Trading Baseball Cards is the Best!

Hey everyone! It has been quite a while since I have posted. I normally hang out on social media these days, but missed writing. I thought I'd write up something having to do with my latest trade. As a child, nothing got me more excited than baseball cards.  I'm not sure what was better - getting a pack of cards to open, or trading cards.  As a 9 or 10 year old, I remember having opened some 1989 Topps, and carrying them around in a brown paper lunch bag.  The star of the show?  "Rock" Raines.  It had to be

You might have GOLD in your relic cards!

Goodness, has it really been 6 months since I've last written an article?  That's a good tell for how busy I've been.  I guess it also speaks to the fact that I haven't really had anything all that interesting to say ... until now.  While the catalyst of the discovery I'm about to tell you is going to zero in on my latest card acquisition, it is my hope that it will cause you to dig into your collection as well, and see if you can uncover gold.  It'll be a fun exercise, I promise!   So, where to begin?  Ahh

Baseball Card Relics older than a T-Rex Discovered!

CHECK OUT THE VIDEO HERE:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zup6xMgrtR8 I've kept this acquisition under my hat for over a year now :)  In 1902, the first Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton was discovered by Barnum Brown in Hell Creek, Montana.  Does it shock you that it wasn't that long ago?  Think of all the people who never got the chance to know about the T-Rex.  George Washington, Van Gogh, Darwin, etc.   Barnum Brown is in the white shirt, next to his discovery.  Ever since, the T-Rex has been known as the king of the dinosaurs.  If you ask a child what their favorite dinosaur is,

134 Year Old Treasure Hunt Yields an Exciting Discovery!

Here is a link to the audio from my podcast if you'd like to listen instead, though I do hope you read the article and check out the pictures! https://anchor.fm/tan-man-baseball-fan/episodes/My-134-Year-Old-Discovery-e13sbv8 What I stumbled upon feels like the baseball card version of the Da Vinci Code and Indiana Jones all wrapped up into one. Everyone loves a good treasure hunting mystery, and I guess that's why I love baseball card collecting so much.  As a 9 year old, nothing would excite me more than when mom & dad would bring me home a pack of 1989 Donruss or take me to

Latest Pickups

These past few weeks have been awesome for my collection.  I figured I'd share what has come in! There is just so, so much that I'm excited about here, but there are a few that I thought should receive some attention.  (The A&G's will not be talked about, as I wrote about them earlier.) The oddball of the month award goes to: This is only the 2nd SP buyback I have This /5 card is one I never thought I'd see This popped up literally a day after I got my first version of it (the jersey/auto).  I am in

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

The Bridge Between Collecting Art and Baseball Cards

If your collecting career was alive and well during the 1980's, you were treated to finding your favorite players packaged with all sorts of things.  From cookies and breads to sausage and dog food, they were everywhere.  Unless they were Broders, you were very familiar with the airbrushed hat, not unlike what Panini and Leaf have to do these days.  Companies did a great job understanding what their consumers liked, and in the 80's, it was baseball cards. Cards being inserted into bread is now a thing of the past.  Card companies have done a number of things differently from

My Collection Just got Personal

As you read this, there are probably millions of online transactions happening around the globe.  Currently, I have cards incoming from Vermont, North Dakota, Florida, Mississippi, Indiana and New Jersey.  These cards are from people I have known for a while, people I have just met or simply people selling cards from Ebay.  They all have one thing in common though:  None of it would have been possible without the use of the Internet. While online transactions are now as commonplace as air-conditioned houses, it hasn't always been like this.  When I first started collecting in the late 80's, the

Maiden Voyage of the Carboard Mobile 2.0

About a month or so ago, we agreed to get a new cardboard mobile ... errr ... minivan. Let me preface this by saying I have not EVER been a minivan dude ... I've grown up being all about horsepower . I can remember verbally proclaiming with many witnesses around that I would never get a minivan. Well, here we are with our second one. The old one had nearly 160,000 miles, and I felt like it would be time to change out with something that had the stow & go seating. Not for groceries or kids of course ...

2014 Flip Quest Finale and the Big Secret Reveal

If you have not followed my story during the season, I decided to start a flip quest in April, and ran it all the way until the A's were knocked out of the season. Welp, that happened a few days ago, so I am here to do a recap, as well as do "the big reveal" as to what the end game was. Things started out innocently enough with me trading a custom card I made. Why did I do this? Because I had just started doing custom cards for my collection about a month or two before, and figured