Focus!

The more I’ve been looking at cards, the more I realize I must focus! I can’t collect everything or everyone. Even narrowing it down to a handful of players has been difficult.


For sure I will be collecting Twins stars, past and present. That’s quite a few players and I’m sure as I go on I’ll have a better opinion on what cards I like and don’t like, so I won’t feel like I have to buy practically every card for each player.

Outside of the Twins, deciding who to collect has been a little harder. Living in South Florida Marlins players are an obvious choice. I’ve chosen to start building Mike Stanton and Chris Coghlan collections. Since Stanton is a rookie and Coghlan is in his second year, I’m not far behind. I also think they’ll both have very good careers, so it will be fun to follow them wherever they may eventually wind up.

As for cards other than baseball, for the most part I think I’ll probably just pick up cards here and there where I find good deals of some of my favorite players, past and present. These will probably be mostly football, but if I run across a really cool John Stockton or Karl Malone card, I wouldn’t pass it up. Just sayin’.

Then there’s NASCAR. I’ve been a big NASCAR fan for over 15 years now, and I already collect Mark Martin stuff, so why not cards? For the most part he’ll be the only driver I’ll look for, but my nephews are really big Tony Stewart fans so if I come across something cool, I may pick it up for a gift.

Got a few fun things in the mail this week:

 
 

The beginning of my Mike Stanton collection.

The beginning of my Colby Rasmus collection.

Picked up a pack of PressPass Premium '10 cards at WalMart one day for the heck of it, and wound up with 2 Mark Martin cards, including this one.

I think I’ll be going to a St. Lucie Mets game later this week, and plan on hitting up a card show and a Marlins game this weekend and hope to share about that next week.

A Trip to the Card Shop

I made a trip to a card shop in Orlando over the weekend, Orlando Sportscards South. I haven’t been to a card shop in many years, and even then it was only Schinder’s in Minnesota (I miss Schinder's!).


The store was great. They have tons of stuff. They were having a sale-all singles 50% off, and since my collection is in the beginning stages, there was a lot I wanted. I showed a little restraint, however and only picked up 7 cards, for a total of $4. I will definitely stop in there again the next time I’m in Orlando.

I picked up a few cards of my all time favorite Twins player- Frank Viola. One of them is just a silly, cartoony card that I just find fun.

I also picked up a 2010 Upper Deck Ballpark card of Target Field. Not real special, but I love Target Field and it was half off, so I thought, “what the heck?

Tonight when I was scanning the card, I read the back more carefully and became puzzled. See if you can see why I am puzzled.

 
They’ve made three World Series appearances, but they’ve only won two. Just seems a little misleading for the card to say “championships” when they probably mean “appearances”, don’t you think?

A Few Favorites

Thought I'd share a few of my favorites I've gotten during the first month of collecting. 

2010 Topps Tribute Harmon Killebrew

Carlos Gomez Rookie Refractor

 

My Regis!

Still getting the hang of the scanner, especially since the software for it isn't really compatible with my computer, but it sure is fun!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! I hope to talk mostly about my re-discovered hobby of sports card collecting and sports topics in general but you never know what might pop up.

I say re-discovered because I did collect baseball cards as a kid (late 70s to early 80s), and also at one time collected 87 and 91 Twins team sets, but I really hadn’t given much thought to cards since then.

A year or two ago I remembered those Twins team sets and tried to find them. Even though I know exactly what they are in (a black binder), I haven’t been able to locate them. I’m 99% sure they have not been thrown out and they are just in a box somewhere.

Since those boxes are in Minnesota and I’m in Florida my opportunities to search are few. Knowing that, a month or so ago I decided I should just start trying to replace those sets. And so, a new obsession for collecting was born and not just to replace my missing sets.

Since I last paid attention to cards, there are so many new and interesting things. Who knew you could now get game used bats and jerseys and autograph cards? Who knew there were so many different inserts, refractors, etc? I sure didn’t. But I’m hooked.

With so much out there, I need to narrow my focus on what exactly I want to collect. Twins obviously, although I will probably focus on current and past stars instead of whole team sets. Former Twins who are now stars? Probably, especially Santana, Hunter and Ortiz. I’m certainly going to collect Carlos Gomez, who isn’t a star but is a sentimental favorite after a spring training incident a few years ago.

Beyond Twins, I’ll probably also collect Marlins stars. I don’t have a whole lot of other favorite players outside of the Twins and Marlins, but Colby Rasmus of the Cardinals is another sentimental favorite from spring training games.

I don’t think I’ll really be trying to collect entire sets with one exception. 2010 Allen & Ginter. I know the Allen & Ginter sets have been around awhile now, but they’re new to me and I love them. I just like the look and all the interesting inserts and minis. It also doesn’t hurt that they have a Regis Philbin card. So I am going to try to collect all the 2010 base cards, and as many of the minis and other inserts that I can.

So that’s where I am. I’m excited about collecting, and excited to be blogging about it and sharing some of my hits and finds.