I have sent off a ton of TTMs over the last month, and I intend on continuing this for the foreseeable future. I have enjoyed the repurposing of old cards, and seeing them come back to me signed after being sent out into the world.
That being said, after receiving a succession of Topps cards signed from some players a few weeks ago, I started thinking about how cool would it be if I could get at least one signed card from every year of Topps. With that in mind, I went to Ebay and picked up a couple 52s, a 51 Red Back, a 51 Blue Back, and a 1955 to add to what I planned on sending out.
I kicked off the project by going into my personal vintage collection and finding the above 1953 Topps Mike Sandlock that I picked up a couple years ago after getting his signature on a baseball TTM.
The significance of Sandlock doesn't stop at the fact that I had gotten him TTM before, or because I had a 53 Topps of him sitting here available to be sent. His main significance is that he is 100 years old and is still signing TTM. To me, that is amazing. At this moment in time, he is the oldest living former MLB player. That is a really cool accomplishment. As you can see, his signature is really nice, and looks cool on the 53 Topps.
Sandlock (b. 1915) played in the majors from 1942, 1944-46 and 1953 for the Boston Braves, Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates. As you can see, two of those teams have relocated since his playing days. When Sandlock was born, Woodrow Wilson was president, the Red Sox had just won the World Series and Ted Williams hadn't even been born yet.
In his career, Sandlock had 107 hits, 2 home runs and a .240 batting average. I mailed to Sandlock on March 11, 2016 and got the card back signed on March 19, 2016, for an 8-day TAT.
For my signed Topps project, this is my first signed 1953 Topps card. I am missing signed cards from 1951 RB, 1951 BB, 1952, 1954-57, 1961, 1962, 1964-69, 1973, 1974, 1977-79, 1982, 1983, 1994-97, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2015 and 2016.
My goal is to obtain the signed cards by either TTM or IP autos. I have accepted a bunch of IP autos from friends like Max, who I send cards to and they get signed. I plan on not buying any signed cards, if I can help it. 1951 will be tough, but I think I can get one or two from some of the few living players who remain in those sets via TTM. I have a couple pending that I am really excited about. I intend to put the signed cards, in order, in either an album or some kind of display. For years that I have multiples of, I plan on picking the one that I feel looks the best, or has the best story, player, etc to represent that year. Right now, I have 11 different signed 1987 Topps, the leader among years I have gotten signed. I plan on playing a little game of this in my head as well in seeing which year I have the most of when I finish this project.
I also would be interested in seeing other folks' attempts at this same project. I would like to see which cards that others choose to represent what years, and what years they end up with the most signed cards. I think that would be a lot of fun, and would make for some interesting blogs!
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