I got a great TTM success in today from a baseball star that I paid a lot of attention to when I was growing up. Being a baseball fan in the 90s, you knew who Juan Gonzalez was. He was one of the biggest stars of the decade and when I saw that he was signing TTM, I jumped all over it. I went through all of my card boxes and pulled out a huge stack of his cards. I then culled them down to just 5 that I thought would look cool signed and/or ones I would have liked to have seen in my auto album.
This 1995 Studio Gold card was the #1 card that I wanted to get signed. I didn't have any in my auto album yet, and this was one of my favorite sets from back then. The concept was pretty cool, and still looks pretty good today. The card turned out great signed; I couldn't have asked for it to have turned out better.
This 1996 Score Select turned out really nice, as well. This was a premium product back then, and I actually had forgotten about it until I found this in one of my boxes. The wood grain design always looks good on a card, so I think that is what pushed it to the front of the line of cards that I picked.
I had a bunch of the 1998 Topps Interleague Play cards, and I thought it looked pretty cool. The 1994 Fleer Ultra is especially cool with the American FLag background, but if you look closer, it has the 1993 All Star Game logo when the game was played at Camden Yards. I had to add that to the TTM request for that purpose alone!
Finally, while looking through the boxes, I found this 1990 Topps Gonzalez rookie. I figured that would top everything off, so I added it to the pile. I was tempted to add a sixth card, but in the end, I relented since I didn't want to push my luck. I am really happy with how everything turned out.
Gonzalez (b. 1969) played in the majors from 1989 to 2005 for the Rangers, Tigers, Indians and Royals. He had 1,936 hits, 434 home runs and a .295 career batting average. He was a 3-time All Star and 6-time Silver Slugger Award winner. He was the AL MVP twice (1996 and 1998). He hit 40 or more home runs five times. He batted .310 or better five times as well. He appeared on two Hall of Fame ballots (2011 and 2012) but only received as much as 5.2% of the vote before receiving 4.0% that dropped him off of the ballot in 2012.
Gonzalez on paper looks like a sure-fire Hall of Famer, but being mentioned in the 2005 Mitchell Report and also Jose Canseco's book as a steroid user. This is the reason why he barely got a sniff of any Hall of Fame votes. I doubt he ever gets in, but if some of the other known users get in, maybe he will have a chance in the future.
I mailed to Gonzalez on September 26 and got the cards back today for an 11-day TAT.
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