Customs, Patch Peek-a-boo and How to House Annoying Sized Cards

"They look too much like the last several years." "These seem to be a bit boring." "Maybe it is time for them to retire this line." I've heard a lot of criticism of the 2016 Allen & Ginter line, and I was actually not too terribly excited about them myself. They just seemed to uninspired to me. And then they hit eBay. As a Canseco collector, the pictures the card companies use are important to me, and Topps hit the nail on the head. The 2016 base rendition is my absolute favorite base A&G of any of them. Allen &

RAINBOW ALERT! 2016 Donruss Signature Series

The last card I needed for the rainbow came in today for my 2016 Donruss Signature Series ... the black 1/1.  Thank you Bill and Chase for reaching out to me.  I hope you all land that special piece for your collection! I REALLY wanted to complete this rainbow, because it is such an anomaly. - It is not licensed - It has no logos - The autographs are not on card On paper, this shouldn't be special.  However, in spite of all this, I count this as the most aesthetically pleasing / eye popping rainbow I've seen. 8 cards

My Crusade is Complete! Plus, my (almost) ENTIRE Want List … In Pics!

At long last, my Crusade is complete!  My 1998 Donruss Crusade rainbow, that is!  Ever since I started seriously collecting Canseco, The 98 Crusade Red was at the top of my wish list - perhaps it was even my first recognized white whale.  I kept thinking to myself ... they are numbered to 25, so how hard can it be to get one?  (Insert painful belly laugh here.) Looking back on my blogs, the start of my new Canseco collection started 2 about 2 1/2 years ago, so that is about the amount of time it took me to finally

A Tale of Two White Whales

I was going to add this in with my next article coming up in the next few days (which I'm quite excited about sharing with you) but decided to dedicate a post just to this, because it was so epic! The following is not a story of a brand new shiny 1/1 with pieces of memorabilia, and autographs.  No, this is a story of 2 cards - each with very intriguing backgrounds...stories so rich that they make those who collect older cards dream about the day they get to add them to their collections. Last week, I shared with you my monster

My ENTIRE Jose Canseco Collection – In Pictures!

This last weekend was not only Father's Day; it was also the weekend of the card show! As always, I set out to hunt for some Canseco cards for my collection. As I got there, I could immediately tell that this was a hopping place. Something was much, much more different though. There must have been something in the air, because the show-goers seemed to dress a bit odd. The selection seemed a bit slim... But TONS of people flocked to the quarter bins... Hey, at least there were some decent signers... I knew something was off when I asked this

My Top 10 Game Used / Autographed Cards in My Collection

Someone online posted a thread asking people to post their top 10 cards.  I tried going through my cards a few times to figure out my top 10, but ultimately got stressed out in the process. SOOO what I'm going to do is post my top 10 jersey/auto cards, because frankly, they are more like art to me than cards. Counting down from 10 ... I'm a big fan of Prime Patches ... I LOVE them. I love how there are different pieces and an autograph on it. Home Jersey, Away Jersey, Batting Glove and Hat. #/25 This 1/1 has

Birthdays, Customs and Collection Additions

The month of May marks two important landmarks for me.  One, that I will turn 36 years young this Monday (I swear I don't feel a day over 34) and two, the birthday of something I have grown quite attached to.  My moustache. It has been a magical year - my first year as a moustachioed man.  Whenever I'm down after having eaten a delicious slice of cake, my moustache brings me great joy by surprising me with a little extra icing it saved me.  Through thick and thin, it still finds the strength to curl and make others smile. 

Fleer Ultra Prototypes Discovered

Picture this:  The year is 1991.  Some of the best selling video games are Sonic the Hedgehog and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  You loved Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and you can't get Mariah Carey's "Someday" single out of your head.  The heated topic of debate is Desert Storm, and while you are not sure what your own views are, you do know that you love the Desert Shield stamped cards they came out with. Baseball cards are a huge part of the culture, and you hold the envious position of being a designer for

Making a Comic Book Come to Life

Ever since I dipped my toe into the pool of selling items beyond sports cards, I have taken notice of the vast differences of personalities of collectors.  One type of collector has really taken me by surprise: Comic book collectors.  Over the past several years, I have probably bought and sold about 80,000 comic books.  I love comic books. Here is what my garage looked like at the end of 2012.  See those boxes?  side from the nice cache of wax you see, everything else is comic books! Comics make me giddy ... not as giddy as baseball cards do,

27 Years of Collecting…TODAY!

WARNING WARNING WARNING:  This post could quite possibly have a high tl;dr possibility among internet viewers, and is highly cansecocentric.  Reader discretion is advised.  (Though, I do hope you stay until the end - I was able to put together some pretty epic pieces of some Hall of Famers!) A few months back, my family and I were visiting my parents.  Mom came out with a stack of journals from school back when I was in elementary.  If you thought my being a baseball card nut is bad now, check out what I wrote in a journal entry back in