I'm a child of the 80's and sports cards have always been a love of mine even though I've sold off and walked away a few times. My initial addiction to this hobby started in 1986, I can even almost still smell the cheap pink gum even though many years ... err, decades have gone by.
My most recent foray into the world of cardboard started sometime around late 2011 after walking away in around 2000. Man, what a difference a decade can make. Autographs, colored parallels, prospect cards, wax prices etc, I had some serious relearning to do. I made many, many mistakes but eventually got the hang of it. I even got into prospecting for awhile but no thanks.
I eventually settled on super collecting and chose Giancarlo 'don't call me Mike' Stanton. I felt he was very undervalued, I loved his personality and besides, "chicks dig the long ball", right? Next thing you know I was well over 200 Stanton autographs, 100 + 1/1's and boxes and boxes of everything in between. The multiple times a day searches was wearing me out, the purchases were getting beyond expensive and worst of all, I wasn't diversified. Should something have happened to Giancarlo, I'd have had to find a very high bridge to jump off of.
I decided to quit purchasing Stanton which was both refreshing and sad. It didn't take me long to realize though that I now had no reason for being in the hobby. Ripping wax was not even fun as I had nothing to collect and just wanted to sell anything and everything. I needed a goal, a chase, a reason for staying in the hobby loop.
I eventually settled on HOF'ers, more specifically, MLB HOF'ers as I am now almost exclusively a baseball fan. As a kid, it was all about the NFL and NBA but as I've gotten older I've drifted further and further from those sports. I still follow but rarely watch.
It is absolutely stunning how many MLB HOF'ers can be acquired for less than $20. I was off hot and heavy when I started and it seemed like I was getting 3-5 new cards per day. That lasted for some time and was easy to do when the cards are $5-20 each but not so much when they start approaching $50-100 unless you're rich. Don't get me wrong, I still eat ramen even though I no longer have to but I most certainly am not independently wealthy. I don't hunt, travel, or buy expensive things. Whatever money my wife doesn't get her hands on goes right into my PC and that has it's limits.
The rush of getting envelopes is addicting and as I got to the point where I did not have the expendable income to purchase new MLB additions I did the natural thing, I ventured into NFL, NBA and even ... gasp ... NHL. It's funny, my buying autographs of basketball and football legends reignited a spark in me. No, I still don't watch much if at all but I definitely follow along more closely than I had in past years.
Mini rant, I detest the basketball Hall of Fame, I can't emphasize that strongly enough. I'm sure there is a place for high school contributors, college contributors, foreign contributors, WNBA contributors and seemingly anyone that has ever been a basketball executive at any level but I just don't care about them and wish there was an actual NBA HOF without all of that other nonsense. However, I am a completionist at heart so detestable or not, I will pick up any member if I can get them cheap enough to justify it, I'm just not happy about it. The NFL and MLB do a much, much better job with their Hall's.
If you've read this far ... wow ... sorry. I have a bad habit of writing walls of texts. I promise that I will do my best to make any future blog entries much more succinct. In any event, thank you for finding my page and by all means, reach out if you have anything to contribute, share, add, debate or criticize.
Oh yeah, that Stanton feller, he's had a pretty good year, good thing I held off on selling until now. Let's just say that it worked out better than I could have ever imagined.
Blog entry #2 - Checking IN - 1/17/19
It's been just over two years since I created this website to document and show off my HOF autograph collection. It was something that I've never done and I was unsure if I'd enjoy keeping up with it or quite frankly, if I'd have the discipline to keep it current. I'm happy to say that other than the blog entries and percentage of completions, I have stayed updated.
Baseball - While still my favorite sport, the stage I'm at with my collection has not changed, I'm at a point where completely new additions are beyond what my means will allow. I have spent the last two years upgrading some cards and pinpointing potential future HOF'ers so that I can speculate and pick them up now before they get the HOF bump in price. I think I've only been able to add a small handful of completely new members. Off the top of my head I can recall Ray Schalk, Cal Hubbard, Herb Pennock and Connie Mack. Not to shabby but it barely scratches the surface compared to what I still need.
Football - I love that football cards are greatly devalued compared to their baseball counterparts. I love the card/player/autograph, I don't care one bit how much a card is worth. For that reason I can't overstate enough how much I love that you can pick up almost all NFL HOF'ers for relative peanuts. It's allowed me to take a huge chunk out of the 100% completion goal.
Basketball - This category still frustrates me as they enshrine anyone and everyone. The completionist in me still desires one of every member but at the same time the sheer ridiculousness of some of them makes me shake my head. Even so, I've picked up a fair amount of new autographs in the last two years and will continue to do so.
Hopefully it isn't another two years before my next entry but whatever the time frame ends up being, my goal will be to continue to chip away at the 100% completion of all three of these sports with an occasional NHL enshrinee mixed in.
I thank anyone who has come here to read this and/or take a look at my collection. My passion for my collection is as strong now as it was when I started it. I hope that anyone reading this has the same passion or that I can in some small part ignite one for collecting. Feel free to contact me with any comments, suggestions or discussion.