The arrival of my Daisuke Matsuzaka through the mail (TTM) autograph yesterday re-energized my faith in the TTM process. I think I might actually send out a few in the next month or so. But that card’s arrival not only made me want to send more out, it also reminded me of what I already had — autographs of 2008 Rookie of the Year winners Evan Longoria and Geovany Soto.

Now neither Longoria nor Soto are terribly hard to come by. Actually, check that. Neither WAS hard to come by when I obtained my copies. I got the 2007 Tri Star Prospects Plus Longoria card signed (15 days total turnaround) in 2007 shortly after the card was released. Unfortunately this was before I learned about preparing the card’s surface, so part of the signature bubbled. And the Soto I obtained (7 days turnaround) this year during Spring Training. I have two Soto signatures, one on this 2007 Bowman Draft Prospects card, the other on the chrome version of the aforementioned. Now that both of these players have been crowned rookies of the year, I suspect it may be a little harder to obtain their signatures through the mail, which makes these successes even more special.

The TTM process means different things to some people. I kind of take some of the signatures with a grain of salt. I’ve got a Mohammed Ali that is almost certainly an auto-penned, a Joe Montana that likely was ghost signed, and the Matsuzaka I received yesterday almost seems too good to be true. But when it comes to collecting signatures of young prospects, collectors are almost assured authentic signatures. And for some people this is a cheap alternative to obtain an early autograph from a player whose signed pack-seeded rookie cards are through the roof. Both Longoria and Soto have signed rookies which sell for more than $100 each.

Quick little factoid: I also have TTM signatures of NL ROY runner-up Joey Votto, and 2007 AL Rookie of the Year, Dustin Pedroia. Good times.

This entry was posted on November 11, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Card of the Day with tags autographs, baseball cards, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Dustin pedroia, Evan Longoria, Geovany Soto, Joe Montana, Joey Votto, MLB Awards, Mohammed Ali, rookie cards, Rookies of the Year, TTM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.