Troy Rutter (TTM Troy) is an autograph enthusiast from Iowa with a long history of collecting autographs. It all started with collecting autographs of Iowa State Cyclone basketball players in the early 1980s, and escalated when he met his first real celebrity, Janet Fielding, at a Dr. Who convention at a local PBS television station. After that meeting, Troy utilized various early computer networks to find celebrity agents and managers and sent a letter asking for a signed photo.
This continued until 1995, when instead of asking for an autograph from an up-and-coming band, he asked if he could do their official website, when the Internet was just taking form. This initial website led him to create a variety of official celebrity websites, where he eventually moved to Los Angeles to work at Warner Bros. studios while creating websites for a variety of celebrities and performing other publicity tasks on the side.
Troy joined the Screen Actor’s Guild himself in 1995, and continued to collect autographs through the mail, even after relocating back to Iowa in 2001. After a bit of a hiatus, he started collecting again, eventually starting a YouTube channel in 2012 and joining the cast of the Autograph Weekly podcast. During this time, Troy purchased the childhood home of another infamous autograph collector, Jack Smalling, author of The Baseball Address Book.
Troy continued collecting autographs, focusing first on 8×10 TV/Film celebrities and transitioned over to sports cards. In 2015 he relocated back to Los Angeles, again working for Warner Bros. where he grew his YouTube channel and also wrote the book Autograph Collecting Secrets, which was released in 2016. He also wrote weekly articles for the popular website “Mike the Fanboy” where he featured the best prospects for a successful TTM return. He relocated back to Iowa to in 2017 and continued working on his collection and YouTube channel, and was featured on many podcasts, eventually becoming a co-host on the popular “TTM Cast” podcast.
He currently resides in Ames, Iowa and continues to enjoy TTM’ing, camping, writing, website development, and being a part of the TTM Community.