This week I unceremoniously celebrated the 15th anniversary of this blog. It feels a bit disingenuous to celebrate such things since I’ve been relatively stagnant on this platform in recent years. But to just let such events go unnoticed only further the idea that I am no longer involved. This blog is the foundation for all that is of my social media/internet presence.  It all started on July 3, 2008.  This was months after Beckett Media decided to revamp its website and the heavily active message boards essentially evaporated and some persons were left with no place to congregate ..read more

Today is “Black Friday,” which for a long time meant it was the one day of the year where many of us frothed at the mouth waiting for hourly price drops on card products we didn’t really need, but always justified purchasing by telling others that “cards are NEVER on sale.” The shopping holiday has been around for decades and is named as such because retailers would slash prices that would ultimately get cash flowing and put their coffers in the “black,” which in bookkeeping terms is positive. Over the years the single day turned into a whole weekend of stuff that now includes Small Business S ..read more

I went down the rabbit hole of Burbank Sportscards Instagram Reels recently and there Rob Veres, the owner of who calls himself “The Cardfather,” has been speaking lately about the hobby lacking collectors and the notion that cards need “forever homes.” Rob is absolutely correct. For decades this hobby has been built on the idea that people buy these cards or trade for them because they enjoy the actual cards. The process by which they make those transactions can of course be part of the enjoyment, but ultimately a person’s long-term involvement in this space comes down to the cards. Now bef ..read more

When I’ve logged into Twitter in recent days there has been a constant theme popping up: Hobbyists fearing that this may the end of Twitter, and thereby the end of some of their relationships with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of fellow card fiends. There is a certain familiarity with this situation. First off, it reminds me of Y2K, where folks at the turn of the century were afraid what would happen to computers at the turn of the calendar from 1999 to 2000 because when computers were programmed in the 1900s – man that is weird to say – calendar functionality was programmed to the end ..read more

Baseball cards have long been a type of medicine for me. As a child I dealt with my parents fighting and eventual separation by using the hobby as a means to shield myself from pain, to help me escape the situation. These pieces of cardboard have been my constant for 35 of my almost 42 years. They ask nothing, but at times provide me with everything. Over the last five days I’ve again been dealing with some stuff. A colleague, who was a supervisor and mentor, passed away earlier this week. I then learned two days later that the Sports Information Director of my alma mater, a person with whom I ..read more

It was a Wednesday morning, February 2, 2022, to be exact, and I had just finished making my kids their breakfast when out of the blue I got this nostalgic feeling about a card I used to own. Every now and again a conversation leads me to wonder what came of certain cards I owned and sold or traded during my life. Sometimes the card is a cheaper one, or other times its a more modern shiny classic that if I had known better I would’ve held onto for another year and had the equivalent of a down payment on a home. Other times it’s cards from some of the best years of my hobby life. In this case ..read more

I don’t buy much football these days, but I managed to find these three fatpacks at Walgreens today while picking up a Valentine’s Day card. Given that today is the Super Bowl I figured this would be a fun, silly way, to see if it’s in the cards as to who will win this game. Pack One: Well, Rams star receiver showed up three cards into this pack, but then A Joe Burrow mask variation blue Press Proof came up near the end of the pack. The highlight here is probably the Trevor Lawrence Rated Rookie. The Travis Etienne Jr is the canvas portrait variation. Pack Two: Had some repeats in this pack ..read more

This is a bittersweet post to write but I feel I should document it properly and not just in a series of Tweets. My cousin and I are five years apart in age. We really came into eachother’s consciousness when I was about 10 years old. He’d always been around but he was living with our grandfather (Lolo) whom I didn’t spend much time with at my age. But around 1990/1991 our lives intersected more. Our family dynamic was changing. My mom and dad had split and as a result I wound up spending more time at Lolo’s house and with my cousin, JR. I wasn’t sure on what level we would connect given the a ..read more

A funny thing happened last week. I was sitting at my kitchen table sipping my decaf coffee and out of nowhere I decided to check eBay for graded copies of some junk wax era cards. I wasn;t looking for stuff I normally collect like rookie cards. Instead I was looking for a handful of special cards that were released around the time I was 10 and 11 years old. The very first card I looked up was the 1990 Score card 701, better known as the “Lights Out: Candlestick” card commemorating the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake here in the San Francisco Bay Area that disrupted the World Series between the lo ..read more

As I look through my collection of vintage baseball cards I often become enamored with condition, and not in a way everyone does. I can appreciate poor condition cards because they often can tell a story of a time in this hobby by where cards were entertainment and educational, and not an expenditure one can write off on their taxes. On the other hand, finding a mint copy of a card more than a century old is another story in and of itself. One thing that always intrigues me when thinking in this head space is how we look at alternative cards, meaning those that had a purpose: Some cards were m ..read more