What to do now???

It is sad to see the baseball season come to an end.  I really expected to see a 6 or 7 game series with the Tigers coming out on top.  Hats off to the Giants for taking the wind out of the Tigers from the beginning by knocking off Verlander.  

This baseball season was one that I will always remember.  Not for the continued struggle of my beloved Royals despite expectations that they would be better.  But for a season in which I had season tickets for the first time.  A season in which I was able to attend my first major professional sporting event, the All Star Game and all of the festivities that surrounded that.  A season in which I was able to get to two other parks (Baltimore and Washington) besides Kansas City.  A season that was somewhat interrupted with a major move and job change for my wife and I.

So where to we go from here???  I am reminded of one of my favorite baseball quotes from the great Rogers Hornsby.

“People ask me what I do in the winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”

Good thing I have MLB Network!

Card Show Pickups

On Sunday, a friend of mine, my wife, and I travelled up the road to the Olathe, KS Hampton Inn for the local card show.  It looks like this is a recurring show on the 2nd weekend of every other month.  This was the first time that any of us had been to this particular show.  There were 11-12 different dealers there and I must say that I was somewhat disappointed.  I had taken my list of cards I needed for a couple of sets, but found nothing from them.  I was especially looking to try to finish up the last 17 cards of my 1973 Topps set, but I came up empty.  There was only 1 dealer that was selling any wax boxes but none of those were from the last 2 years, and most were just selling a ton of patch and auto cards that I don't really care about.

I was able to make a couple of purchases.  Being close to KC, there were a couple of dealers with some George Brett cards.  After leaving my wife to browse through the box (and she has a pretty good eye for what I need) we walked away with 4 Brett cards.  One was a 1989 Topps Wax Box bottom, a 1993 Kraft Singles Superstar, a 1991 Sports Educational, and my favorite, 1 1993 Cardtoons.

According to cardtoons, "True" Brett is one of the legendary Old West figures to have played professional baseball.  Some of the others include...Bat Masterson, Wild Ball Hickock, Billy the Say Hey Kid, and Buffa-Low Ball Bill.  There were others listed, but I will stop there.  You have to love unlicensed cards......

My steal for the show came from what I was told a 10 cent box.  When I showed the dealer the 20 cards that I got, he asked if I got them out of box he pointed at.  I guess he wasn't wanting to get rid of them for 10 cents each, but based on the condition, he honored his original offer.  I pulled $2.00 worth of cards and came away with some pretty rough cards from 1958, 1959, 1963, and 1964.  Nothing I needed, but just pretty cool to add to my collection.  At only $2.00, I considered it a bargain and at least I had heard of some of the names!!!

I probably impressed my wife by only spending $5.00 although I had to trouble her for the money as none of the dealers had enough change to break a $20.00 bill.

2000 Upper Deck Legends Legendary Jersey Update

Over the course of the last few months, I have been able to pick up a few more pieces to my goal of collecting the 2000 Upper Deck Legends Legendary Jersey subset.  I have added a couple of players from my youth including Randy Johnson, Tony Gwynn, Ozzie Smith, and Willie Stargell.  Although Stargell was at the end of his career, I still remember the 70s run of the Pirate "family".
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I have also added a few players from before my time including Bob Gibson, Don Drysdale, and Roger Maris.  The Maris is my first "graded" card in my collection.  I never did get to see any of these players play the game, but growing up I definitely remember hearing about each of their achievements.  I was very pleased to be able to add these to my collection.  This brings my total collection up to 35 cards in the subset.

What is better than entering a blogger's contest and winning....

NOT entering a blogger's contest and STILL winning.  Thanks to Dennis over at Too Many Verlanders for having a contest in which: 1) I won and got some great prizes; 2) I didn't have to enter; and 3) I ended up with new followers on my blog.  Based upon the name of his blog and how Verlander has pitched this year, I would like to predict that one of them will win either a Blogger of the Year Award and/or the Cy Young Award.   Maybe both will come true.

I must say that the main contest prize was a pretty cool Jayson Werth manufactured bat barrel card from 2010 Topps Update.  This is my first barrel card and while I don't think I would pursue any more of these cards unless it were someone in my PC it is still cool to have in my collection.  It is, by far, the thickest card in my collection.

The rest of the loot will fit nicely in my Royals collection as Dennis included a large number of random Royals covering many years.  Some of my favorites in his stash included this 1983 Fleer two card set of Bud Black and Vida Blue.  I remember loving how they would make two cards form one picture.  I am not so much of a fan of this anymore, but as a 10 year old kid, it was supercool!

A few of the cards were of the Chrome variety including this 2006 Bowman Chrome Futures Game Alex Gordon and the 2001 Topps Chrome Golden Anniversary Bo Jackson.

But the really big surprise was the card I actually didn't see until the end. A card from a Royal.  A card from my favorite player.  A rookie card.  A 1975 Topps card.  A piece of cardboard that has definitely been appreciated....I love it!  Thanks Dennis for the contest and letting me win even though I didn't even enter.  Definitely, the best contest ever, and the reason I love blogging!

Back in the game....with a new job, a new house, and a new set completion!

Well, it has been quite some time since my last post, but when I left you I was in the midst of finishing up another school year, taking on a new job, and trying to sell a house.  I would like to say that all of those things got accomplished, but not that easily.

The house, even in today's market, sold very quickly.  Of course, I decided the phrase "priced to sell" should mean just that.  We bought a new house.  Although I will say that I feel sorry for anybody that tries to buy a house with today's banking regulations in place.  Thanks to the Wall Street banking fiasco for making that process a living hell.  In a quick recap, closing on new house delayed 3 times for a total of 6 weeks, moved out of old house on Thursday night with no place to move to, was approved to move into our new house without closing on it Friday morning, started new job 3 days later, had to miss 2nd day of work to close on new house. There was much *)@#*$& going on!

My wife and I have been in our new jobs for almost 3 months now and are enjoying them a great deal.  I made the move into educational administration while my wife was able to get another teaching job doing what she loves...teaching band!

Moving and starting work in such a short time frame meant not much time to unpack the important stuff....my cards!  Finally, that is slowly getting done.  I have made a few trips to the LCS which is only about an hour from my house, instead of the 3  hours that it used to be.  I have been able to track down some cards for my 1973 set, but finally found the last remaining card of my 2000 Topps HD Set that has eluded me for quite some time.  I have had a few opportunities to buy it through eBay auctions but I wouldn't justify spending $20+ dollars for a lot of 30 cards (29 of which I didn't need)!  Finally, I came across an auction that only required me to buy 4 extra cards for a lot less money.

I give you the elusive 2000 Topps HD #76 Sean Casey.  It's been a long time coming but I'm glad it found its new home.  I think its beautiful!!!

The other four cards included the only two Royals in the set that will find their way into my Royals Team Set notebook, and two sluggers that will probably find their way into someone's trade pile in the future.

It good to be back in the blogosphere again.  I hope the posts keep coming, the trades will once again pick back up, and I will continue working on completing some more sets that I was working on before my hiatus.  Thanks to all of you fellow bloggers for keeping me connected as I continued to read your blogs on a regular basis.