Through-the-mail (TTM) autograph collecting is a fun and exciting way to add autographs to our collections. It often involves waiting for months, even years, but coming home and seeing your envelope returned from one of your TTM attempts is a great feeling.
There’s an etiquette to TTM collecting in place to show respect to the celebrity you are asking to sign your items and to help keep this avenue of collecting open for our community. Tonight we have an example of what can happen when that etiquette is not followed.
Steve Blum, who provided the voice for Zeb Orrelios in Disney’s Star Wars Rebels, posted a photo on Twitter of a stack of envelopes he received from a recent TTM request.
“This guy has sent me 19 envelopes with three trading cards each and no return postage, trying to get free autographs. Don’t be this guy.”
Situations like this often make the celebrity feel taken advantage of and disrespected. It also increases the chance of them no longer signing TTM. After seeing Blum’s Tweet I reached out to Star Wars Autograph News podcast host Graham Miles, who has been collecting autographs through-the-mail for 20 years, to get his thoughts.
“When you send something through the mail for signing you’re basically asking a celebrity to do you a favour.” says Miles. “They are under no obligation to do you that favour so you want to make things as easy as possible for them to do so.”
Showing your appreciation for the celebrity’s time and talents are a big part of TTM etiquette. A letter, even a short one, telling them what their work has meant to you and why you are requesting their autograph goes a very long way.
“Be courteous in your letter.” Miles explains. “Don’t be greedy and certainly don’t expect them to pay out of their own pocket to get your stuff back to you.”
Requesting too many items to be signed is another sure way to make the signer feel disrespected and jeopardize TTM collecting for the rest of our community. The rule of thumb is to only send 1-2 items in your request for signing.
“Asking for more than two items to be signed is at best going to come of as greedy” cautions Miles “and at worst make the celebrity think you’re not being honest and these autographs are not really for your personal collection.”
As Graham mentioned it’s important to make this process as easy as possible for the signer, and to never expect them to pay out of pocket to return your items back to you. Including return postage in your request is essential.
“You also to make sure you include a stamped addressed envelope with stamps appropriate to the celebrity’s country.” explains Miles. “They are not going to go to the post office and buy stamps to send your stuff back. If this is what you expect then your letter and items will swiftly find their way into the celebrity’s trash, and rightly so.”
I put together this short TTM tutorial awhile back, and while it’s somewhat dated, it does provide the basics.
I encourage Star Wars autograph collectors to try TTM at least once. If you’re like me it won’t be your last. Just remember these simple steps to the process by showing respect to the signer and our Star Wars autograph collecting community.
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