This site provides an outlet to share my baseball card collection with the world without being constrained by formatting rules and the ephemeral nature of social media platforms. It also provides a place in which I can record my thoughts and research on specific cards and players.
My sports card addiction began in 1990 when my grandmother bought me what she described as a “pack of baseball cards” for Christmas. What I opened that morning was a package of 25 penny sleeves with a 1990 Topps Rich Gedman card on top. I had never held a card before and remember thinking, “So this is what the all the older kids are always talking about.” I was hooked.
Over the next half dozen years I built a collection out of whatever packs the local Rite Aid had available and whatever low/mid-grade cards could be scrounged up at local shows. A regular dealer at these shows and the discovery of mail order catalogs allowed for a decent accumulation of low-grade stars from the 1950s. A combination of junk wax fatigue, girls, and refocusing income towards upcoming tuition needs led me away from collecting later in the decade. In the late 2010s I began using baseball statistics to learn new software applications, an initiative that eventually rekindled my interest in cards as time progressed.
I decided to start collecting again, but this time I would purposely set out to collect what I wanted and not what was simply available. I drew up a list of sets that held special meaning to me and resolved to work towards completing each one. These sets combine to represent less than 1,000 cards, a total I believe to be achievable and small enough to allow a deeper look at each individual component. This should take more than a decade to fully put together.
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Frequently Occasionally Asked Questions
What sets are you building?
I am building the following baseball sets with varying degrees of optimism for ever finishing:
- 1949 Leaf (17% complete)
- 1952 Topps (62% complete)
- 1991 Donruss Elite (50% complete)
- 1993 Topps Finest Refractors (99% complete)
- 2018 Topps Archives Sandlot Autographs (42% complete)
In addition to the above, I have completed a few smaller insert sets (1994 Leaf Gold Stars and 2001 Topps Finest Origins Refractors). From time to time I also work on expanding player collections of Jose Canseco and former A’s pitcher Charlie Bishop.
Do you trade cards?
Not really. I might do so in person, but the focused nature of my collection and a general lack of duplicates and differing condition preferences make finding a mutually agreeable trade a bit difficult. Instead, I tend to just give away duplicates if I am fortunate enough to land an upgrade. I’m not a big fan of giving too many people my address so I prefer to keep this a one-way flow of cards.
Why do you use wOBA in your rankings of players rather than an adjusted metric like WRc+?
If I wanted to get truly to the bottom of who a better batter is, I would probably replace wOBA with WRc+. However, I use a more personalized ranking system and the fact is that I enjoy periods of greater offense. A guy who hit 35 home runs in the middle of the 1960s is less exciting to me than a guy who hit 40 in the decades before and after the decade of the pitcher, even though the former might be a tiny bit more impressive.