Time to Pare It Down

 The better part of the last 11 years was spent accumulating autographs nonstop. Looking back on it, the chase and just getting autographs either through the mail or in person was the fun part for me. But over time the thrill of getting that magical signature faded faster than the ink has.

I still get the odd itch every now and then but for the most part I'm comfortable enough saying I'm mostly done.

So before the calendar turned to 2024 I made the decision to part with my TTM and IP autograph collections. Or at least most of the baseball cards that made up that collection.

I took advantage of my winter holiday by scanning all of the autographs I'd accumulated over the years just so I could at least preserve the jpegs. The players took the time to sign for me after all, would be a real waste if I didn't at least keep some proof of it. Especially since I had somehow been able to maintain a log of everything from day 1.

After that was a long thought process on where exactly these cards would go. I will admit that some names popped up in my mind depending if I was willing to go by team or as one giant lump. Ultimately I picked a weird hybrid of both by sending the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants to nick and everything else to Gavin.

Well almost everything. I disposed of my home-made customs.
From the official cards I did keep some stuff.

Some keepers

Luis Torrens

The Torrens collection is still here, I have other plans for it.

Stuff addressed to me

I've always thought it was really weird and kinda shitty to sell autographs that were specifically addressed to you. Like I go on eBay and see "to Robert" or whatever and I'm like man, if your name isn't Robert you can't buy that. And even then...

So yeah I'm keeping the "To Kenny" cards and the stuff that came with letters even if I'm not selling them.

Colorado Rockies, New York Rangers, New York Giants and NBA Cards

Small enough and cool enough to keep intact.

Non-Sports/Cosplayers

I'm not sure if anyone was excited at the thought of getting cosplayer polaroids or anything but uh, those are staying with me. Polaroids of attractive women cosplaying has essentially replaced sports cards as my main collecting hobby now.

Various cards I just wanted to keep

The reasons why I'd want to keep any given card are varied and subjective. I thumbed through stuff I kept "just cuz", and except for like Japanese cards and Team USA stuff (mostly because I still appreciate P-Town Tom giving me two(!) base sets so many years ago) there were all random. I tried keeping these small though.

Some other keepers

With the TTM and IP cards themselves now gone all that's left is sorting through the blogposts left behind. A lot of from 2014, 2015 and 2016 were deleted anyway thanks to a switch from a previous photo sharing service to Google Photos a half decade ago that made them unreadable. Thought it might be best to axe them all unless the post features all/mostly cards I decided to keep.

As for the future, I can't say I'm definitely done with autograph collecting (old habits die hard as they say) but I think the scale/level that I'd been doing it until now is over for sure. In 2022 and 2023 respectively I only sent out 4 TTM requests, I think that sounds about right going forward.

Still, big thanks to all of the people who signed autographs for me throughout the years. This was incredibly fun and it's all thanks to the kindness of strangers who helped.

And as always thank you the readers for joining me on my journey into TTMs and IPs. Take care.

Cumulative TTM tally from 2013 to 2023: 1,499
Cumulative IP tally from 2013 to 2023: 674