By Force

The bad combination of my lack of boxed/packed purchases, and my lack of any luck pulling anything of note in the boxes/packs I do buy, keeps me from acquiring unique cards. Namely things that sound like what the "super sick hits" crowd would be into. In concept at least.

For instance the uber (the word, not the shitty company) popular short print (SP) autograph, or the rare dual autograph or the even more elusive triple autograph.

If you want a shot at these via packs/boxes you're probably going to have to dump several months worth of salary to buy several cases. Maybe you might hit one in your sixth case.

If you want them on the secondary market, you might be able to find some with underwhelming names for cheap but most will cost a fair bit because the people who pulled those cards expect it to pay for their six+ cases.

Which is why the IP/TTM route gives me a great alternative.

The Jacob Faria card right there is one of my latest TTM returns. It'll be featured in the month-end roundup post, but I'm showcasing it here first because it sparked a topic worth talking about.

That Faria is an SP. It's a photovariation or whatever from 2017 Topps Update. Last year's Update had a million SP's and were printed (and more importantly inserted) at a rate where they felt like they weren't even SP's at all. I sent it out via TTM thinking "meh, why not?" and now, by sheer force, is my first SP auto.

Hah, take that certified SP autos! I got one for far less than you'd cost. It's actually on-card and not a sticker placed on a card printed at the last minute to boot!

Earlier this year I completed my first dual autograph. Courtesy of Matt Sauer and Clarke Schmidt in Staten Island. To this day I love this card and it remains my first (and to date only) dual autograph. I had chances in the past with the likes of Eric Jagielo, Aaron Judge and Ian Clarkin that I let slip by due to sheer fear of the unknown and risk. I also botched it with a dual that never came back to me even after it was signed by Billy McKinney. I wasn't going to let it happen this time. I grabbed the opportunity to get both at once, and I feel all the better for it.

So I have an SP auto and a dual auto too. Do I have a triple auto?

I do now!

The triple auto above actually came in my mail box on the exact same day as the Faria. Meaning I got all of these in the span of about four months (at most). Although if you include the time it took me to get the signatures on these three, it goes way longer. Let's rewind a bit...

This journey started in 2016 when the Doyle came back to me via TTM in March. Heath and Rajsich were prominent, but also oddly elusive signers. Any TTM addresses they once had floating around on the internet were shoddy, out of date, and untrustworthy at best. So I kept this card around hoping the two would show up at the local card show.

Heath finally did in 2018. I blogged about it three weeks ago.
This is where shit got serious. It's one thing if a triple-auto failed because the first guy didn't even respond/sign. But now I've put time and money into this and am OVER the halfway point to completion. It's officially a project. I'd have to really nail it on the last signature by any means necessary. Of course Rajsich was still pretty hard to find via TTM (although some of my friends in Japan have had success with him). But as luck would have it a reliable method of obtaining his autograph popped up.

Through the wonder of mail-in autograph ordering, I got Dave Rajsich. Completing this triple auto. Rajsich was a signer at another show the organizers of my semi-local card show was hosting. Unfortunately that location was way too far for me to attend in person so I sent this in as a mail-in (which also meant I paid a fee, worth it!). It came back in the SASE I sent along with it, so this too will count as a TTM for the year.

There we go. A triple auto three years in the making. In a lot of ways it's fitting that the first triple auto I got is the one card from the 1979 Topps Yankees team set that has the words "Yankees" and "Prospects" on it. That compliments the dual auto from the two (assigned to) Staten Island boys well. Too bad Faria is a Ray and ruins the symmetry. But I don't see my Luis Severino/Don Mattingly/Robinson Cano/Joe DiMaggio SP's getting inked any time soon so I guess I don't have any choice.

So to recap I acquired a...

short print autograph,

dual autograph,

and a triple autograph all in 2018.

Man, 2018's been one fun year for me as an autograph collector I can tell you that much.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).