Back At It Again After 20+ Years

**EWPhotography** · 08-14-2023, 12:28 AM

Hi all. I'm two-year retired Systems Security Engineer and used to do TTM autograph requests all the time. It was a hobby that lasted years. I have tons of sports (and other) autographs, mostly football. But that was 20-30 years ago (that's how old all my cards are). That was also back in the days when you would pay to have a list of celebrity/sports addresses snail-mailed to you.

I stumbled onto SCF quite by accident (thanks Jeff from the Spire City Ghost Hounds!) and it renewed my interest in TTM requests. The only problem is that I gave away my entire card collection to my two Godsons (brothers) at least 10 yrs ago. The boys are grown now (one a sophmore in college and the other a senior in high school) and I didn't know if they ever were interested in the collection. I saw them today and they said my collection was "collecting" dust in their basement. I jumped for joy asked asked if I could get it back. They were happy to get rid of it.

If I uploaded the pic correctly, you will see my collection. I'm not sure if it is considered big or not (probably not by today's standards). The cell phone is added for size comparison. Back in the day, I was a huge Redskins fan. Two entire rows of the big box are nothing but Redskins cards. About a quarter to one-half of those shoud be vintage cards too, just itching to be signed! I've already got a pretty large collection of old Redskins (and many other) autographs but can't wait to search the TTM Manager to see how many of them are signing these days. My only regret is that I never got one from my favorite player, Dave Butz. He died almost a year ago. I don't know if his record has ever been broken but he was noted as having the largest helmet size in the NFL. LOL

https://i.postimg.cc/mgHwgBk0/0813232042-HDR-3.jpg

The other thing is that I've become a sports photographer in my retirement. My main claim to fame is that I shoot for my local minor league baseball team. I also do a little minor league professional wrestling, a lot of various sports at my local high school and some concert photography. I also have the priviledge to be able to shoot some celebrity charity golf tounaments that current and former NFLers attend. I did one already this year (Ron Rivera was the big draw but there were a handful of 80s and 90s Skins there too). There's another tounament coming up in a couple weeks. Unfortunately, I am NOT allowed to ask for autographs. However, there's one guy I know of who will be at the next tournament and that's Lawrence "LT" Taylor. I've already dug out some old LT cards (eight so far). One of them is even a 1992 Pro Line Profile Portraits card showing LT golfing! UPDATE: Just saw Tony Womack will be there too. I'll risk not being invited back to shoot again but think I might be able to have the lead organizer get one or two signed for me. We'll see. I'd rather have my own personal pics of these guys than autographs. What I should do is print some pics after the tournament and send them TTM. I've had a few professional musicians sign copies of my pics in person.

Thanks for letting me into your world,

--Eric