About the Author:  Tanner Jones is a self-employed web developer, graphic designer and writer.  In addition to making the cover of Beckett Monthly in August 2015 with Jose Canseco, Tanner’s work and collection have been featured on camera, radio, print and the web.  Tanner only collects Jose Canseco and is thrilled when others reach out to him when they find rare Canseco cards.  His dream is to one day be featured on his very own Topps baseball card and have a hand in designing a set for Topps that has Canseco in it.  

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Cardboard runs in my veins.  For whatever reason, I can vividly remember several points in my childhood thanks to the baseball cards.  One time, I locked myself in the bathroom because I didn’t want to go to school.  How did my dad bribe me to get out?  Baseball cards.  When my cat died, what did my parents get to console me?  A box of baseball cards.  What kept me up at night?  Dreaming about getting an entire case of baseball cards.  (That didn’t happen until I was an adult!)

My story is not unlike a number of guys in their mid thirties.  As a child, I loved baseball cards, but as I got older, my excitement for them waned and gave way to everything that the teenage years had to offer.  I grew up, got married, had a son and then the hurricane hit.  In about 2005, the Houston area was hit hard by Hurricane Rita.  With no electricity, my boredom led me to my closet and retrieve my childhood collection of baseball cards.  While much of it was vintage, a disproportionate amount of it was Jose Canseco.  I recall my mother in law and sister in law coming over while I had my cards sprawled out all over the table of the living room like I was twelve years old again.  My sister in law came over to the table, peering at all of the piles of Canseco cards and said “Wow, man crush much?”  I wanted to explain to her all of the reasons why I shouldn’t feel like a creep, but in the end I came to grips with the realization that I am just a twelve year old at heart.

Shown above are a few cards in Tanner’s collection from Topps that represent various categories.

Digging into my baseball cards again must have sparked something, because I wanted to get more.  When I got back into collecting, I wanted to find a niche – something that would satisfy this desire I had to link this nostalgic feeling for baseball cards from my youth to adulthood.  Initially, I settled on building a run of complete sets from my birth year 1980 to 1993 (when I stopped collecting.)  When I learned of the latest game used and pack-pulled autograph craze, I was hooked.  I bought tons of them with no rhyme or reason, regardless of who the player was.  There was just something enticing about owning a card with a piece of the player’s jersey.

Eventually, I grew dissatisfied with this directionless way of collecting, and the closet full of “junk wax” complete sets.  I made plans to sell everything.  Within a matter of months, I was cardboard free – with the exception of my childhood Canseco collection.  I couldn’t sell his cards, because he was my childhood hero.  The very reason I got excited about baseball in the first place.  I loved watching him violently swing the bat and hit the ball so hard, that your eyes couldn’t track where it was going or where it ended up.  He was like this mythical figure that transcended the game of baseball, and nothing gave me more enjoyment than collecting his baseball cards.  I wrote him and even invited him to my birthday party as a
young child.  Sadly, he did not show up.

After I sold my cards, I realized I could make some money buying and selling.  Over the next decade, I had done deals for approximately ten million cards.  It was a blast!  I would hold onto the gems I would come across for a short while, but eventually sell them, as I had no desire to keep them.  The only cards I held onto were any Jose Canseco cards that would cross my path when rowing through countless 5,000 card monster boxes from my latest acquisitions.  The goal was to one day “do it right” – spend time making a checklist for what I had and did not yet have.  At the end of 2013, that day had come.

Nearly 100 different Topps Archives Signature Series Canseco cards, with only 28 of them being numbered higher than /10.

I ended up selling out of everything I had, and decided it was time to finally sit down and look at all of the Jose Canseco cards I had accumulated as an adult, along with my childhood collection.  I was disappointed, because there was nothing truly special.  There would be 100 1990 Topps cards, but not a single tiffany.  1991 Topps?  A whole stack, but not a single, solitary desert shield version.  Yet again, I grew frustrated, and sold out of all my Canseco cards, with the exception of 3 or 4 of them.  The most expensive card I owned of Canseco was probably no more than $10.

