TTM Requests Out But Not Forgotten

I have had some luck with TTM requests and I usually have custom cards in the works in case I decide to send out some requests. Last fall I sent out two packages but since I have moved and my ex-girlfriend sold her house and moved two weeks ago, I put in a change of address and she put in a change of address so I still have hope that if the cards were signed that the return packages will make it to me or her but it has been over 6 months so I am feeling a bit deflated.

I created cards for Kurt Russell and Sam J Jones. Kurt Russell is one of those easy to love actors who has made such a variety of movies that everyone can enjoy something that he has done. What a lot of people do not know is that Russell actually played minor league baseball in the California Angels organization. He made it to AA but he had started acting as a kid and ended up turning to Hollywood and gave up baseball, though he did return to play for his father's Portland Mavericks minor league team. He has no official cards but Dave Stewart (a disabled Vietnam vet) created a set with proceeds going to the Disabled American Veterans fund that depicts Kurt in his El Paso Sun Kings uniform, a card I do have in my collection. After watching the Battered Bastards of Baseball documentary about Kurt and his father I decided to make a card for Kurt with the Mavericks.

I used the 1977 Topps baseball design, which was Kurt's final year playing baseball. It was difficult finding any images of Kurt with the Mavericks and what I did find was in sepia tone so I ended up colorizing the image. The entire image was the color of the people in the background, so everything else was touched up by me. The problem with colorizing a sepia image is that colors don't come out natural. Using a black and white image would have been easier but I liked this shot so I worked with what I have. I used Mark Fidrych's back as the template and used Russell's actual stats and created the cartoon based on Kurt Russell's portrayal of a jungle boy on Gilligan's Island. I used matte photo paper when I printed the front and cardboard stock when printing the back. I sent five copies of the card asking that Kurt sign two and return them using the SASE and keep the other 3 for his friends/family.

Sam J Jones played Flash Gordon in the 1980 film and without going in to it I have a sentimental connection to the movie and I do have a small Flash Gordon collection. In the movie Flash is the NY Jets QB and gets abducted by Zarkov and ends up on Mongo where he leads a rebellion against the dictator Ming the Merciless. Jones does not appear in the movie wearing the Jets uniform but as part of the advertising blitz this image was released. There have been a couple of people that have used this image to create cards but I wanted to create my own for a TTM request.

I used the 1980 Topps football design and with the help of a reader, thank you Greg, I was able to get a detailed scan of the back of the actual NY Jets QB Richard Todd. I changed up the personal bio information using Sam J Jones info but I kept Todd's stats. Like Russell cards I used matte photo paper for the front and cardboard stock for the back and again I sent 5 cards asking two to be signed and returned and to keep the other 3 for friends/family.

If they do eventually make their way back to me I plan on keeping one signed copy of each and doing a contest for the other autographed copy of each card. I currently have two cards designed for one of my favorite actors as well as a series I am designing for a movie trilogy that I will be sending out soon.

TTM Success

After having some luck with TTM autograph requests this year I decided to continue with some of my favorite actors and this includes Mel Brooks.

I was first introduced to Mel Brooks when my parents took us to see History Of The World: Part I in the theater. Sure the movie was a bit over my 9-year old head but the jokes that I did get made me laugh and created a Mel Brooks fan for life. Over the years with movies like Spaceballs and Robin Hood: Men In Tights I began to appreciate Mel's humor and looked back to his older movies like Blazing Saddles and shorts like The 2000 Year Old Man.

I came across a TTM autograph website and saw that Mr. Brooks does respond to autograph requests but that it is usually in the form of an 8x10 but I took a chance and created 3 custom cards (including the backs) similar to the Randy Couture card that I got back signed not long ago. These are the digital versions of the cards I sent.

I sent the cards and waited, it took about 3 weeks and I got a large envelope from Brooksfilms and honestly did not put it together in my mind until I opened it. Inside was a black and white signed 8x10 along with a business envelope. Inside the business envelope was my SASE and three cards, which were not signed.

I love the photo, I am a bit bummed because I would have loved to have his signature on the cards and be able to put them in to a binder but the photo is hanging prominently in my workspace near my Dalai Lama signature.

A Randy Couture TTM Success

Earlier this year I sent a TTM request to Macklemore for my nephew and was happy to get it back in just over a month. I first started sending TTM requests in the 1990s when I got back in to collecting and after getting no responses I gave up due to frustration but after my luck earlier this year I decided to give it another try, this time I sent a request to Randy Couture. I sent the request on August 8^th and got it back on August 17^th, a nine-day turn around.

Couture is one of my favorite MMA fighters so I selected a card that I really liked, the 2011 Topps UFC Title Shot Legacy card.

 

Because I also like Couture’s character Toll Road in the Expendables movies, my favorite recent action film series, I wanted to get an Expendables autograph but there are no cards for the movie series so I made my own. I used a great clear image from Expendables 2 and I tweaked the autograph design from my Mel Brooks series. I kept the card simple, his image along with the Expendables logo and along the bottom I added a mist similar to what Topps uses for autographs but I think I will remove the mist for future cards because I like the bold signature across the front. I may only use the mist if I have a dark image where the autograph my get lost otherwise.

I even made a back with his bio. I plan on using the same design for other actors/athletes so I can easily change the bio. I created the box for the bio using a grunge style but now I realize that the bottom of the box looks like my printer was running out of ink so I plan on cleaning that up for future cards.

The scan looks washed out, the card does not look like this in hand. I have included the digital file to show the true solid black coloring. As you can see in the card I did not include a border, those lines in the digital file are the cutline.