Paul Tagliabue, who took over the position of commissioner midway through the season.
HOCKEY: 2003-04 McDonald’s Pacific Atomic
As badly as I wanted to list the 1986-87 Kraft Drawings, the $30 price tag on even an unsigned Wayne Gretzky prevented me from putting it here. From 1991 to 2011, McDonald’s Canada had card sets, much like the present day Tim Horton’s releases. 2003-04 was the final year that they were made by Pacific, utilizing the die-cut Atomic design for the biggest of all the McDonald’s sets to that point: 61 cards. My friend Lanny Hanscombe gave me a bunch from this set and I love getting them signed. Only 14 of the 61 players have TTMed this year according to SCN, but that’s still the most of and McDonald’s set. A whopping 17 of these guys are Hall of Famers, and all are still alive. It also can be a nice introduction to international mailing as the set’s players live in the US, Canada, Slovakia, Czechia, Sweden, and Finland.
SOCCER: 1987-88 Pacific MISL
Anyone who has seen my website probably knows I’m a bit of an indoor soccer geek. The sport challenged the NHL and NBA in the 1980s for the #3 spot in popularity, outdrawing those leagues in some cities before internal squabbles, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and the rise of the MLS led to the indoor game becoming little more than a niche sport by the 2000s. But Pacific jumped on the MISL in the late 1980s, putting out a 110-card set that is loaded with 17 other errors and variations. Seven players in the set are in the U.S. Soccer Hall of Fame. Unfortunately another seven are deceased, and like hockey there will be some international mailing adventures, with players living in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Netherlands, Croatia, and Denmark.
Trivia Answer
Bobby Mitchell and Herschel Walker are the other two with both a 90+ yard catch and 90+ yard run in their careers. Walker even had both of his come in a single season, with a 91-yard touchdown run and a 93-yard catch (where he was stopped a yard short of the end zone) for the 1994 Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles lost both games.
If you have any ‘graphing questions, you can reach Drew via email at [email protected]
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