Within a few months I sold everything, but this question kept nagging me: “What if I were to do it right this time, from the very start?”  I made plans to buy meaningful cards – the game used, serial numbered and refractor Canseco cards that were cheap, yet had eluded me.  Not only that, but I decided to keep a checklist so I wouldn’t run into having 100 doubles of the same card again.  After a few key purchases using the funds from my old Canseco collection sale, I amassed quite a nice selection of die-cuts, refractors, inserts and others that I had never seen before in the millions of cards I shuffled through over the years.  This made it clear to me that assembling a meaningful collection would not come from just
throwing money at more cards; it would take a great deal of time and effort – being intentional and deliberate about collecting the right cards.

Over the next several months, the hobby I loved since I was a child became more exciting to me than ever.  I picked up a few collections from former heavy Canseco collectors, and with them, several interesting story lines.  Within these collections were cards that had not seen the market in several years.  In these collections were cards that were fought hard for.  Some were picked up from intense trading sessions and still others were unearthed from tirelessly sifting through countless boxes at local card shows.  I have a ton of appreciation for these cards and the history of how they made their way into my collection.

Beautiful 2015 Dynasty patch autographed cards.

Somewhere along the line, a switch was flipped, and I was no longer casually looking for cards I thought were cool; I was intently searching for cards I didn’t have.  This happened when I realized that there were significantly more items on my “have” list than on my “want” list.  This list, by the way, has evolved from a Word document, to a Spreadsheet to a fully searchable online database at www.CansecoCollector.com where every card I own is pictured.  I cannot begin to imagine how many hours I have into it.

In addition to being a Canseco supercollector, everyone knows me as a writer and a custom card creator.  Both of these elements have greatly enhanced the enjoyment of my collecting experience, and have added another dimension to the hobby for me.  It has helped me to think about the collecting experience differently, and I am constantly thinking about how to take things to the next level.

The greatest thing that has happened to me in this hobby occurred in May of 2015.  Several months prior to this, I had an idea of holding a private signing with Canseco.  I reached out to his manager to see if it could happen.  It took months, but everything fell into place, and my family & I found ourselves in the car, driving across the country to meet Jose Canseco.  We did not know any details; just that we needed to be in Las Vegas on a certain day.  With well over 1,000 miles logged into the trip, I was uneasy about not having any details firmed up.  Just then, I was notified by Canseco’s manager with news.  Jose Canseco had invited us to his house!

The entire experience was awesome.  He was incredibly nice to my family and I, and spent the afternoon with us feeding his pets, signing countless items, playing cards, eating cupcakes and listening to him narrate his best home runs that he showed us.  He even traded fielding gloves with me, and signed it for me as well!  I vividly remember the cards I won on eBay during the cross-country road trip and the cards I missed out on.  I still get a chuckle out of being frustrated that I missed out on a few pieces of cardboard with a picture of my childhood hero who I was on my way to hang out with!

This card was created using the custom card program on Topps.com

That is an abbreviated version of the story, and the rest of it can be found in the August 2015 issue of Beckett magazine.  They put me on the cover with Canseco, gave me six full color pages inside the issue and made a baseball card of the cover I was on for the 2015 National Sports Card Convention.  I am very grateful for all that has happened, and though it has been about a year and a half, it feels like yesterday.  Several months after all of this, Canseco texted me to check in and see how my family was doing out of the blue.  I have since forgiven him for not making it to my birthday party as a child.

Even with all that has happened to me over the past few years, I still get a huge thrill out of finding Canseco baseball cards I do not yet have.  In fact, I am on pins and needles right now waiting for the mailman to get here today, because I am expecting something big that someone online tipped me off about.  Speaking of which, the online collecting community has been amazing to me.  So many big cards in my collection are only there because of the kindness of so many who go out of their way to notify me when they find something they think I do not yet have.

Finally, I want to thank Topps for allowing me to be a guest writer on their website.  My first Topps baseball card I remember having was thirty years ago.  It was a 1987 Topps Jose Canseco.  My collecting journey has been enriched in no small way thanks to Topps and the remarkable cards they produce.  I look forward to seeing what they come up with in the next thirty years to come.